Ch 6: The Rules of Writing (Make Your Character Change)

This is a new series of blog posts about writing, the rules, and how to get started on your writing journey, based off several workshops for teens I've given at the Palatine Public Library. This series is also posted on figment.com and wattpad.com, two places where teen writers gather to share their work.

Ch 6: The Rules of Writing (Make Your Character Change)

There are two kinds of character arcs in stories:

1) one in which the character never really changes (think James Bond, same guy, different plot)

2) one in which the character undergoes some important change (think Harry Potter, finally accepting his destiny in fighting Voldemort, among many other changes)

Most compelling stories have characters that grow and change throughout the novel. The best kind of character will start as the least likely person to be able to overcome the obstacles that will face them throughout the story. Then, when they DO triumph over those obstacles, it gives the reader a great feeling of satisfaction. We want people to win. We want the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose, but if every main character is Superman, heroic in the extreme, we will quickly lose interest. This is why it's important to have flawed characters and to put obstacles in the main character's way ... ideally obstacles that force the character to change into the kind of person that actually can defeat the bad guys.

Even Superman had kryptonite - make sure your characters have weaknesses they have to overcome.

One way to figure out what weakensses your character should have is to dive deep into their backstory. Flesh out who the character is by giving them a history, a family, important events that shaped them into the character they are by the time we meet them at the beginning of the story. You do not need to have all this information in your story - in fact, it's better if you don't. Save this information to be sprinkled through your story and revealed at just the right time. But use it to inform the way your character speaks and acts and that character will live and breathe and feel more alive to your reader. And they will have real weaknesses, based on the secret history of their past, that they bring with them to the story.

Peter Dunne's book Emotional Structure is a great reference for understanding character arc in a novel. Dunne emphasizes that emotional structure has to come before plot, because the plot is used to reveal the emotional structure. He sees the emotional arc of a character as having an evolution where one step follows another in a structured way, no matter what the particulars of your story or plot. It goes something like this:

Our hero has survived so far by developing habits to avoid pain. Without these habits, or crutches, her life is too risky. Now some kind of PLOT EVENT happens and her habitual defenses no longer work. She's forced onto a new path, for the moment, in order to get back to "normal" where her habits will work again. Then more PLOT happens, and now her tools for survival aren't working anymore. Her emotional walls start to crack, her weaknesses are exposed, maybe weaknesses she wasn't even aware of. Her old habits are useless. She must be brave, take a risk or leap of faith. This is a huge moment of vulnerability. But she learns something: that she can change. Here she learns something about the thing that caused her to build those defensive habits in the first place. She has to face this past to free herself, and the PLOT connects this moment to her physical survival. In that moment, she grows. She may be clumsy and frustrated in using her new emotional tools at first, but she has to use them in order to survive.

You can see how this emotional structure is pretty generic, but also how the plot is (in Dunne's view) existing solely to force the hero's fears to the surface. The life threatening plot isn't there to kill your hero, but reveal her (and the co-protagonist is there to help things along).

I encourage you to read the book to fully understand how this can play out for your novel. The book rambles along - oddly not as structured as you might expect! - but there are several insights throughout Emotional Structure that make it worth the time to read.

 ~*~

Susan Kaye Quinn is a young adult author. Her newly released paranormal/SF novel Open Minds is available on Amazon and Barnes&Noble. You can subscribe to her author newsletter to find out about upcoming releases and giveaways.