While reading, we become active participants in a point-of-view character’s journey (seriously, our brains become the character). This means that when characters undergo a deep journey of change, we do too. Character arcs are the method through which authors move hearts, change minds, and influence the world.
A character arc is the trajectory of a character’s inner journey of change. They begin the story with a false view of how the world works (often called a lie, misbelief, or inner obstacle), and the plot pushes them to unlearn that view. In a heroic story, the arc is ‘positive’. In a tragedy, the arc is ‘negative’.
At your story’s climax, your character’s proof of change (or failure to change), and the consequences of that decision, make your story’s overall ‘point’. But your characters can’t change overnight. They must continually struggle against their lie throughout the story—in every scene.
Action is the proof of change. For example, a character who’s struggled against a lie that *‘power is more important than friendship’ *****throughout a story **may believe they’ve learned otherwise near the end, but it’s not until they’re forced into a corner and have to make a really hard choice between power or friendship that they prove it.
Your character must be given a choice between upholding their lie or challenging it in every scene. At the beginning, they will always choose their lie. But as the consequences of their decisions get worse, they’ll start to see the error of their ways and begin making different choices.
(Spoilers Alert: If you’ve never read An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, stop now because spoilers abound!)
Let’s break down how scene choices build Laia’s positive character arc in Sabaa Tahir’s brilliant An Ember in the Ashes. The lie Laia struggles against throughout the story is her belief that ***‘**some people are inherently strong, others are inherently weak.’ *****
We won’t look at all of Laia’s scenes, but we’ll choose key moments in the story and highlight the choices she makes to show the general shape of her arc. Note how she’s always forced to choose between her lie (believing herself weak) and an opportunity to change (believing herself capable).
At the beginning of your story, you must show how deeply embedded your character’s lie is through the choices that they make.
An Ember in the Ashes begins with Laia’s family being attacked by the ruling class, the Martials, in the dead of night. As the Martials kill her grandparents and imprison her brother Darin, Darin tells her to run.
The Choice: Give up and run away (believing herself weak) or stay and fight for her brother (believe herself capable)?
The Decision: She chooses to run because she thinks she’s too weak to save him.
“Laia!” Darin cries out, sounding like I’ve never heard him. Frantic. Trapped. He told me to run, but if I screamed like that, he would come. He would never leave me. I stop.
Help him, Laia, a voice orders in my head. Move.
And another voice, more insistent, more powerful.
You can’t save him. Do what he says. Run.