Wattpad India Awards 2021

Learn: Character Arcs

In every story, there is an arc that the main character is going to undergo. This is what helps readers attach themselves to the character and relate.

As people living non-fiction lives, how many different ways we might be changing at once can get pretty complicated. Who you were five years ago is different from who you are today. And it is different from all the future versions of yourself.

Fiction, on the other hand, has no time for that.

Stories take the human process of growing and learning and make them a little simpler to help convey a lesson within it for others to learn and grow from. Time in stories travels way faster than in real life.

The human brain, complex thing that it is, is very good at visualizing and playing pretend and it likes to put itself into the shoes of a character so it can learn. If people can't attach themselves to the content, they won't remember it after they're done, if they even finish it.

So let's give the readers character arcs!

Let's go into the steps of change. There's a particular technique you might use where you work backwards from the end state of your character to figure out where they need to start. For example:

By the end of the story, your character is more confident in themselves and more experienced in using their magic. In order to change into that, they will have to be the opposite when they start: nervous, self-doubting, untrained in using their magic properly. Let's say they want to win an ongoing war in their world. Specifically, they want to ensure they and their family make it out safe. So your character is nervous and self-doubting and can't control their powers well enough, and that is blocking them from fighting against the Evil Leader who is leading the uprising against non-magic.

We have an endpoint, a beginning and a motive in that order.

Another common one is rising to become a hero in the face of adversity. In order to be a hero, the character will have to change something about themselves. If they start a hero, ready to slay dragons, then their change will have to be away from the hero they were at the start, perhaps becoming more compassionate and down to earth.

With a beginning and endpoint for your character, they're going to need some emotional moments along the way to help move them towards their change. Nobody just changes on a dime. In reality, people often take a long time to change and have to go through a lot of lessons and self-reflection. Fictional characters too have to go through some trials.

Let's go back to our nervous magician with a hero factor and use them as our guide through emotional points. Here are the things we'll need to know:

Why are they the way they are at the start? 

Like a psychological profile, this is what caused your character to be the way they are. It may never be explored in the story but it will inform how you think about them. Did something happen to them that makes them doubt themselves? Have they always been this way? How did they get their powers?

For example, the character, we'll say, lives in a world where magic is forbidden and only used by the bad guys, so they've got to hide who they are. They've found it easier to just do whatever everyone else is doing to fit in and be normal.

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What will they have to overcome? 

Why haven't they just gone ahead and done the things they need to do already? What will challenge them to become that person?

Example character needs to show that magic isn't always bad. The big blockers in their way are their personal history of self-doubting, plus they have a family who could get hurt in the process. Now the war between magical and non-magical people is getting worse, and they would need to stand up to people they care about, which is inherently hard for them to do (not every challenge needs to be slaying a dragon).