How to Write the Character Arc

hey guys it's Ellen Brock novel editor I hope you're all doing really really well today we are going to talk about the character Arc in a future video I'm going to go over how to plot the character Arc or how the character Arc and the plot influence each other but today I just want to go over the components of the character Arc and sort of dig into those nitty-gritty details of how it actually works so there are lots of videos and articles about the character Arc how I'm going to explain it today is probably going

to be different than other you've read or watched in the past I'm not here to confuse you so if you have a system that already works for you and makes sense for you um go ahead and just stick to that I'm trying to explain it in sort of the simplest possible way with as few terms or components as possible because I think um it's a complicated subject and I think we can make it even more complicated by adding additional terms or components so I've tried to distill it down to four basic components in this video

um but if this doesn't make sense to you and you have a system that works for you go ahead and stick with that um often the character Arc is uh sort of pushed aside I think in favor of focusing on plot structure but the character Arc is extremely important to story construction it has a huge impact on how the story unfolds not just the character's internal growth not just what the character thinks and feels but actually how the plot develops so that is what I really want to focus on today but again we're not going

to really be getting into structure just the components and how they actually work so let's go briefly over those four components one the motivation this is the character's deepest desire commonly for love power safety belonging Etc two the goal this is a tangible external objective this is the thing the character wants the thing their motivation drives them to strive for three the belief this is something the character believes about themselves other people or the world this belief can be true or or false it can be positive or negative depending on the type of Arc four

the lesson this is an alternative perspective that contradicts the belief the character may or may not accept this lesson in the end and the lesson may be positive or negative depending on the type of Arc so we're going to go more in depth on those four components later on in the video but for now I just want to quickly go over the types of arcs so you've probably heard about positive arcs negative arcs and flat arcs um these arcs actually all have the same four components so even though they function differently and they unfold differently

they are all made up of those same four components that we went over so let's briefly cover what those different types of arcs are the positive Arc in this archet type the belief the character starts with is negative and the lesson they're presented with is positive and they accept that lesson the character grows and becomes a better person the ending is positive this is by far the most common type of Arc the negative Arc in this archetype the belief the character starts with is positive and the lesson they're presented with is negative and they accept

this lesson the character becomes a worse person the ending is negative next we have the flat arcs so the flat Arc can take two different forms depending on whether the character starting belief is positive or negative so the flat Arc Light version in this archetype the belief the character starts with is positive the lesson is negative and they stick with their positive belief the character stays a good person the ending is positive the flat Arc dark version in this archetype the belief the character starts with is negative the lesson is positive and they stick with

their negative belief the character stays a bad or flawed person the ending is negative I do want to mention that whether we consider an arc positive or negative might be somewhat subjective we don't all have the same moral compass we don't all have the same values so sometimes we might have a character who accepts a belief that we don't agree with or they reject a belief that we would have accepted um when we talk about positive or negative or good or bad we're really just talking about the shape of the Ark not necessarily whether it's

objectively more moral or objectively less moral so I just want that to be clear because I think there are sometimes arcs where uh it may be up to interpretation whether or not it's positive or negative but the structure um still stands the structure is that I went over it's still going to be one of those structures even if maybe it's not as objectively moral as maybe in some other stories so now that we've gone over that let's go deeper into each of the four components and some common misconceptions and misunderstandings that can make it harder

to create an effective Arc what is the motivation really so we all know that the motivation is an incredibly important part of the story it's the drive that gets the character to move towards their goal it's also sort of the backbone of the character Arc so the motivation sort of glues all the components of the story together however a lot of writers struggle to identify the motivation and I think often that's because they're not really going deep enough so the motivation is the the deepest part of what's going on for the character and because of

that it's not always obvious it's not always easy to spot um there are many stories where we might even say um it's difficult to even know for 100% certain what the motivation was for the character uh because it's it's that deep it's so under the surface that we don't always see it as very obvious or very clear so when we're working on our own stories we do need to really deeply understand the motivation of our character in order to create a a functioning and a compelling um character Arc however often what happens is the the

motivation can seem more superficial because of how we Define it so so often we Define um the motivation as as the driving force it's the thing that gets the character to take action but I don't think that's necessarily a very clear explanation of what the motivation is because it doesn't Force us to really dig deeper that that could really be superficial we could say well my motivation was that I was hungry or my motivation was that you know I just didn't like this person but that doesn't go deep enough when we're talking about the character

Arc so what I think is a better definition of the motivation is that it's a feeling that the character wants to experience usually this is something very basic very Primal something like love acceptance power Justice something very deep something very simple so it is it's neither good nor bad inherently so the motivation gets corrupted by other aspects but the motivation itself it's neither good nor bad it just it is um and it's typically something that most humans experience but for this character that's the really important thing in their life right now that's the thing they're

really really focused on so it's the desire for a feeling and the reason that I say it's a desire for a feeling is because when we talk about the structure of the Ark it doesn't matter whether the character could already be experiencing this feeling and they just aren't because of other things going on so for example the ark structure works just as well if a character has the motivation of love so this character just deeply wants to be loved it works just as well if that character is bullied and hated so very obviously they don't

have what they want or if that character is just not capable of seeing or feeling love from the people in their life so they could be feeling love but they themselves in a way are preventing themselves from feeling that feeling so that's why I think it's so important that we talk about it in terms of the desire to feel a certain way because it's all about the character's perspective The Arc is not about objective reality it's not about what we see as the reader because we as the reader can look at a situation and we

might say well this character obviously is already loved it's very clear that they already are loved by the people in their life the character is what matters the character's feelings is what matters and the character wants to feel loved and they don't feel loved that's perfectly fine even if we might look at it and say well they already have this thing that they want when it comes to the motivation it can be helpful to keep distilling down what the character wants until you get to one or two words so ideally the motivation should be able

to to be described in a single word or two so like we talked about power acceptance um Justice something that we can really condense down to a really simple one or two word explanation and this is important not just because of terminology but because when we think about plotting if we're trying trying to plot and we don't have the motivation correctly identified it's going to be extremely difficult to craft a really compelling and cohesive story so for example let's look at Shrek so Shrek everybody I think knows the story of Shrek which is why I

I chose it for this so uh if we just look at the surface of Shrek we might say that Shrek's motivation is isolation because uh he wants the fairy tale creatures out of his swamp he wants to be alone again and he goes off on this quest to save Fiona specifically so that he could then be alone in his swamp if we stop there and we say his motivation is isolation the problem is that doesn't work for the rest of the plot well it could work for the rest of the plot but it doesn't work

with the plot chosen um by the writer so if we were writing Shrek and we were thinking isolation is his motivation the problem is all of his actions would need to be in alignment with that with that drive for isolation which means it wouldn't make sense that he would would eventually fall in love with Fiona or that he would pursue Fiona because that has nothing to do with that motivation for isolation um if if that were the case he would just sort of dump Fiona off and go back to his swamp because then he could

be alone which was what he wanted all along we have to dig deeper than that to something more Primal and and something just further deep down in the subconscious so some characters may be conscious of their motivation but most it's a subconscious drive that they're not even really aware that they have so if we dig deeper into what's really going on with Shrek his real motivation is acceptance so he wants to be isolated but he wants to be isolated because he doesn't believe that he can be accepted by other people and the only way for

him to to feel okay in that sense is to avoid people because if he avoids people he can't be rejected and when we look at that and we say Okay acceptance is his motivation it makes sense why the story pivots so that he starts to pursue Fiona because Fiona accepts him for who he is and that's his actual motivation so whatever Shrek thinks is going on it doesn't really matter because that Primal deeper instinct is what's really driving driving us to do things it's what's really motivating our actions so because Shrek is genuinely deeply motivated

by acceptance it makes sense that he would pivot so that he can then become friends with donkey he can pursue Fiona romantic and in the end he does not achieve that goal of um being alone in the swamp and we don't care we don't wish that he had achieved that goal because that's not the point so really dig down into what your character really wants and and keep distilling until you get down to a primal uh a desire that doesn't really feel good or bad it's just a deep Primal desire that a character has and

you will know when you found it because it will make sense with the actions that your character is is taking assuming that you've already written something if you're plotting then it's really important for the plot that you distill it down because if you if you don't distill down to a to a simple Primal desire or driving force you're going to have a very limited amount of options that the plot can take so for example with Shrek if we said isolation was his motivation basically he can just go on an adventure to get his swamp um

empty again free of the fairy tale creature so that he can just go home and be alone which functions as a story but it would be a very flat story a very basic Simple Story and aside from maybe some CH some short children's books maybe some comedies we don't generally see stories that are that simplistic even a kids movie like Shrek it's not that simplistic so when we look at that deeper motivation we can figure out actually how to plot an interesting and dynamic story that still feels cohesive because the motivation will still glue everything

together what is the goal really so the goal is probably the simplest aspect of the character Arc it's just the thing that the character wants while the motivation is deep down it can be difficult to identify we might even have to reflect very deeply on a story to really realize what the motivation um of a character really was the goal is very superficial it's it's basic um it's very apparent and the reader can uh tell very clearly whether or not the character is moving towards or away from it so it's very tangible and very clear

the biggest problem with the goal that amateur writers tend to have is the goal feeling too disconnected from the motivation so while the motivation is the desire uh to feel a certain way or to bring about a certain feeling the goal is how the character thinks they will achieve that so a big mistake in amateur writing is the goal being completely separate so thinking of the goal entirely um on a plot level just what what's the plot what's the character trying to do not not also how is that going going to fulfill this deeper need

this motive that the character has if the character doesn't think the goal is going to bring about the feeling of their motivation you're going to have a plot that feels um not cohesive not logical or at the very least that it doesn't have the emotional depth that you want it's not as engaging on a deeper level because it will feel very superficial and uh you might also have the problem where the character Arc feels really tack tacked on or really stuck in and it doesn't feel integrated into the plot so the character has this motive

this thing they want to feel the goal is the way that they think they are going to feel that it can also be difficult for a lot of writers because we can have a tendency to think of the goal as the point of the story but usually that's not the case in most Stories the goal isn't the point like we talked about in Shrek his initial goal that he wants to get the fairy tale creatures out of his swamp that's not the point of the story and we know very clearly when we think about it

that that's not the point of the story because he doesn't get that in the end and we don't wish that he had and we don't feel like he failed because he didn't because he fulfilled his motivation In The End by getting that acceptance that he wanted with Fiona we don't need him to achieve that goal that initial goal because he does then later have the goal of being with Fiona but we don't need to see him achieve that initial goal of getting the fairy tale creatures out of out of the swamp so another common problem

is is feeling that stories are constructed with a single goal so the character will have a goal and that goal will stay the same through the whole story that's very rare um aside from some really simple stories some kids stories some comedies it's it's pretty unusual for the goal to just stay exactly the same throughout the entire story so normally there is some pivoting that happens and again that pivoting is glued together by the motivation so even though the motivation in a lot of ways is more important to the construction of the story because the

the character is always going to act in alignment with their motivation they're not always going to stay in alignment with the same goal that does not mean that the goal isn't important to the structure of the story or to the character Arc the goal is still extremely important because it gives the character something to do something to act towards something to move towards if the character only has a goal they really can't do anything so for example say we have a character whose goal uh um whose motivation sorry whose motivation is um love so they

want to be loved if that character doesn't have a goal really all they can do is just hope that love comes to them or they can sort of wander around aimlessly you can write a lot of scenes where they're sort of upset about not having love or maybe sort of trying to make it come about but if they don't have a goal their actions are not going to feel directed they're going to feel really Meandering and aimless and that's a really common problem um in amateur in amateur novels or in amateur stories in general that

the character just feels super super aimless they might have a motivation only and they don't have clear crisp goals for how they're going to um achieve that motivation or fulfill that motivation so the goal is still extremely important we might sometimes find it difficult to untangle the goal from the motivation because they can be very close so for example a character who wants love might have on a motivation level might have a goal that something like getting a boyfriend or getting a girlfriend those are two separate things love is personal it's the character's perspective it's

not uh tangible we can't see it we can't know for sure if it happened the reader needs that external goal that visual that idea of what success means even if it changes so that we know is the character moving towards this thing or away from this thing because motivation is too under the surface it's too mushy it's too ooey gooey we can't tell it very EAS easily if the character is moving towards fulfilling their motivation or not so we still need the goal even though the motivation is really the glue that holds everything together something

to keep in mind that can really help with writing dialogue and introspection is that the character may or may not identify mainly with the goal so some characters will identify mainly with the goal and some characters will identifyed mainly with the motivation the reason that this is important is that a character who mainly identifies with their goal so they're not really aware or they're not maybe they don't even want to be aware of what that driving force is what their motivation really is they're not going to sit around thinking about it so a really common

problem in amateur writing is that the dialogue or the introspection is very strangely on the nose so for example with Shrek uh Shrek is goal oriented he wants to get rid of these um fairy tale creatures out of his swamp that's what he's thinking about he is not going around thinking about how he just wishes he could be accepted by people that's not what's consciously in his head if you write characters who are thinking too much about their motivation but really they're more more goal oriented or it doesn't really make sense that they'd be that

self-aware it can feel very odd and unnatural so that's just something else to be aware of because often we might feel like the ark isn't working very well or maybe it feels really awkward and sometimes that's because the character seems bizarrely aware of their own motivation and normally we don't really move through life thinking that much about our underlying motive we're thinking more about our goals so in most CA cases with most characters thinking about the goal is going to feel a lot more natural than thinking about the motivation so so far we've talked about

the motivation the underlying desire and the goal the the sort of the the tangible thing that the character is trying to do to achieve that motivation or fulfill that motivation but if you know anything about the character Arc you know that there has to be a problem there has to be something not working there has to be a lesson that needs to be learned and that brings us to the next component which is the belief what is the belief really so the belief is a specific perspective or idea that the character has about themselves the

world or other people in the majority of cases this uh belief is negative so that's what we see with the positive character Arc so the belief is negative and the character grows and we have a a positive end point however like we talked about earlier in this video that's not always the case sometimes the belief is actually positive and that can happen in both a a negative Arc so the the starting belief is positive and the character actually becomes worse um and in other cases the the starting belief is positive and the character stays the

same they do not um they don't change they stick to that original belief so while in many cases the vast majority of cases this belief is going to be negative it isn't always the case that it's negative it sometimes is a a positive uh belief most stories will provide an a pretty explicit explanation for where this belief came from this is usually the key piece of back story it's sometimes a flashback it's sometimes just an event that the character mentions often in a heart-to-heart conversation sometimes we get a glimpse of what this event was at

the beginning of the story uh it can take a lot of different forms but in most cases there will be a specific event often a traumatic event but it could also uh just be the general environment does not have to be a single specific event so for example uh with Shrek we don't see a single specific event uh Shrek talks to um donkey and he talks about how uh people don't accept him we see this perspective multiple times throughout uh throughout the film that Shrek feels that people don't accept him um you know people grab

their pitchforks and they want to attack him he lives in an environment that does not accept or like ogres and that's completely fine it's okay if the backstory is just that it's the general environment the character might have a generally abusive uh family they might be in an environment that uh say a business environment that's extremely Cutthroat and aggressive and that might be what created their belief that's completely fine but um I just wanted to say that in most cases and in the majority of adult books especially it tends to be connected to a more

singular event especially a negative uh belief tends to be connected to a single tra event so we might think that because the belief is internal that it wouldn't really have that big of an impact on the plot but the belief actually creates a tremendous amount of the obstacles and the problems in a story so the thing with the belief is that the character is working so hard to achieve a goal but the reason that things aren't going well for them the reason they need to have this character Arc is because the belief is preventing them

from either pursuing the correct goal or from P pursuing the goal in the correct way so it maybe that the goal itself um is never it's it's never going to be fulfilling to them uh we can see this in Shrek for example so his initial goal of getting rid of the fairy tale creatures and being alone in his swamp that's not really going to fulfill his need or his um motivation for acceptance um it's never going to be as fulfilling as where he ultimately ends up which is with Fiona um in other cases it's it's

less that the goal itself could never be fulfilling but more that the approach or the way that the character is going about uh achieving that goal um isn't fulfilling to them or or won't satisfy that motivation so when we look at the um positive Arc so we have a character who has a negative belief that negative belief is usually um a defense mechanism A coping mechanism um a way for the characters to sort of protect themsel and because of that they can't see what would really be good for them they can't see um how that

belief is PR preventing them from being able to achieve the goal that they really want and to really achieve that deep satisfaction um and really fulfill their motivation so in some stories the belief like we've talked about is positive and you might think then that the belief can't be causing obstacles in the character's life but the belief is still creating a tremendous amount of conflict and obstacles and that's because when the belief is positive the environment isn't conducive to that belief or the character is being confronted with other perspectives that contradict that belief and because

of that it's still creating conflict so to give sort of an example if you had a character who is maybe a businessman he is um really valuing Integrity so he really believes in telling the truth but he's in an environment where people are lying and cheating and getting ahead his Integrity is still creating problems for him so if he didn't have the belief that Integrity is important and he was willing to lie and cheat he would get ahead it would be easier for him to fulfill his goal so even when the belief is positive it

still makes things harder for the character even though they might be sticking to their morals and we might say this character is doing a good thing it isn't making their life easier it's still making things more difficult for them so in many cases um the obstacles and the conflicts would not occur without the belief um this is not uh always the case so for example if there's an antagonist the antagonist is also causing problems and those problems aren't going to be necessarily related to the character's belief but often the characters acting as sort of their

own antagonist or co-agonists with the um the True Villain or antagonist of the story because that belief is causing problems and uh an example that might help to illustrate this is in Shrek so um because Shrek has the belief that no one can accept him when he overhears the conversation between donkey and Fiona where Fiona is talking about her own um transformation and how um ugly and and unattractive she thinks she is when she becomes an ogre uh because of Shrek's belief he believes that no one uh can accept him for who he is and

so he thinks that Fiona is talking about him and so he then lashes out at Fiona to sort of protect him himself and that causes her to run off with farquad and sort of uh adds this obstacle and this complicating factor to the romance when things had really been going in alignment for both of them towards getting that romance that they want so the belief causes problems in the story if if the belief in your story isn't causing problems that's something you really want to look at because it should be making things harder for your

character and like I mentioned this might not always be um harder in the sense that the character needs to learn a moral lesson and become a morally better person sometimes it makes things harder even if the belief is positive and the character is sticking to positive morals um it still makes things harder it still creates obstacles what is the lesson really so the lesson is really what the character Arc is all about it's really what we talk about when we're simplifying the character Arc we're talking just about what what's the lesson that the character learned

so this lesson is going to in many cases be the antithesis or the opposite of the belief so for example if you had a character who believes that people are inherently bad the lesson is probably going to be something like people are inherently good it could be a little more complicated than that so it could be something like um some people are good and some people are bad and that's okay so it doesn't have to be fully the complete opposite but it will contradict the belief so it will make it challenging um for the character

to let go of that belief and take on the lesson a common misconception is that this lesson always has to be positive the lesson does not always have to be positive it will always be uh the opposite or the polar opposite of the uh belief so if the belief is positive the lesson will be negative and this is true no matter what even if you have a flat Arc so if you have a a character who is positive and stays positive the lesson is still negative so it's still the opposite and if you have a

character who is has a negative belief and maintains that negative belief the lesson was still the opposite of that belief it was a positive lesson that the character chose not to accept so it is a common misconception that the flat Ark doesn't even have a lesson that the character just stays the same and there is no lesson um component that lesson component does still exist the character just chooses not to accept it so the lesson will be there whether the character accepts it or not whether it's positive or not but the lesson will always be

the opposite polarity from the belief I do want to dig just a little bit deeper into the flat Arc because I think people can be confused about how this would play out so in the flat Arc the lesson is presented to the character they're shown um how the lesson would make their life easier so like we talked about the belief is making things harder whether uh the belief is moral or immoral doesn't matter the belief makes things hard harder for the character so in the flat Arc the character sees the lesson and is tempted by

the sort of perks or benefits that might come from accepting that lesson so the degree to which the character is tempted by the lesson or tempted to accept the lesson in a flat Arc can vary a lot so it can be barely attempted at all so they they are presented over and over again and maybe they really don't feel all that tempted by it in that case often it's more about the other characters learning from that character's um tenacity that character sticking to their belief so the other characters seeing this character sticking to that belief

um they learn more than obviously because it's the flat Arc so they they learn more than this character who doesn't change in some cases though the flat Arc might present with more extreme Temptation so the character might be uh so tempted by a lesson they might even try on that lesson and sort of experiment with something that goes against their belief but then in the end they will still decide to maintain that belief so how tempted the character is can vary a lot but the lesson is always there and the Temptation is always present it's

just that some characters will fall into it way more and others not so much so we do see quite a bit of variation in um what this flat Arc really looks like with the negative Arc of course we have um the character taking on this negative lesson so they're starting at a positive point they see the perks of this negative lesson and they choose to take on this negative lesson and become a worse person and the positive Arc is in the opposite the character starts with a negative um belief they see this positive lesson the

perks of of this positive lesson and decide to take it on so that's sort of roughly how this lesson will play out so a common problem with the lesson in amateur fiction is that it doesn't have enough impact or relevance to the plot or it's not present in the story enough so this can sort of uh manifest as the character just sort of changing their mind at the last second so they make it to the climax they have this big change of heart and it sort of feels out of nowhere it might sort of just

feel tacked on it doesn't feel like the novel set it up or was building towards this lesson so this is usually because uh writers don't realize how the lesson needs to be present and really felt throughout the story so the reader in the character will start to feel the presence of this lesson way before it's consciously introduced into the story and that is something that we have to design and and do intentionally as writers unless of course you're very intuitive and it comes naturally to you so the lesson often early on manifests as sort of

a crack in the facade so especially with a um a character who has positive Arc so a character who starts with a negative belief we might start to look at that character and think maybe they're not as okay as maybe they want to be or maybe they're not as fulfilled as they might be claiming to be the exact issue here is going to depend so much on the specifics of the arc so for example if we look at Shrek we can say maybe Shrek's not really that happy being isolated even though you know he claims

this is what he wants we can kind of think M does he really want that is he really happy with that so sometimes it's just sort of a crack in the facade and that's what sort of starts us thinking about this lesson or or it plants the seed of what the lesson is going to be another way that this seed can be planted is through Envy or jealousy so often a character might say perhaps they they believe in Integrity the businessman who believes in integrity and and that though he feels very strongly about that we

might see him looking enviously at a cooworker who lied or cheated in some way and got a promotion so we might see those seeds of Envy being planted uh we might see for example a a a child who says you know I don't need you know my parents approval I don't really care about my parents approval but we see the seeds of the lesson when they look jealously at a kid in their class who's getting completely you know made over and praised by their parents so we start to see you know maybe this belief isn't

the best way and we start to kind of see the seeds of that lesson often there will eventually be a character who sort of outright States what the lesson is this can be uh a mentor type character or sometimes it's just sort of a sidekick character or like a a quirky friend who sort of presents the opposite view so in shk Donkey kind of falls into both of that so donkey sort of is tr's Mentor who s sorts of he sort of guides him towards realizing that there's a different way that you know people can

accept you for who you are that that's a possibility and he's also that sort of weird quirky side character who's just um not that uh not as maybe concerned as Shrek is about uh people not accepting him so donkey's sort of maybe more presuming that people will accept him so he comes with a from a more open perspective so we often see a character that kind of presents the lesson in that way and in many cases they will outright State the lesson and you might not uh notice that now that I say it you might

start to notice that in films in particular a character will often outright State what the lesson is or what the character needs to learn so that's another way that the lesson gets um into the story um and then of course the consequences of not accepting the lesson is a presentation of the lesson so when we see a character who is being punished for sticking with their belief and they're not getting the things that they would be getting if they had learned the lesson we see that um we see that as a demonstration of the lesson

on a subconscious level even if we're not really consciously aware that that's what's happening so for example um in Shrek we see that uh because Shrek is sticking to the belief that he is struggling to make friends with donkey he's struggling with his romance with Fiona and that happens because he hasn't learned the lesson and in that way the lesson is present because we see the consequence of him not accepting the lesson so I hope that makes sense or clarifies things it's a little bit tricky because we don't we often don't want to come right

out and say what the lesson is or we don't want to repeatedly say what the lesson is so we sort of need to to demonstrate what the benefits might be if the character did accept that lesson and often we can do that through other characters who have already accepted that lesson and and because we can witness that we can see what the perks are of accepting the lesson and how um the character would benefit from it tips for crafting your character Arc so when it comes to actually crafting the character Arc it can be really

difficult often because as writers we're generally more inclined towards either the character or the plot so if you're more inclined towards the character you might find that the motivation and the belief come very easily to you but you struggle a lot more with figuring out the goal and the lesson and sort of where the plot is going if you're more of a plot person you might find that the goal and the lesson come more easily and that it's hard for you to figure out the underlying motivation or to really figure out what kind of belief

makes sense with the storyline that you want to tell even though we're only talking about four components which doesn't seem that complicated I always recommend that you write down any components that you do know sometimes just writing it down can help us to mentally narrow down the options that we have available to us you can also sort of ask yourself questions later on I'm going to give a cheat sheet uh I'm going to review it in this video so you can sort of go over um how the components fit together and what might fit into

those blanks that you still have in the character Arc but asking yourself questions can be really helpful for example if you know the goal you could ask yourself um what motivation would drive someone to have this goal you know what sort of deep feeling might be achieved through this goal that's someone might want and that can help you to sort of figure out the motivation if you're more um character oriented and you know the motivation and belief you might think about what goal with this character perhaps think might bring about that motivation and that will

really help you to sort of narrow down your options and sometimes it's helpful to just list out a whole bunch of options and then you can sort of think about which might appeal more or you can cross them off as you go through and you realize they don't really fit the component or they don't really fit the story that you want to tell it can also be extreme helpful to narrow down what type of Arc you're going to use for your story if you know the belief determine if it's positive or negative if you know

the character has a negative belief at the beginning that eliminates two options right off the bat from there ask yourself if the ending is going to be positive or negative this is something we usually know early in the writing process even if we don't know exactly what the ending is if you know your character has a negative belief at the beginning and the ending is going to involve positive growth then at least you know which type of Arc you're shooting for I've also made a list or a sort of cheat sheet of tips and things

that you can think about when trying to figure out each of the components this will help you to sort of check your work and make sure that you have identified those components correctly and if you are still trying to fill in some blanks it can probably help you to sort of spark some more ideas about what might fit there and to have a better understanding of how these components interact with each other the motivation the longing for a specific feel Peace Love belonging acceptance safety Etc one or two words long not inherently good or bad

drives the character towards the goal stays the same throughout the novel The Goal what the character is trying to achieve tangible to the reader the reader can tell whether it's been achieved or not the character thinks it will fulfill their motivation can change over the course of the novel must be something the character can move towards the belief a thought or message about the character of the world or other people comes from their backstory a specific event or the general environment can be good or bad makes fulfilling their motivation harder it creates obstacles difficult to

let go of the lesson a thought or message that contradicts the belief the character must choose to accept or reject it can be good or bad makes fulfilling their motivation easier difficult to accept because it goes against their belief so that's it for this video I really hope that this gave you a little bit of a better understanding of the character Arc I do intend to make at least one more character Arc video maybe more than one it sort of depends on how much I can fit in one video I hope this video wasn't too

much to go over at once if you have any questions leave them in the comments it will help me um when I make the future videos to have an idea of what I haven't explained clearly or where you guys are still confused um I know that this can be pretty difficult to wrap your mind around if you are on patreon I will be putting a cheat sheet up on there that goes over all the things we talked about in this video um the different types of arcs the components of the arc and then that those

tips that I just went over for uh how you can sort of check over the components I have all those put together into one um cheat sheet which will go up on patreon at the $5 and up tier we also have a podcast now at that tier it's 30 minutes every other week I think we're on I think next week will be the sixth episode so if that interests you at all um you can join us on patreon and help support the channel I really really appreciate that it makes a big difference because it is

uh it's quite hard to make a significant income on YouTube alone so I will be back uh with a new video My Health has been a little bit iffy lately again so I've been a little slower so I'm not sure when the new video will come out but in any case I will be out with a new video in the near future and in the meantime happy writing guys