1_million_words | Tuesday Tips: What's your character's problem? (Reply)

First, my apologies for shirking on the Tuesday Tip duties the last couple of weeks....

I thought life would get simpler once May 15^th arrived, but, well, it didn’t. Funny how that works sometimes. But I’m hoping to get back on track for the summer, starting with this post on …. character arc!

Please note: The topic and links below are courtesy of

goneahead , who suggested them. Thanks, and sorry for the delay in sharing them!!!

What's your character's problem?
Character arc is a fancy-schmancy way of saying that your beloved character(s) will change somehow in the course of your story, whether chapter fic or double drabble. They may grow and prosper, in which case you have a redemption tale. Or they may sink into the abyss of evil thoughts, deeds and eventually go straight to hell in which case you’ve got yourself a damnation story going. Either way, in a character driven story you give the audience a character with a need, a problem, and then you show how he fixes it and grows or fails to fix it and suffers.

‘Oh crud,’ you might be thinking, ‘Don’t I have enough to do divining what happens, where it leads, how it ends? Do I have to give every damn character an arc, now?' No, you don’t. An entirely plot-focused story can work fine, can entertain and amuse and get you kudos and comments and bookmarks.

But if you consider your character – his issues, his needs and wants, what makes him tick or holds him back, and then hold a happy ending tantalizingly close to his long, lovely fingers, so close he can almost… not quite… reach it ... you may find you go from comments like ‘I really liked this story!’ to ‘You’re killing me with this! Fix it! Fix them!’

In other words, it’s the character’s journey that ropes the reader in.

Links:

Much info and many links on character arcs here

Starting a character arc

Do you need character arcs?

All about character arcs

Using character arc to drive your story’s action