How to Write the Character Arc
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- The Four Components of the Arc
1. The Motivation: This is the character's deepest desire (commonly for: love, power, safety, belonging, etc.)
2. The Goal: This is a tangible external objective. This is the thing the character wants, the thing their motivation drives them to strive for.
3. The Belief: This is something the character believes about themselves, other people, or the world. This belief can be true or false, it can be positive or negative, depending on the type of arc.
4. 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.
The Four Types of Arcs
1. The Positive Arc: In this arc 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.
2. The Negative Arc: In this arc type, the belief the character starts with is positive and the lesson they're presented with is negative and they accept that lesson. The character become a worse person. The ending is negative.
3. The Flat Arc (light version): In this arc type, 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.
4. The Flat Arc (dark version): In this arc type, 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.
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"The lesson will always be the opposite of the belief."
"The belief should cause problems in the story."
I needed these explanations.
I saw the notification, did a little dance and immediately started watching it ✨
I hope you find it helpful!
same!! :)
Suck up…
Haha jk ;)
I need to do the same! I love these videos sooo much. I rewatched the writer types at least 4 times.
Not only are these analysis useful, they're structured in such an elegant way that they have a beauty in themselves.
I usually dont interact much, but holy moly if your videos aren't some of the best writing advice i've ever seen (even including some big names like sanderson)
Wow, thank you! That means a lot!
I’ve been doing a lot of writing research to help improve my story and I hear a lot of the same terms and ideas thrown around and I always THINK I understand, until I watch your videos. They always clarify the haziness and get right to the heart of things. I’m so grateful you take the time to make these videos despite not feeling well. ❤
I'm so glad these videos help! It took me a long time to understand these things. It doesn't come naturally to me, and so I've tried really hard to explain things in a way that would have made sense to me back when I was watching/reading everything and still struggling to get it.
Us doing NaNoWriMo: Augh! Everything stinks! This is awful. Won't someone please help?!
Ellen: I come now in your darkest hour of need!
Ha ha! NaNoWriMo is so hard. Good luck! I hope this helps, even if only a little!
Had to pause the video when I heard your definition for character motivation. "A feeling that the character wants to experience". It's so good!
I was just thinking yesterday that I hope theres a new Ellen Brock video soon, and here we are!
I appreciate you clarifying the difference between motivation and goal
I love every single one of your videos! You are so thorough and technical. It helps so much!
I'm so glad!
your explanation of the motivation is really good, clarifies it and made it click in a way other sources didnt
Awesome! Glad to hear it!
This is exactly the kind of content ive been looking for. Would love a series like your plot structure series, breaking down each kind of character arc.
I like the idea of the MC's initial belief (in a positive arc) being a maladaptive way of preventing the opposite of the motivation; i.e., Shrek's motivation is acceptance, so he has a maladaptive belief (it's better to be alone because people will reject you otherwise) to avoid rejection.
Thank you so much! As a mostly character-driven writer, I do struggle with goals a lot and this video helped me realize I don't need a single 'main' goal since the goal can change throughout the story. And defining the goal as the way to get the core feeling the MC wants to have makes it easier for me to distinguish the goals and how they can move the story forward. I've already identified several goals in my current story and how they serve as the MC's attempts to get this feeling (in Bailey's case, love), and I'm hoping I can raise the stakes of the chapter I'm currently writing by connecting his current goal more directly to his motivation.
I'm so glad this video helped you with figuring out the goals! Good luck with your novel!
@@EllenBrock Thank you!
I am so grateful for your videos! They really hadn't helped increase my skill and have encouraged me to write my books. Thank you Ellen! Thank you for providing this information for free to every inspiring author.
This truly brought home the relationships between these concepts. The notes in my second brain (Obsidian) that I take from your videos are some of the best I have. 💜
It took me months of google research and CZcams watching to find this information.
Except, you present this info in such a nicely compacted, condensed way.
My 12 pages of feral info... vs your paragraph of pure gold.
TY ❤
Great video Ellen! Character arcs were the very thing I struggle with in writing my story, so I'm so glad you addressed this topic in this way. Please keep making awesome content 👍
Wow! Really appreciate your explanation.. I was working on my MC to make him realistic and believable..and i was confused to find his true motivation. Thanks for great explanation 🥰💗✨
Glad it was helpful!
Hi Ellen! Great information as always! I really like those summaries at the end as any video can be a lot of information and I think this helps me with implementing your advice for the next time I write. Thanks again for another articulate and well laid out lesson!
You are so welcome! I'm glad you liked the summary at the end!
even as a already published author your videos help out tremendously. Keep up the good work
Great explanation. Thank you! (Hope you feel better soon 🙂)
Thank you!
Just what I needed!
This is brilliant- thanks so much!
Perfect timing, Ellen. Thank you for the clear distinctions and tips.
Thank you for this. Awesome video!
Great breakdown and explanation. Well done!
This was so, so useful. Thank you :)
this is a phenomenal channel!
So much gems in this video 🙏🏼
This is Awesome!!! Thank You!!
Another precious gift of knowledge from Ellen. Bless you.
Amazing content! Thanks!
This was incredibly helpful! Very concise, simple, and detailed.
Great break down on this subject. 👏
Thanks for this breakdown! Super informative as always
Awesome! 👏👏👏
This was extremely helpful. Thank you so much
This is a great video! Thank you so much!
Best explanation I’ve heard so far.
Great job.
Master is back 🤟🏼
Love your videos. Thank you.
This is the most helpful video on this topic I've seen.
Thank you❤
If i could like this video twice, I would! So precise, so useful
Thx for all the videos you make and made they helped me a lot! I also love your positive attitude. That sometimes helps me after a hard day at work!
Your videos have been incredibly helpful in my writing journey. Thank you Ellen!
Thank you for your videos! You always explain things in a way that clicks for me and leaves me empowered for my own writing ❤
Absolutely great video, a very solid explanation of some very important things worth considering when writing a story.
I'm so glad I stumbled over your videos. They are great! Good examples and well explained❤
Such a great way to explain it, especially as to how each part ties together or counters the other parts. Really helpful way for me to think about it into the future. Thanks!
Great video! I would love to hear more about character arc ❤
great stuff, thank you
It's been a very useful video. I really have learnt a lot❤
Well done Ellen! I'd read tons of story structure books but has always struggled to totally grasp this one. I'm just a few minutes into this video but it's already beginning to click. Good work and thank you.
Please, please, do the more character videos, I love how you explain everything.
Another great video that sparked so much inspiration! You are able to phrase your explanations in a really clear way that opens my mind each time - I want to go back to my novel immediately. Your advices are always so precious. Thank you! ❤
This was brilliant! It literally helped me finish working out these elements for one of my main characters. Now I feel much more excited to write the next section of this first draft 😊
excellent presentation, thanks Ellen. You get down to the core things we all need to use in our work
This is really helpful, thanks! The Shrek example clarified things for me.
Insightful video - concept well explained and actionable. thanks
Thank you so much for your content. The Shrek example is perfect ❤
Best advice on topic that I've run across. I don't say that casually. I've read whole books on the topic and came away with less.
That was very clear! As I've said many times before I feel like you are one of the few people I can listen to on writing and feel like I can more fully understand the writing process. It manages to be succinct and not feel like every other tip/guide out there. One thing that would be nice to see in the crafting video (and I know this might be too late to change with the lateness of this comment) but it would be interesting to go over several arcs from one crafted story. To me a lot of villian arcs would probably be flat, while the main protagonists often get the most extreme changes, so seeing how all of the arcs interact with one another in one story would be much more helpful than several from different stories.
This is fantastic! Sometimes so much of different language can be used to describe the writing process, it’s good to see it broken down like you do! Keep it up!!
You explain things so clearly, thank you! I have three main characters who briefly share their journey and then become antagonists. I realized I could only easily assign motivation, goal, belief and lesson to one of them. I'll keep on brute forcing Y first drafts in hopes they begin to take a more recognizable form to the shape it for the second draft. At least I now know what to aim for.
Also, the character I whose elements I could recognize has a flat arc dark version for book 1 and a positive arc for book 2 (the final one). I always thought she had a negative character arc but her belief was negative to begin with so that wasn't the case, so thanks for that as well.
This is the smartest writer, editor, assessor you will ever come across on CZcams.
A key insight, explained perfectly. This brings much needed focus to my storytelling. You are brilliant. Thank you!
Hi Ellen! Thanks so much for another excellent video. I’ve seen these concepts explained several times before, in other videos and craft books, but I think this is the first time the explanation makes so much sense to me. It’s not the first time that’s true with one of your videos! One thing I’d like to see, maybe in a follow up video, are some movie or book examples for the three less common arcs. Although I understand them conceptually, I’m having a hard time coming up with examples that illustrate them.
I love your videos. They are straightforward, detailed, and really help me think about my stories and writing. I really needed to hear about this topic in particular. I think I finally figured out how to move into my story's climax.
Thank you so much for this!
As a side note: I'd love to see a video about how the character arc intersects with the darkest hour plot point.
Ellen you give by far the best writing advice I've ever heard! The way you break down and explain the concepts is so simple and elegant, and actually makes me excited to write, rather than feeling overwhelmed and out of my league. Thank you thank you thank you!! Please never stop making videos
Hi Ellen, I discovered your videos on writing a couple days ago. I'm so glad I did! I've been doing research to improve my writing recently and I appreciate the way you explain different writing components. This video in particular continues to be a great help to me as I've referred to it for my manuscript. Thank you for these videos, I appreciate you and believe I'm becoming a stronger writer because of your willingness to share your expertise with us!
I was waiting for your new video. My writing these days has gone from bad to worse.
You are the best at explaining the ins and outs of story and character. I know I can trust your videos to be full of useful quality information. Thank you so much! I didn't even think about goal-oriented or motivation-oriented characters. It's a totally new concept to me. Wow! 😃🥰
I was just checking yesterday to see if you posted a new video and I missed the notification somehow and now there’s a new video yayyy!! ❤️
Hi Ellen, I've just found your channel and am so grateful for you! I'm embarking on writing my first novel and have been struggling to know where to start, how to plan etc. This has really helped me understand what questions I need to ask myself in order to write this story. Thank you!
Thanks a lot for the wonderful advice. Keep doing it.
Sorry I didn't see this sooner! Thank you so much for your support!
Thank you, for this and all your other work here on youtube. My head is spinning with the mechanics of writing but through watching and rewatching, the pieces are slowly falling into place. After this video, I revisited my current story and created a simple arc overview which I can now write against. If my character veers off track, I simply use the overview as my guide to question which direction they would take next.
Thank you!! That's beyond helpful! Love your videos!
So glad it helped!
Your videos have been the most helpful resource so far for me. This video addressed something which has been causing me to get stuck with my current story. I have a good idea of the plot, but nailing down the character arc needs more work. Looking forward to the video on how character arc works with plot.
I love this! Thank you so much! It took me a while to realize what my character's goal was and this actually helped me figure it out :) and made me want to rewatch Shrek :)
Thanks for your tips throughout the years!
Idea I'd love to see for a next video:
The benefits of using a typewriter compared to a computer for editing your works!
Great explanation!
I've always found motivation part easy, but struggled with making up clear external goal. After watching the video and reflecting over how the goals look like in some of my latest reads, I was able to think of a few possible goals for my current project's mc.
Thank you!
Thank you so much Ellen! Thanks to your video I finally nailed down the foundations of my three main characters' arcs! Now the next challenge is to make all their arcs connected somehow. I think that'd be great idea for a video, how to make the main characters' arcs relate to eachother in a story.
Yesterday i was thinking about how no matter how much i studied creative writing, i couldn't get the character arc right, and now there's a video of my favorite writing channel about it. Thanks Ellen, you're doing an amazing job!
Watching this for the third time in two days while I try to hammer my brain into sorting these things out for my MC. 😅
So helpful. Great video! Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
Great video. When I came across the belief centered model as supposed to the lie to truth model I imeadiatly new that it was better, The seperation between goal and motivation just clicked the final piece into place for me. That being said I think ill be using the term desire instead of motivation, as it is not as easy to confuse it with the goal.
Sorry, guys, I'm busy today. New Ellen Brock video dropped.
I love your videos so much! This really helped me and cleared up some questions. However, once question I have is what do you do with major side characters (who later might become one the brim of main characters)? How detailed should their character arcs be, and how tied should they be to the plot?
Amazing video as always Ellen!
Personally I think it's whole up to u and how much of the side characters are really 'side' characters, how involved are they with the protagonist or main characters? ☆~☆
Overall anything can work, best of luck buddy!!!
Great vid. Can you cover how much arc to put in a long, episodic, series in book one in your next vid on arcs, please. I find your attention to detail very helpful. I have a full arc for book one and an arc for the series but unsure if I have two arcs for book one as he has a positive arc and a flat arc as he fails to change enough yet in the arc for the series.
ELLEN BROCK IS BACK
Thank youuu
Luke Skywalker is a great example of the light flat arc. Luke persists in the belief that Vader has good in him even as everyone else (including Vader himself) says that Vader is too far gone. It makes things harder for Luke, but ultimately more rewarding.
Yes!!
This video was already great and then you started talking about shrek….subscribed!
¡Gracias!
Thank you so much for your support!
The audacity I have every time I think that I don't *really* have to watch another Ellen video, and then each time you absolutely crush that one problem i didn't even knew I had! It's always that weird feeling that creeps in the back of my head that I ignore because I don't understand how to fix it 😭 Your videos are pure gold!
Thanks!
Thank you so much for your support!