11. The Character Arc: How to Show Character Growth and Change

In this episode of The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, Zena expands on one of the fundamental principles of storytelling, namely, that the finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that character for better or for worse over the course of the telling. But in order to show us that a character has grown, you must:

1.    Set up the character’s need from the very beginning, and differentiate their need from their want.

2.    Recognize that with very few exceptions, whoever changes the most in the story is your main character. 

3.    Make sure that your character’s growth is believable; the audience has to buy it. 

4.    Allow the character’s choices to take on greater and greater importance as they grow in self-awareness. 

5.    And finally, recognize that everything that happens in the story is part of the main character's internal emotional arc.

 
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SPECIAL THANKS

The Mission with Zena Dell Lowe would like to thank composer Carla Patullo for the original music she graciously permits us to use in the intro and outro of this podcast. To find out more about this amazing talent, go to  www.carlapatullo.com

Transcript

Ep. 11 - Transcript

Tue, 10/13 8:28PM • 15:12

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

character, story, change, han solo, film, aware, walter, characterization, momentary, ebenezer scrooge, neo, elf, main character, schmidt, choices, true, order, transformed, beginning, trauma

SPEAKERS

Zena Dell Lowe

Zena Dell Lowe  00:00

INTRO: Hello, and welcome to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe, a podcast for artists and storytellers about changing the world for the better through story.

Zena Dell Lowe  00:14

TOPIC INTRODUCTION: We've been talking about character arc, and that is because character arc is one of the most important aspects of your story. In fact, the whole point of everything that happens in the story is to nudge your character along this trajectory, providing the right kinds of conflict or encounters that allow the character to incrementally change along the way, so that by the time we get to the end, we not only believe the change that's taken place, but we are also emotionally satisfied with that change. In other words, we need to feel like our emotional investment in the story was worth it, that there was a payoff. But how do you do that? Today, I hope to be able to give you some practical tools and insights that you can use to start incorporating this element into the story. 

Zena Dell Lowe  01:04

PRESENTATION: First of all, in order to show us that a character has grown, you need to set up the character's need from the very beginning. Now, this is different from their want, which gives us the character's goal. As soon as the inciting incident happens, the character's goal becomes clear, and then they pursue that goal relentlessly for the rest of the story. This is the plot as it unfolds, according to the choices that the character makes in order to achieve his or her goal. But the need is different. You have to set up the need the moment we meet the character in the story. Every single moment of interaction that your character has between the audience or any other characters is planting seeds, clues about what he really needs deep in his soul. Now, often what he needs is different from what he wants, but we need to know from the get-go what that character's core issue really is, the missing piece of the puzzle, what they need more than anything to overcome in order to fix the hole in their soul. Now, obviously as people, we have lots of things we need to fix, but characters have to have one thing, which means you have to narrow it down. So, the question to ask yourself from the very moment that your character enters the story is: what does he or she need and what clues do I need to plant so that my audience understands that? For example, in the film About Schmidt, what Schmidt wants is to be important, or in nicer terms, he wants his life to have meaning, but what he needs is to become a better person. And over the course of the telling, all of the events that happen in the story end up making that change possible, which is essential for him to actually get what he wants. So, the trick for the writer is to always be aware of both and to allow the stuff that happens in the story to affect the character, so that what they want and what they need are actually working together to accomplish the goal. Now, notice in About Schmidt, Schmidt isn't actually aware of what he needs. He only knows what he wants, but the want and the need are two of the most essential pieces of information that you need to know in order to be able to show the slow and steady growth of your character. 

Zena Dell Lowe  03:25

Number two: whoever changes the most is the main character, and this becomes a question in a lot of stories that maybe are ensemble pieces, where there's a lot of different characters. A lot of people don't even know who their main character is, because they have so many characters. Whoever changes the most, it's their story. So, it follows that the main character would be the one that's going to change. However, even Hollywood gets this wrong from time to time. They get it wrong when they think that changing characterization is changing true character, and it's not. Let me give you an example: Luke Skywalker versus Han Solo. What is Luke Skywalker's characterization at the beginning of the film? Well, he's an orphan, he lives with his aunt and uncle, he's kind of a farmer out there, he wants to have adventure, he's bored, he's a bored teenager, blah blah blah. Now, let's look at Han Solo. Well, Han Solo is a smuggler who only cares for himself. He lends out his skills to the highest bidder. He's also kind of a shyster. He's got debts with a lot of different bad people all over the galaxy. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. At the end of the story, Luke Skywalker, his characterization has changed. He's become a Jedi Knight who saves the princess and the galaxy from the evil empire. However, his true character didn't really change. He was still the same person at the end of the story that he essentially was at the beginning. However, Han Solo did change. He goes from being the selfish, self-absorbed, self-interested character, to caring about his new friends, and in fact, giving everything that he has to give to help them win at the end of the day. So, he changed more in his essential nature. That's why we love him. Who doesn't like Han Solo more than Luke Skywalker? And the reason is because we got to see him change. So, whoever changes the most is usually the main character, but it has to be true change and not just characterization. 

Zena Dell Lowe  05:34

Number three: a character's growth must be believable. The audience has to bond, which means it has to be incremental and not happen all at once. They need to change in a slow and steady way. There's nothing worse than a character who changes and transforms for no apparent reason all at once. It ruins the entire story. So, your job as the writer is to create the right scenarios that would, in fact, allow the character to be altered, to have their views changed, to force your characters to rethink their worldview. For example, let's look at Ebenezer Scrooge. What was he like at the beginning of the story? He was a miser, cold-hearted, despised Christmas. What was he like by the end? Well, he's fundamentally changed, redeemed, transformed. He is literally one man, and that's evidenced by his new actions. And do we believe it? Yes. Why? Because he had sufficient reason to change. He was visited by three ghosts, each of whom showed him a picture of who he was, who he is now, and who he will become if he doesn't change his ways. And the combination of the three is enough to jar him out of his stubborn and cold-hearted ways, and step into the man he was always meant to become. And now notice, when he looks at the past and he sees himself as a young man, there is a part of him that longs for that. We see that momentary softening as he looks back on himself and he sees what it used to be like. He wants it still, right? But what does he do? Well, in the story, he has that momentary softening, but then he dismisses that as ridiculous. And so, what he has effectively done is taken two steps forward and one step back. And that is good. That has to happen. That is what we call slow and incremental change. So, they take baby steps, a little bit of a change here, a momentary recognition. 

Zena Dell Lowe  07:34

Which actually brings us to number four: allow the character's choices to take on greater and greater importance as they become more self-aware. So, we've talked about how the root of your character's need is suffering; your character has some sort of trauma. Now, one thing that we've learned from trauma experts is that people with a trauma event in their past often operate on a subconscious level, on automatic. They're running on some sort of program, but part of the process of recovery is to bring the subconscious to the conscious, to become more self-aware. And the same is true for your characters. So, with Ebenezer Scrooge, because these ghosts are bringing him to the past, to the present, and to the future, he is becoming more aware of who he has become, and he does have a trauma from his past. He's got a very big wound that made him become the man that he is. But then, he starts to see himself more clearly. And that's what you want to do over the course of the telling. You want your character to slowly become more self-aware of how their choices have been causing harm or how their choices have at least not been helpful in getting them what they truly want and need. So, here's an example of a story where the character's awareness of the harm did not seem to increase, even though it could have and it should have. And if it had, it would have made the story even better. Now, granted, the story I'm talking about, it's still great. Nevertheless, this would have made it better. And I'm talking about the film Elf, starring Will Ferrell, who plays Buddy, a man who was raised as an elf in the North Pole, who discovers that he's actually a human. And so he goes in search of his biological father, Walter, who's played by the great James Caan. Now, Elf is a tricky movie, because as I said earlier, whoever changes the most is the main character. However, Buddy is the main character and yet he does not change. Instead of Buddy changing to become like those around him, which would effectively mean that he loses his childlike innocence and becomes cynical, Buddy is so full of pure Christmas spirit that he becomes the catalyst for change for all of the other characters in his orbit. So, by the time we get to the end, we believe every single one of their transformations, except, I believe, Walter's. Now, throughout the film, Walter is put in situations where he must choose between his family and his career, and he chooses his career over and over again. However, he does it with no apparent internal conflict or torment that he's really choosing wrongly. Then, at the end of the film when the stakes are really, really high, he suddenly chooses to walk out on his job so he can go be with his family, because he's realized how important they are. Now, to me, this comes out of nowhere, and it has no real setup or justification. Now, all they needed to do was show me that Walter had angst over the choices he was being forced to make up until this point. All they needed to do is have him hesitate and wrestle with himself, like, "Ooh, should I? Shouldn't I?" And had they done that, then I would have believed at the end that he would have made that choice, because I would have seen him wrestling and becoming more self-aware.

Zena Dell Lowe  11:09

So, that actually brings us, then, to point number five: everything that happens in the story needs to be part of the main character's internal emotional arc. Now, of course, in the example I just gave you, we were talking about Walter, who is not the main character. And yet, because Buddy's job is to cause all of them to change, it still applies. When we talk about our characters, then, we need to be thinking about it in terms of how the story unfolds. So, this means we can't ask which is more important, plot or character, because plot is character, and vice versa. At the end of the day, all stories are character-driven. You know, it actually drives me nuts when I hear people in the industry or anywhere else talking about whether or not something is a character-driven story or a high-concept piece, because any good story has, at its center, a great main character who drives the action or plot of the story. So, it's always about who the character is. This is true even in a movie like The Matrix. Now, that's the kind of film people mean when they refer to something as being high-concept. But guess what? We wouldn't have cared about the story if we didn't like Neo. And notice that The Matrix is actually a clear example of the main character's internal transformation. At the beginning of the film, Neo is literally asleep. He's hooked up to tubes inside a pod, completely unaware that reality as he knows it is false. The life he thinks he's living is nothing more than a computer simulation. So, Neo takes the blue pill and wakes up. And slowly but surely, throughout the rest of the story, he comes to believe his true calling, until finally, he steps into the man he was always meant to be. He literally becomes the one. Everything that happens in the film builds towards this exact moment. The entire story was constructed so that we could witness Neil's internal transformation. So, even in a so-called high-context film, the real story is the character's internal emotional transformation. And that's why every story is a personal paradox, because really, no matter what your story is about plot wise, what it's really about is the character's internal change, bit by bit, over the course the telling. The character's inner journey happens because of the outer journey. And what we really care about is how they handle that journey and how the pieces of that journey have changed him, because those are the elements where they learn. Those plot points are where they incrementally are transformed, and by the end, they're able to step into the role they were meant to step into or they step away from it all together. 

Zena Dell Lowe  13:57

RECAP: To recap, then, the finest writing not only reveals true character, but arcs or changes that character for better or for worse over the course of the telling. But in order to show us that a character has grown, you must, one: set up the character's need from the very beginning and differentiate their need from their want. Number two: recognize that with very few exceptions, whoever changes the most is the main character of your story. Number three: make sure that your character's growth is believable. The audience has to buy it. Number four: allow the character's choices to take on greater and greater importance, because they're becoming more self-aware. And finally, number five: recognize that everything that happens in the story must be part of the main character's internal emotional arc. They are intertwined. It is the outer stuff that allows the inner stuff to happen. 

Zena Dell Lowe  14:57

OUTRO: Thank you so much for listening to the Mission with Zena Dell Lowe. May you go forth and change the world for the better through story.