Revising Character Arcs in Your Novel
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Today I'm talking about the intensive process of revising character arcs! This is a common thing to have to do, and can be a real gamechanger. If you get notes about a character being unlikeable, difficult to relate to, having agency issues, motivation, etc... you may be looking at a character arc revision.
I'm going over the things you need to consider when approaching a character arc revision, and how character arcs impact the emotional experience your reader has.
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Ugh this video has come at the PERFECT time! I've been tweaking the first five chapters of my wip for forever, not quite able to work out why it wasn't working. I realised during a particularly bad night of insomnia that some of the main characters have zero agency or agenda in the beginning. I don't think it's any coincidence that these are the characters I haven't don't backstories for. So I've been back at the drawing board over the weekend, writing those backstories and filling character plot holes and now I'm going back over those first chapters, amending as needed and I'm SO MUCH HAPPIER with it! I had one character I didn't know what to do with but while listening to this I realised I might need to cut them from the opening scenes and bring them in later. I just wanted to say thanks for sharing these videos, they really do help with the writing process, and I don't feel quite so alone.
There’s more arcs in here than a geometry textbook.
When you decide to change half of the personality of your main character
👁️👄👁️
This is exactly what's going on with my book right now 😂 One character arc revision has led to a second character arc revision and a second POV.
I just started revising so this video spoke to me!
Thank you so much for talking about this! I feel like I often write stories before I write the characters. Then revision is liking unraveling a tapestry.
Love this video!! I'm going through this process right now. I've used a couple of books that are absolute game-changers for me. "The Plot Whisperer" by Martha Alderson (the best plotting book ever - character arc being one of the elements you plot), and "The Emotional Craft of Fiction" by Donald Maass. I hope you make more revision videos! Thanks! :)
Thanks for the recommendations :)
This is the only video I’ve watched by you that’s about something I actually feel like I have a decent grasp on.
This is the only thing I’m good at? Damn it.
That's not so bad. If I could choose to be good at only one thing, this might be it! Good characters seem to be the most important ingredient in writing, and I've often struggled to create them.
Excellent video. You cut right to the heart of it. I've seldom been consciously aware of the formula you've laid out so clearly here, but looking back on my own work, it really brings everything into sharp relief. It's amazing how much a story can change from those initial first drafts, just by adjusting a character's motives and endgame.
Really enjoy your videos, and can't wait to check out your books.
I love your revisions video, and this is an especially good one. I feel like revision isn't talked about as much, but it is so important! Thanks for all of these videos!
I'm going through this for a few of my characters right now, and while it's totally making my book better it's also SO HARD. It's nice to listen to your advice, though, because it helps me know that I'm doing the right thing, lol!
I really like your videos. They are so helpful (and came at the right time, because I just wanted to change the behaviour of one of my characters)
I also wanted to tell you: I'm just reading brightly burning and I think it is awesome so far
Such useful tips as always! I’ll be sure to check/ revise my character’s ARC now that I’m diving in the second draft :D
This was so helpful, thank you! I've got to revise my main character and I'm feeling really nervous about that.
I live for your videos, you're so informative! Yes, please keep doing revision and writing craft videos, it really helps and motivates aspiring writers like myself. ❤
I personally found this video very helpful, because I’m going through a similar thing right now, with the antagonist in one of my novels. Aside from that, I also think that this video topic is a very interesting look into revisions. Keep up the good work, Alexa! (As a fellow writer, I’ve found a lot of your videos to be very helpful and informative. I absolutely love your channel).
OMG it's so true and obvious when writers don't bother to do this properly. I am personally getting good mileage out of Dan Harmon's Plot Embryo technique for ensuring my characters actually have arcs to start with - revising them for any good reason is indeed daunting but worthwhile. Do it! #committed
Thank you for this content! 😊
I love your channel Alexa. You've been improving it's quality in each video.
Thank you for your great videos. You have a gift .
Great video! I did tons of work on my character arcs recently so that they will all be stronger as I go through the 2nd draft of my novel. Wouldn't be surprised if they needed strengthening again in the 3rd draft, though!
I have a pretty big concern about my favorite character in my story. He's the eventual love interest of my main character (just a brand new best friend in book 1) and I've modeled him after specific characters I've seen in other stories (those being Jaden Yuki (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX), Hau (Pokémon Generation 7, the Alola Region), Kid Flash (Teen Titans Season 5 Episode 6), Sun (RWBY)), so he's meant to be a fun-loving, carefree, free-spirited, super talented, comedic, and eccentric personality. He's by far my favorite character in the whole series so obviously I want to leave no stone unturned in his development and make sure that he has a really strong character arc. So because I also am keeping the story as scientifically, psychologically, and practically realistic as possible I felt that I made him too positive all the time in Book 1.
To fix this I gave him a bit of a temper, a reckless angst to fight in physical combat that grew into more of suicidal recklessness, a discomfort when the topic of his backstory comes up (which is very tragic and has always been even before I decided to counteract his borderline irritating positivity), guilt and remorse for a specific crime he committed (which just kinda wrote itself unintentionally when I was first trying to bring more depth to how he presents himself in a particular campfire backstory story-time scene), a clinginess due to loneliness (which is amped up due to him being quite the extrovert), and finally a completely unanticipated, "who the hell did he just turn into" aggression and anger toward the main character due to the suicidal recklessness.
HOWEVER, I feel like maybe the suicidal recklessness and the out-of-nowhere aggression might be too much and also out-of-place for this naturally peppy character who isn't really supposed to show the darker sides of himself or his backstory until later in the series. But at the same time I can't really dumb it back down at all or at the very least conceal it until a later point in the series because that would force me to cut out the very important heart-to-heart between the two boys that immediately follows the aggression and also alter on of my favorite moments in the book (which happens earlier in the same chapter and is the event that my main character thinks is what sparked the sudden aggression). Also, an alteration to this would mean I'd have to change my favorite chapter title "The Uncovering", which has a triple meaning with the three meanings being perfectly representative of the 3 key points of the chapter, which are 3 different contexts of the word uncovering.
Blah blah blah huge word vomit in yet another comment on one of your videos, but at least this time you said you wanted to see character arc struggles in the comments
I’m actually in the middle of plotting out my third draft to restructure my main character’s arc by adding in someone who will better kick start his journey so this is perfect 🙌🏻
A couple of weeks ago I realized my protagonist didn't have an arc for book 1, even though I had/still have one for the series itself. Yesterday I started getting close to discovering that arc, but after watching your video I see just how much more work I need to do. But now I have a better idea for how to do it,
Wait until an editor or publisher tells you that you need to combine characters. This happens to me. Publishers always want less characters, less pages, etc. I once had to combine male & female characters. But tbh she was right, bc both those char had the same arc & journey which was jr hero quest, & they were young char for the adult genre in which that novel was written. So basically the editor was saying, you can only keep 1 of those young char on jr hero quest arc in this novel, or cut both and move their stories to a YA book. Interestingly, I ended up writing one of those char in a middle grade novel pub 2yr later. Moral of the story: never be afraid to revise char arcs & always save material you cut. It could be gold & could get a 2nd life in another book! ;)
Halfway through my book I realized my antagonist was really a red herring for the real antagonist. I finished the book in that way, but had to rehaul the first half completely. Ugh.
I love your videos but this one really struck me. This is a specific topic that I don't see touched on enough. I'll be doing some revising tonight with your advice in mind. Thank you.
I'm doing some pretty intense revision work myself. Only for me, I'm changing setting and action in this current chapter that I'm working on. Thanks for making this video!
Thank-you for this video Alexa! I'm not near revising with either of my WIPs, but I have thought as I've been writing that I may need to beef up the arc in the revisions. This is great advice. I can see how it would be a lot of work, but it's exciting to hear about how opening it can be for the story.
Hayley ^_^
Character and story seem to be connected like space and time
Amazing Video
Great video with great tips!
Thanks for helping me figure out why the chapter I was trying to revise kept ringing so false: she was at the wrong place in her character arc! (Now I just have to fix it.)
Thank you!
I'm midway between a pantser and a planner. And I've found through revising my novel from 3rd to first my main character has become batman 😅 it's turned from comedy parody to mystery because the main is the straight man 😭 any ya revision tips would be amazing peeps!
Same. Pantsed a bunch of zero drafts and now when I'm transitioning into plotter mode, I realized I have to adjust my character arcs, so...a lot of plot might change to fit to them and a lot of skeleton scenes I wrote is...yikes. And I'm hoping I don't have to completely alter my act one events( although I'm missing key plot beats because I thought, oh, it's ok, start with the inciting incident-then my beta reads got bored from the jarring introspection...yeah this is harsh truths
This is lovely and helpful! Thanks for your opinions and advice! How do you keep track of multiple character developments when you have multiple plots? Currently have a timeline/grid thing.
This tends to come naturally to me in rewrites.
Can you talk about what we should do if some of out characters are real people?
Revising Character Ark = The Butterfly Effect.
"too many characters are bantery and funny"
so you've got Dawson's Creek lol
Setting is like a four-dimensional character.
I feel like all my other characters and my antagonist have pretty good motivations except my MC. Is it ok for him to just go along the ride?
What does it mean to create ripples in your writing?
When you adjust one thing, such as your main character's personality - from say bubbly and talkative to more serious and mature, it will essentially affect the way the rest of the book will go as well. So then dialogue will change and the character's actions will change in response to events and circumstances. But this also goes for characters' back story and the world building, although changing the main character's way of thinking and or personality will probably have the biggest impact. Kind of think of it like the pebble in a pond analogy, if you drop it into water it creates ripples that will spread throughout the entire pond (or in this case, your book).
I hope this helped!(: Happy writing