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When you begin your writing, it is best to go into it with a plan. Last week I talked about using tropes to help plan, develop, and expand your writing. What I didn’t mention in that article is that you also need to plan it out and outline your writing.
This planning stage of outlining has helped me speed up my writing process. Prior to this new way, I utilized James Patterson’s method of having every chapter be a scene and jotting down what will happen in that scene. This is a good method, but at the same time, it doesn’t provide the why that I didn’t realize I needed. In this case, the why provides the character arc.
When I went in search of a book that felt would help me develop my characters into richer, deeper characters, I found several that were helpful in doing this. In fact, I even utilized Gwen Hayes’ book Romancing the Beats to create my latest book, Romancing Mr. All-Star. Using her method that she gives in the book, I created an outline template I could use for writing Romance books.
At one time, I simply used the whole plot diagram to create my books where you have an introduction, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. This was great, but it lacked thoroughly developed characters. You need those characters to live and breathe to the point they almost step out of the pages. You want your reader to pull for them. You want your reader to know them intimately and personally. In the end, it’s not the plot that the reader remembers. It’s the characters.
The book that helped me understand this dynamic was John S. Warner’s book The Secrets to Creating Character Arcs. This book helped me to understand character development in context to the plot outline. Prior to this, I wasn’t fully thinking about how the conflicts and incidents in the story affected the character. I went into writing assuming that my character was brave and bold, but the inner conflicts didn’t resonate or were missing. The character didn’t change due to the circumstances in the plot. That’s where learning about character arcs came into play.
Well, aren’t you an ELA teacher?
While I do teach ELA to middle school students, character arcs are something that we teach to high school and college students. In middle school, we teach how to identify a character’s traits, but we don’t delve into the why behind the change. We talk about dynamic characters, but not in terms of the character arc (which is the character’s journey). Warner explains it like you have several plot lines overlapping one another. One’s arc may end before the climax of the story. Another character in the same story may reach the end of their arc after the climax. These outlines all overlap one another. I suppose that is why after reading Warner’s book, Hayes’ book made me understand why I had to hit certain beats (goals) in my writing.
Overall, when you begin to plan out your writing, you should definitely take into consideration your character’s own journey in the story line. Paying attention to how they will change throughout the story and who will change them can help you build a better outline for your book or story.
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