Character Arc is Not All About Change
October 28, 2005
“There was no character arc.”
You hear this all the time from screenwriters and story people about a film they didn’t like. To them, character arc is all about whether or not the Main Character has changed. Are they the same person they were at the beginning? “Yes? Then there is no character arc, ” they would proudly say.
But that would mean William Wallace in Braveheart had no arc, and neither did Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive. Both of these are great stories, but according to the definition above they’re flawed.
What most story people don’t realize is that when they talk about character arc they are referring to what Dramatica calls the Main Character’s Growth. Growth is all about whether or not the character is moving towards something or away from something - not whether or not they change. You can grow as a person and still hold on to your beliefs - they just get stronger.
Both Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford’s characters have a character arc - both grow in their resolve as they hold out for the oppressive situations around them to alter. Mel fights the subjugation of his people by the King of England while Harrison holds out against the obvious reality that he’s the only suspect in his wife’s murder.
So the next time you’re in a story meeting or reading a friend’s script, amaze them with your new found knowledge that just because a character doesn’t change, they can still have an “arc.”
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