Five Steps to Creating Characters—Step Two
I have permission to use the cover of book #3!!!A Model of Devotion
Last month I talked about making characters likeable by making someone like them. Find that here.
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This month I’m talking about Character Arcs
1. Make a character likeable by making someone like them
2. Character arcs
3. Give them quirks
4. My main character types
5. Avoid backstory dumps
Character arcs. Whatever you start with, for a romance novel, or honestly, any novel except maybe Jack Reacher, your character needs to change. But for me, at a person’s most fundamental level, I don’t think people really change. At least not without years of intense therapy. But a person, their strengths and weaknesses, their personalities, don’t really change.
A take charge, feisty woman doesn’t become meek. An easy-going artist doesn’t become a dynamo. Or at least neither of these things happens with a true change of character. If
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that feisty woman meets a man who likes to run things, but she respects and loves him and likes the way he runs things, well, maybe she’ll let him be in charge. But even if she’s now second in command, she’s still going to be feisty. That easy-going artist might find something that wakes up her passion to run something, but she’s going to do it with an artistic, easy-going flair.
People don’t change who they are, but all personality traits can be used for good or for evil. That feisty lady may have spent her life pushing people away (except for her friends who like her, of course) but in the end, her arc is learning to turn her feisty personality toward charming, respecting and loving others but in a feisty way. So your character arc is revealing who the character is, then showing her grow into her best self—but not a different self. And you as the manipulative, cruel author, put her through your story to develop that best self.
