Character Growth

Continuing my ongoing discussion about story structure, i wanted to touch on character change and transformation.

Good stories are all about change. This can’t be stressed enough. When you’re writing, you should make sure that not only your protagonist, but even your subsidiary characters go through a dramatic change. To do this, you have to make certain your characters begin the first act flawed in some way and have specific goals. Then, throughout the struggles of Act II and the ordeal of the Climax, they transform like caterpillars into butterflies, becoming true heroes.

You also have to make sure your story starts with something wrong with the world, too. That something will get fixed once the protagonist goes through his transcendence.

Be careful with transforming your secondary characters. You want to make sure your main protagonist exhibits the most growth, because he’s the one your readers will naturally “feel” is the hero of your story.

Also, even if you have a team working together to solve a major problem and reach an ultimate goal, you can only have ONE hero. Think about The Avengers movie. They all participated in the Climax, but, ultimately, it was Robert Downey Jr. who experienced the “death” and “rebirth” after taking the nuclear missile through the hole in the atmosphere. He was also the character who showed the most change (interestingly, it was the Hulk and Thor who exemplified the All Is Lost moment, after being ejected from the S.H.I.E.L.D. craft).

And remember, your protagonist should be the main factor in defeating your antagonist. In a later post, I’ll talk about breaking down the Climax into components. I know I’ve been a little vague in that area to date.

Another important point is that protagonists change on two levels; there’s a visible change and a hidden change. The visible change is the obvious one: your hero, having conquered the antagonist, no longer lives in fear. He is confident. He is strong.

But the hidden change is a change we, as readers, aren’t so aware of. We feel it more than we see it. It’s an emotional change. A divine change. Having gone through his ordeal, your hero has somehow been touched by God.

Often, the B plot will be a major conduit for the divine change in the

protagonist. It can be a love interest dying or finally falling truly for the hero, or it can be the death of a Mentor.

Whatever causes this second, hidden change has to be in your story because the reality is that THIS CHANGE IS THE TRUE STORY YOU ARE TELLING.

One last point that is slightly unrelated is some advice I once received from Gardner Dozois (one time editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine): Your story should be the single most important event that happened to your main character up to that point in his life. Otherwise, what’s the point in telling it?

Start thinking about all this while you read books or watch movies and you’ll find that (for good ones) these points are always true.

That’s it for now.

If you enjoyed this post, be sure to go through my Writing Tips categories for my posts on story structure. This is part of an ongoing series I’m writing about.

Michael out.