Emotional Arc
Whether you’re writing a literary novel or a plot-driven novel, your characters need to experience some kind of growth or change. This growth – as in real life – rarely happens all of a sudden. Try it and your beta readers will leave comments like “I don’t feel this moment was earned” or “This doesn’t ring true.” The emotional journey of your characters is the backbone of any good story. So how do you plan for it?
When I am plotting out my story, I use a three-act structure. This site has a good breakdown of what a story arc looks like. Essentially, Act One is where you introduce your characters and setting. Then something happens – the conflict – that shifts your story into Act Two. This is the meat of your story when roadblocks are tossed at your character, and they must use their problem-solving skills to work around them. The tension builds throughout this section until you reach the Black Moment. This is the darkest moment in the story when your MC is not sure how they will resolve the conflict. The Black Moment is your climax and shifts you into Act Three where the conflict comes to some type of resolution.
This is a simplified explanation of the three-act structure, but I hope you get the gist. In addition to using this structure to outline my plot, I also use this structure to determine the emotional arc of my characters.
| ACT ONE | CONFLICT | ACT TWO | BLACK MOMENT | ACT THREE | |
| Story Arc | Introduce characters and setting | Introduce story conflict. | Roadblocks are tossed at your character creating rising tension. This is the middle of your story when stakes are raised higher around the conflict. | Tension reaches a climax. Your MC is not sure how to solve the conflict. Failure is imminent. | Story conflict is resolved. |
| Emotional Arc | Who is my MC? How do they react to the world around them? What is their value system? What matters to them? | How does my MC react to the conflict that shakes them out of their normal world/routine? | As obstacles are thrown in the MC’s way, how do they react? The character shouldn’t react the same way every time – but most of the time they should be true to their value system.* The emotional arc is affected by the rising tension of the story. | This is your MC’s darkest moment. If you’ve done your job right, your reader knows exactly what’s at stake for your character and they care if your reader will fail. | Your MC finds a way to resolve the conflict, or at least, I prefer my characters to solve the problem rather than outside forces coming in to save the day. If my characters have done the work, it makes for a really satisfying conclusion.** |
* An exception would be if you are trying to show the character spiraling out of control, but then you would need to have spent time establishing how “out of character” they are acting for the contrast to be successful.
**Note: I didn’t say happy ending. I’m okay with an ending that isn’t tied up with a neat ribbon BUT I want to feel that my character has grown. Personally I can’t stand reading a book only to find the character hasn’t changed one iota when confronted with problem after problem. That works for minor characters, but not MCs in my opinion.
I also want to point out that sometimes a story begins with the conflict – in fact, many of the best stories do. When this happens, the details of Act One are filled in through back story.
I hope this helps!
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4 Responses to "Emotional Arc"
on September 27, 2010 | to this post
huh. I never thought about breaking the story down this way. I usually go old school with index cards and a corkboard so I can jot down major plot points and character developments and then mix and match and move them around with ease
on September 27, 2010 | to this post
I learned the three-act breakdown of a story in high school, though it used slightly different terms, but I hadn’t considered the emotional arc for the main character. Looking at it, I find my story roughly follows the emotional arc, but it’s very good to have a concrete way to break it down. I think it will help immensely when one is trying to find problems or make other modifications.
on September 28, 2010 | to this post
This is very cool. Thank you for sharing this!
on September 29, 2010 | to this post
This is great! I have an intuitive sense of all this, but it helps to have it all plotted out. I just was revising my character’s “darkest moment” – now I have something to call it in my mind!