Seeking Character Arc advice

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  • #16
    Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

    may help to look at the character's environment. where they start, where they may end. the story thread. in JAWS, brody starts on land where things are neat and tidy like he likes things to be until a girl is eaten by a shark and...at the end of the story he ends up in the ocean living his worst nightmare. and certainly didn't want to be on that boat at all (only did it after his kid almost got eaten), and then, when things got deadly just before credits roll, trying to stay above the waterline in his greatest fear and where he was sinking while trying to slay a monster...

    at the very end as he and hooper kicked to make it to shore, you knew brody had slayed more than his fear of drowning in the story, or even the killer shark.

    he had left his job as a nyc cop to move to amity, where he said a cop could make a difference...in a town where there was no crime.

    under the radar in that story, brody went from being a coward to a cop.
    Last edited by AnconRanger; 06-06-2017, 07:06 PM.

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    • #17
      Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

      There was a book I read years and years ago by some screenwriting professor named Michael Chase Walker. He recommended that young writers use the 'leads to' method when plotting a script. That's when you define your hero's POV in act 1, is he greedy, vengeful, scared, confident. what have you. The second act is 'leads to', which essentially the road map from point A to B. Act 3 has to be defined by a force or emotion that would be considered an opposite to the ACT 1, so Greed 'leads to' Charity or Vengeance 'leads to' Forgiveness. He said that unless the change taking place in your script was that drastic, it wouldn't be a big enough story.

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      • #18
        Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

        i would guess a character like luke in COOL HAND LUKE is difficult to pull off. luke's whole thing is being difficult...(spoilers) starts out in the movie drunk and cutting off the heads of parking meters. not to get the change, but it just seems the right/fun thing to do. a couple hours later in the story, he ends up in a church, the whole world after him, he pleads to God, God brings him Dragline and a host of police, not angels, around the church. Luke thinks God never did deal him a fair hand. But he is cool with it. A minute later the man with no eyes shoots him and Luke dies on the long way to the prison hospital. No real big arc in the story for Luke, but Luke carried the story...he seemed like he changed here and there, etc. but turned out he went out as he went in. but the men in the prison camp changed. luke did not change, but where he was changed with him being there. he changed others.

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        • #19
          Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

          Luke is an anti hero. Films with those structures, the character never sees past their behavior. We all have issues in our life that we continuously bang our head on. Could be your weight, your love life, your career, your health. We want this issue to get better but we are in a trap of bad habits when it comes to this issue. Some will figure it out, some wont. Classically structured scripts are about a Hero's head banger of an issue where they are trapped in a cycle of bad habits. In these stories there is a structure that shows us how a person like this can conquer a challenging weakness.

          In the anti-hero version the weakness wins and often kills the character. American Beauty. Scarface.

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          • #20
            Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

            interesting.

            if in the plot of COOL HAND LUKE say, a new guy brought in to the prison camp was on the verge of suicide or trying to bust out and getting killed, for some important, emotional reason, like to visit with his dying mother (why luke was locked up tighter) or see his new baby, etc, and luke helped the guy escape, knowing the guy was going to try anyway and would fail (luke was said to be a war hero), and at the very end it ended up with luke and the other dude in the church, and dragline. i don't think luke would be viewed as a antihero or whatever. and in that supposed story change (which would be not nearly as good or powerful as the original obviously and would cheapen it), his character remained the same from beginning to end, as the other. no arc. others did though when around him. he wasn't tinder; he was a match.

            'nobody can eat fifty eggs.'
            Last edited by AnconRanger; 06-07-2017, 10:23 AM.

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            • #21
              Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

              Anti-hero is a spectrum term, there are movies where it is clear that this is a bad person, they kill, they cheat, etc., in other movies it's not meant to be cut and dry. These are the 'black comedies'. which I really like to watch. The character has glaring failures about them, but they are not all bad either, there is a heart in there that comes out time to time. Like Lester Burnham in American Beauty.

              In your new version, I could say that Luke's meddling had a hand in this man's death. So now you must go back to the early parts of your structure and make sure that 'Luke's meddling often turns out bad for who he is trying to help' is in those pages, and not on the nose either. Sprinkled through ut little by little.

              As a writer you are an interpreter of sorts. Your character will make choices, you have to interpret why once you do that why becomes integral to your first act. It's kinda the whole reason 'why' you write it. You are letting the reader know why what's going to happen is supposed to.

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              • #22
                Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

                Hey OP here's some two cents on the matter, fwiw.

                Your character needs to change, basically. Story is kinetic. It moves from a beginning to an ending. Characters who don't change = static. Stasis = antithesis of kinesis.

                So here's an arc that helped me understand the broad movement of the concept. It's from Bad News Bears, the original, which I loved/still love/don't care if y'all mock my azz:

                Walter Matthau starts off a big old drunk failure. Ex-baseball player. I don't remember how he ended up that way but whatever, he starts flick off as big ol' mess, cynical, caustic, bitter, screw-everything-and-everyone kind of guy.

                He starts coaching the little league team. Something happens (don't recall what) and he starts to care about the team winning. I think it's bc other team is full of cheating blow hards or some such -- piques his sense of justice/injustice. That mixed with, like, poignant shizz about the tots and shizz like that.

                So he starts to care, and when he does he gets his mojo back.

                But you can't wrap it up like that, A (dick) to B (gets his mojo back), in one simple movement. So he gets his mojo back BUT he swings too far the other way and he's soon a total dick ballbuster and we have to win at all costs and he makes life hell for his team. A to B to C (overcompensating tool).

                THEN something happens, don't remember what, and he realizes that winning isn't everything, yadda. That's D, a balanced state, and how he ends the flick. Neither a valemadrista nor a ballbuster.

                Again, fwiw, but I always think about that rough A to B to C to D movement in terms of an effective arc. (Not to be cut/pasted of course; I'm just talking re broad physical principles.)

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                • #23
                  Re: Seeking Character Arc advice

                  Originally posted by sixridgeroad View Post
                  Again, fwiw, but I always think about that rough A to B to C to D movement in terms of an effective arc. (Not to be cut/pasted of course; I'm just talking re broad physical principles.)
                  Actually very helpful, thank you. Coach Buttermaker ftw.

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