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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31805
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31805
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To the extent you plan out arcs at all (many of us do not, and Stephen King does not), make a plan for each character present for a significant part of the story.

For example, in 007 movies, Q is the gadget guy that shows Bond all the cool things about his car, his wristwatch, his pocket devices, etc, that will of course be the deus ex machina that lets Bond escape some otherwise impossible situation. (How Q became so omniscient to give Bond the perfect device he would soon need, different in every film, is not explained.)

So while Q is important, he needs no character arc. He is a prop, like many characters, there to accomplish the exposition of explaining Bond's devices and how Bond came to own them. Q appears in one or two scenes and that is it.

The more often the character is making decisions that affect the story, the more of a character arc they need. (007 is a bad example for this, he virtually never changes at all.)

Or if you don't like the notion of character 'arcs', you might consider just character transformation within the story. The idea that the adventure teaches them, changes their attitude or philosophy about something, affects them in some way by the end of the story. Matures them, for example.

Which is why some of us discovery writers do not PLAN arcs, we try to let our characters be as much like real people as we can imagine and make decisions, have emotions and slowly change who they are throughout the story (much as people change in real life). Thus by the end of the story the 'arc' has taken care of itself, my characters at the end of the story are not who they were when it began. But I did not say _"At 70% through the story I must make Karen realize how cruel she has been to her sister,"_ or anything like that.

Such inflection points IMO are the culmination of escalations that people naturally engage in, so Karen's cruelty her sister's responses will escalate until something breaks her sister and Karen finally feels guilt for it. An arc with turning points will exist, to be sure, but it does not have to be planned.

Original score: 4