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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Character Arch...

A new year is almost here. I'd like each of us to take a deep breath and think back ... if YOU were a character in a novel, how would you sum up your character arch for the year?

Character development is one of the challenges of writing novels. We need to keep the plot moving, and the conflicts peaking, but it's also important for the characters to grow and change (for the better) throughout the story. They need to be different people than when the story started.

The more writers work on a project, the better we understand the characters. After I finish a book, I often have to go back to fix some of the scenes at the beginning of the story. Mostly, because I know my character better, and because I realize that I have her doing/saying things that she would never say/do. Of course, real life is not that way. We cannot go back an "edit" the early scenes. Yet we can note how we have grown and changed for the better.

So, tell me. How did you change and grow during 2007? What was your character arch?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great post! This is something I am working on right now with my work.