Creating a Strong Character Arc
Free Monthly Meeting, 1-hour Zoom presentation
(includes Q&A)
Saturday, September 18, 2021
Presentation 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
Sign-in and social time 12:30-1:00
with
CS Lakin
Award-Winning Novelist, Copyeditor, and Writing Coach
You know your story needs a strong character arc, but how do you create one? In this PowerPoint presentation, aided by movie clips, you’ll not only learn what’s involved in moving a character from his persona to his essence; you’ll understand what the specific six scenes are and where they are placed in a novel to craft believable character change.
The protagonist’s transformational journey is an important consideration in fiction, and something you’ll want to ponder before you get too far in plotting your scenes.
Why? Because stories are about a character who desperately wants something, and while all successful stories involve external conflict, those that go deep into the levels of character, showing the greatest obstacle—self—tend to be stronger stories.
Here’s what you’ll learn from this presentation:
- What specific transformational steps your character will take and how they coincide with your plot’s five turning points.
- How to believably show a character moving from “persona” to “essence” from the start to the end of your story.
- The purpose of each stage of transformation and what it needs to accomplish.
- How the theme of your story—which is your character’s inner motivation made universal—can be brought out through these key scenes.
- The transformational journey of your protagonist lies in the answer to this question: What does my character have the courage to do at the end of the story that she doesn’t have at the beginning?
Whether you are in the plotting stage or the revision stage of your novel, it’s not too late to craft a strong character arc that will sweep readers up in a journey of the heart.
C.S. Lakin is an award-winning author and blogger at Live Write Thrive. She has written twenty novels and ten writing crafts books and works full-time as a copyeditor and writing coach. She teaches writing workshops in person and online at cslakin.teachable.com.