The Character Arc meets Story Structure

hey guys it's Ellen Brock novel editor I hope you are all doing really really well um today we are going to be talking about how to structure the positive character Arc so in a future video we'll talk about the negative Arc and the flat Arc but today we're just going to be talking about the structure of the positive Arc I still don't have a permanent filming setup so hopefully the light will cooperate and everything will look okay for this video um previously the light was kind of of being crazy and it looked like we were

filming from the great beyond so hopefully the light will cooperate for now but I apologize if it doesn't look super great I thought I would take advantage of this time where I don't have um a more elaborate setup to do some longer form videos where I can reference my notes because I am at my desk and it's really hard for me to film these super long videos um from my old setup because I couldn't reference my notes or anything so anyway with all of that said uh this video is going to uh sort of fill

the gap between my story structure video and my character art components video so I recommend that you watch both of those videos first before this one just so that you completely understand what we're talking about I'm going to attempt to minimize repetition in this video so I'm not really going to go into much depth on the uh story beats or on the components of the character Arc I will be using films as the examples in this um video not because I don't love novels but because uh I can pick films that I can be pretty

confident that everyone has seen so it helps us to all be on the same page and so when I reference different points in the story you all know what basically what I'm talking about so um just in case you're worried about spoilers these are all older movies but just in case I am going to be spoiling um Toy Story Shrek Liar Liar Disney's The Kid and the six sense so those are the examples I'm going to be using in this video um before we walk through the specifics of how the arc plays out structurally I

want to start by saying that how you conceptualize the character Arc uh overall just how you think about the arc will have a major impact on how you write it so firstly as a quick reminder of the components of the arc how I like to conceptualize it to maximize Simplicity and Clarity is to think of it as having four components so one the motivation this is the character's deepest desire commonly for love power safety belonging Etc two is the goal this is a tangible external objective this is the thing the character wants the thing they

think will fulfill that deep desire that motivation three is the belief this is something the character believes about themselves other people or the world this belief can be true or false it can be positive or negative depending on the type of Arc of course today we will be talking about negative beliefs and for the lesson this is an alternative perspective that contradicts the belief the character may or may not accept this lesson in the end and the lesson may be positive or negative depending on the type of Arc but today of course we are talking

about positive arcs so the lesson will be accepted and it will be a positive lesson so a lot of the time when we're first starting out when we first learn about the plot and we learn about the character Arc we might think of these as two separate things as sort of two strings side by side in a story you can write a story that does not have a character Arc but if there is a character Arc it's interdependent on the plot so these are not two string side by side there are two strings that are

twisted and knotted together and we can't take them apart we can't really look at them thoroughly as two separate things because the plot influences the character Arc and the character Arc influences the plot and I hope that this video will help to clarify uh exactly how that plays out um but I just wanted to mention that because I think um we sometimes don't look at the ark as as interwoven with the plot or as the plot being interdependent with the ark and I do think that's a vital way of conceptualizing it of really um plotting

or editing you really want to be looking at how the structure and the character Arc are interacting with each other so um one of the main difficulties or the main problems with character arcs that amateur writers face um it's that the arc seems to happen either so GR gradually that it's imperceptible so the or maybe it's perceptible but it's not clean or crisp so the character just seems to sort of gradually change over the course of the story or the character seems to sort of change all at once at the climax so all of a

sudden the character has this realization and we don't really get the sense that it was built thoroughly and that it wasn't set up thoroughly so what we want is those clean crisp transitions in the character Arc the same way we want those turning points in the plot we want these turning points in our character Arc so with that said let's go ahead and get started on walking through the structure so the first uh the first quarter the very first uh plot beat that happens is the status quo so when we're setting up the status quo

we want to be planting the seeds of the character Arc we don't need to explain every component of the character Arc right away that's another really common problem with amateur writing is um the writer will learn about the character art components and then think they have to rush to explain every single one of these elements right away in at the very beginning of the story during the status quo in the same way we talked about during the um structural series we don't need to set everything up before the disruption so in the same way you

don't have to introduce every character and every location in every component of the story before the disruption or the inciting incident um you don't have to set up all the details of the character Arc either and there's a lot of benefits to not setting up all these details right away we want to raise Intrigue we want to suck the reader into the story we want them to be excited and interested to see what's going to happen next and a good way that we can do that is to create Intrigue through withholding information so in most

cases we don't want to stuff all of that information into the status quo an additional potential problem there would be that uh it can add a lot of heaviness and a lot of emotional components to the very early scenes when we really want to be pulling the reader into the story with some some action or something more interesting and we can use the character Arc to raise Intrigue and to function as that hook um for example this isn't the hook of the film but it is a good example of how we might raise Intrigue by

withholding information so at the beginning of the six sense we meet uh the little boy Cole he goes into the church he's sort of playing with these little figurines and that's such an unusual and odd thing for a child to be doing to be playing with these figurines in a church pew so that gets us really curious it makes us wonder you know what's going on with this character why are they you know why is this boy like this so we can always create those interesting moments of wow why is this character doing this thing

why why are they like this without explaining too much so as soon as we start to explain too much we can take out a lot of that Intrigue so that's one of the reason reasons and again like I mentioned uh we don't want to bombard the reader with a bunch of heavy emotional information right at the setup either so for both of those reasons we're just really planting the seeds of these stories uh story arc components or sorry character Arc components we're really just planting the seeds in the status quo so in most cases the

status quo section uh it's not in that section it's not going to be obvious that the character needs to grow so we're not going to immediately necessarily we're not going to immediately look at this character and think oh this character needs to learn X lesson or this character needs to learn y lesson uh the it's in many cases the the character seems content or they seem completely fine for example in Shrek we meet Shrek and he's in his swamp and he's sort of um you know he's living his weird little life alone he's scaring the

the humans and we don't look at him and think oh this is a character that needs to learn a lesson it's not necessarily going to be something that we see during this status quo um time or this the status quo story beat um another example is Woody in Toy Story So Woody is sort of Happily being the favorite toy we don't look at him and think you know here's a guy who needs to learn something necessarily that's not to say that we can't do that so for example um certain stories have characters who are more

obviously flawed uh Liar Liar is a good example of that so in Liar Liar Fletcher is obviously a pathological liar and so we can look at that and say oh this this is a guy who needs to learn to stop lying uh so it there's flexibility there but I just don't want you to feel like you need to introduce your character in a way where it's super obvious what uh lesson they need to learn um in the same way uh the character doesn't know who the antagonist is in most cases they're not going to know

the antagonist at this point they're also not going to know that they need to learn this lesson so that's another thing to keep in mind is that we're not trying to create a character who is self-aware that they have this problem and that they need to learn this lesson the self-awareness will come over the structure of the character Arc we don't want this character just being super self-aware from the very beginning um so after that after the status quo we establish the the seeds or we plant the seeds and it may be very subtle that's

when we have the disruption and the disruption is something that happens that disrupts the life of the protagonist we went over that in these structural videos and that sort of ends their status quo and puts them into a period of um debate and often there's a a big component of denial there so they may be in denial that things have changed uh but what's important about the disruption in terms of the character Arc is that the disruption is going to butt up against the character's belief in a way that is very uncomfortable so um this

disruption can happen early or late in the first quarter like we talked about in the structural video so I recommend that you check that out if you're confused at all about that um for example in Shrek uh donkey disrupts Shrek's Solitude so we get that sense that it's sort of rubbing up against that belief so even though maybe we're not even consciously aware that we're uh coming to understand what Shrek's belief is so we're sort of coming to see that Shrek um believes that he needs to be isolated or that he isn't safe around other

people or that he can't be accepted by other people we don't really consciously know that at this point so we're not really aware that that's what's going on but we feel that donkey is really rubbing up against Trek in a way that is really unpleasant and distressing another really good example of that is in Toy Story So when Buzz arrives we see Woody really getting bothered we see that it's really affecting him in a negative way and that's affecting him specifically in relation to his belief so um Woody's belief here uh his his belief that

being the favorite toy is essential for him or is super important an for him that's what's affecting this even if we may not consciously think about that as the as the viewer we might not consciously think oh this is what he believes and this is why this is a problem it's very present it's still very very clear um when you look at look at the uh the film or the character Arc as a whole and that's a tricky thing with the structure of the character Arc as well as story structure is that it becomes more

clear when you look at it as a whole when you just take step by step it's not always immediately clear what's going going on but the important thing for you to keep in mind is that with this disruption we want the character to be feeling this dis this intense discomfort they really don't like emotionally because of their belief they really don't like what this disruption is doing to their life so after the disruption like I said comes the the the debate so there's a sense of um denying what's going on or debating about whether or

not it's bad enough yet to get involved um so normally in this we're going to see things like Shrek being frustrated with donkey being in the swamp we're going to see Woody being really frustrated with uh the other toys being impressed by by Buzz they're frustr you know he's frustrated that they're so interested and so impressed by him um so what we're demonstrating here is the character's desire to hold on to that status quoe to sort of try to cling to that comfort zone they've created with their belief so they've created a life or they're

in a life where their belief hasn't really been challenged they haven't really had to own up to it or face it and so this disruption is the first time likely the first time they've really rubbed up against that belief in a way that's really distressing um so we need to demonstrate through the um through this debate section that the character can't just abandon the status quo we're demonstrating that it's it's too difficult for them it's too difficult for them to let go of that right now so there's this sort of period of of frustration hesitation

denial debate Etc and that's very important for the character Arc um then after that something will happen that ends the debate and that is something that becomes so intolerable that the character can no longer live in denial or they can no longer debate about whether to get involved this is a thing that is so uncomfortable it's pushing them way past their tolerance level for what's rubbing up against their Bel so they feel like they must take action in some way so for example um in Toy Story That's when Woody wakes up in the toy chest

he sees that buzz has taken his spot on the bed that's super distressing he sees Buzz um posters all around he can no longer deny to himself that buzz has replaced him it's not possible anymore for him to live in that denial um in Shrek Shrek goes outside and he finds that not only is donkey in his swamp but all these fairy tale creatures are in his swamp his Solitude has been broken the Solitude that he feels like he he believes that he needs in order to be to be comfortable to be safe um it

is completely disrupted so now he's he's entered into a scenario that is intolerable so this is when the character feels forced to take action so that's when we get to the first plot Point um this is the moment that sort of locks the character into their Journey uh they may have felt like they didn't really have any choice so again they they were pushed to a point where their situation became intolerable so they don't necessarily feel like they willingly chose to do this but they did willingly choose to do this they did make the choice

so Shrek um decides that he will go to farquad and demand that the fairy tale creatures be removed from his swamp um Woody decides that he's going to fight Buzz to be the top toy or to get his spot back um note that in many stories the character isn't looking to to bring back literally the exact same status quo but instead they want to create a scenario that satisfies their motivation so their deep driving force and that keeps them in harmony with their belief um so perhaps a better way to conceptualize this is the character

is willing now to walk away from their status quo situation to attempt to find a more tolerable situation that better fits their belief and their motivation for example um we see this in Deadpool I'm not really going to spoil anything about Deadpool I know I didn't say I was going to talk about Deadpool we we see this in Deadpool so Wade Wilson decides about um whether to leave his girlfriend Vanessa or to stay with her through his battle with cancer his decision to get the experimental treatment and leave Vanessa behind is more tolerable than him

than having her watch his decline so he's determined that maintaining the status quo of being with Vanessa in their normal happy relationship um it's not possible anymore so he's in he's searching for a more tolerable situation it doesn't mean mean the character is seeking the exact State the exact same status quo again because in many cases it's not possible to go back to the status quo so it can go either way um the plausibility of the character's actions really really depends on how well you've conveyed why the character makes the choice that they make um

it's the unique combination of the belief and the motivation that dictates this action or that dictates this choice to move forward so if Woody didn't believe that being the favorite toy was important he could have simply found fulfillment um as a rarely played with toy so if Shrek didn't believe that his isolation in the swamp was important for him for his safety uh he could have simply found acceptance and Community among the fairy tale creatures so who the character is is very important in creating the effect of this disruption just really rubbing them the wrong

way something happening that really pushes them to a point where their situation becomes intolerable it's so incompatible with their motivation and so incompatible with their belief because it's forcing them you know to really be pushed into a scenario where their belief isn't going to work anymore it's not going to be possible to live in accordance with that belief anymore then they feel they have to make a choice to engage with the plot a choice to take action so it's very important to establish those seeds enough that we get why this is happening but again we

still don't necessarily know every single piece of information about the character Arc at this point so with all of that um established and we have the first plot point the first quarter has come to an end and we go into the second quarter so we talked in the structural video about the second quarter how it usually thrust the character into a new world or a new circumstance as a result of the first plot point this is where we have our upside down World beat our Fish Out of Water beat and our new world new problems

story beat so something significant about the character's life has changed due to them kicking off this this adventure or this journey and they're leaving behind their old ways or their old world but this big change is on the plot level on the Character level a better way to conceptualize the second quarter is same old character new circumstance so the circumstance has changed the character has not changed the character has not grown at all yet so for example Shrek doesn't want to be donkey's friend in the second quarter any more than he wanted to in the

first quarter Woody doesn't want to let Buzz replace him in the second quarter any more than he did in the first quarter we're not seeing any change or any growth from the character at this point um how upset the character is to be going on this journey can vary um some stories the characters are very reluctant and in other stories not so much so for example in Disney's The Kid uh Russell is visited by a child version of himself and in the second quarter he's nearly panicked trying to figure out some way to get rid

of this child um in Toy Story we see that Woody is picking fights with Buzz he's very distressed about um interacting with Buzz fundamentally he's constantly picking fights with him and causing problems um but in other stories we might not see the character being particularly distressed for example in Shrek um he does get annoyed with donkey but he's more or less okay with being on this adventure he's sort of taking it in stride so the character doesn't necessarily have to be distressed or upset about being in the new world in the second quarter we just

need to be mindful that this is not a character who has experienced any growth at this point excuse my dog um so whether the character is highly dist or not the important thing to keep in mind is that in the new Circumstance the character finds themsel in in the second quarter the character's belief will never help them gain anything so in the first quarter in their status quo their belief was basically working okay it was driving with how their life was going they were probably either um not experiencing conflicts relating to it or maybe even

getting rewarded for acting in accordance with their belief so they were gaining benefits from this belief we are not going to see that happen in the second quarter so in the second quarter there's going to be no benefits to sticking with the belief um we might see the character being outright punished when they when they act in accordance to their belief so they may face really serious um consequences or we may see this more so as the character just not being able to move forward they're not able to progress the plot uh when they act

in accordance with their belief which they will fundamentally do in the second quarter so a lot of the time we're going to see a character who's really struggling to make progress or to achieve things it's not always the case but that's often the case um for example in the kid Russell believes his child self is bad and embarrassing so he sort of mocks his child self for crying he speaks harshly to him he's just overall viewing this kid as this major inconvenience he isn't able to make any Headway in figuring out how to get rid

of the kid because of this belief Because he believes that his child self is annoying and embarrassing and neither he nor the viewer know at this point that what he really needs to do is to connect with this kid and get in touch with his inner child so ultimately the lesson that will eventually find that he needs to learn is that he needs to get in touch with his inner child he doesn't know this at this point and the viewer doesn't really know this at this point either um so while the belief is not allowing

the character to make progress it doesn't necessarily mean that that's obvious in to the reader to the viewer to the character it it's not typically obvious that this is what's going on we're just talking about uh the sort of the behind the scenes working of of stories so it's not going to be obvious necessarily that this is the problem in Shrek um we see that he's able to uh get to farquad he's able to defeat the guards he gets this mission to save Fiona so it's not to say that plot progress can't happen we can

still see the plot progressing especially um in plot driven stories often the second quarter will have plot progression but we still need to see that the character is not being rewarded for going along with their belief or for acting in accordance with their belief um so for example with Shrek uh all of his plot level goals ultimately are not what he ends up pursuing in the end so he's succeeding on the plot level however uh we all know the end of Shrek he ends up ultimately pursuing his relationship with Fiona and as well as his

friendship with donkey uh so he does not make any Headway on those things in the second quarter he doesn't make any Headway impressing Fiona romantically although he barely interacts with her in the second quarter and he doesn't make any real progress being friends with donkey we were not going to see any significant progress going on um I do want to address that we might sometimes think that we're seeing progress with characters we might sometimes think think the character is progressing or growing in the second quarter but it's not actually what's going on so any actions

that seem in alignment with the lesson the eventual lesson that the character needs to learn um if that happens in the second quarter it's disingenuous it's forced or it's begrudging for example in Liar Liar Fletcher tells the truth in the second quarter because he literally has to he has no choice he's not grown he hasn't developed his son just wished on a birthday cake that he could never tell a lie and now he can't lie so while he's not lying he's also not experiencing any growth um importantly he also isn't seeing any benefits from telling

the truth so because he is acting in accordance with the lesson begrudgingly not willingly he isn't getting the benefits either he's actually still getting punished for telling the truth so um he ends up upsetting people and hurting his job and offending people and things like that um by telling the truth and the reason that the truth isn't giving him any um positive events it's not causing anything positive to happen is because firstly because we're in the second quarter so that's just fundamentally not going to happen and two because he did it begrudgingly he did it

against his will he was forced to do it um something else that can make it seem as if the character is growing in the second quarter when they actually aren't is that the viewer or the reader's understanding of the character can increase but it's not the character that's changing for example um Shrek tells about how ogres are like onions and they have layers and we might look at that and go oh wow like Shrek's a deeper character than I realized but that's our understanding that's not Shrek changing he's not gained anything he's not learned anything

this isn't a new revelation for Shrek so we might gain understanding of the character but the character themselves they are not changing in the second quarter so near the end of the second quarter we'll start to see the character gaining some Mastery or gaining some understanding of what's going on they're starting to acclimate a little bit to their environment but again they're not going to change until we get to the big Revelation which is the midpoint so the midpoint of the character Arc should occur right around the midpoint of the plot it might not be

logical for it to be literally the exact same point uh the same point as the plot point it should be about the same time but don't go crazy if it can't be the exact same point it's okay if it's not exactly the same moment um at the midpoint what we want to see is a character who has had a significant realization about themselves um but they've not fully learned the lesson likely they're not even fully aware of what the lesson is they may still not know what the lesson is actually about or they might not

have been pushed far enough to learn the lesson yet so for example in Liar Liar at the midpoint Fletcher realizes that he's a bad father he says this out loud he has this realization that he is a bad father to his son however he does not learn that he needs to stop lying in fact we see him immediately go from this midpoint to trying to get his son to wish on a birthday cake that he'll be allowed to lie again because he has not learned anything he's not learned his lesson so he has had an

increase in Awareness but he is not he's not had his lesson yet so his eyes are sort of opening as a way to think about it but he's only partway there um what can be a little confusing about this is that sometimes the connection to the ark is a little bit harder to see we might not always like I've sort of T touched on this with all the points we might might not always be able to tell when first reading something or first viewing something what it actually has to do with uh the or how

it has to do with the ark that's sometimes something that has to come to light um when we take the whole thing collectively so again we're talking behind the scenes stuff here for example in the kid at the midpoint Russell has the realization that the kid version of himself is there because he as the adult needs to teach this kid to be less of a loser to to be able to fight to be able to be a little bit cooler to just not be such a little loser because that's how he views himself he is

wrong in this realization however there is a kernel of Truth there which is that one of them is there to help the other one he just has it the wrong way around it's actually the kid there to help him but at this midpoint he's just sort of starting to realize what the situation is but he's he's not 100% there so the character is not going to get 100% there at the midpoint the most important thing about this U midpoint realization is the effect that it has so the effect that we want to create is that

we want the character to start the shift towards their character Arc but we don't want them to be aware of the lesson so how we do that is we get them to start to interact with the world in a way that's more in accordance with the lesson without having learned the lesson yet or even maybe not being aware of the lesson at all so um for example even though Russell doesn't realize that what he really needs to do in in the film The Kid what he really needs to do is he needs to get in

touch with him his inner child with his child self and sort of accept his child self he doesn't know that however his thought that he needs to make the kid be cooler or be able to fight you know to be less of a loser it makes him interact with the kid in a way that is more in accordance with the lesson so we immediately see him as we go into the third quarter we immediately see him trying to teach the kid how to fight and he sort of laughs and Goofs off and we see that

he's getting in touch with his inner child and he's feeling some benefits there but it wasn't because he learned the Le the lesson consciously um so just keep in mind that the character develops a partial understanding but doesn't figure out or accept the lesson here so as a result we see the character starting to change um and the important thing is that the in the same way the second quarter created a circumstance that forced the character into a new situation where the false belief doesn't pay off or they can't benefit anymore from acting in accordance

to the belief the third quarter creates a situation where the character starts to get glimpses of the benefits of accepting the lesson so let's go ahead move on to the third quarter so there's often an emotional low point after the midpoint we talked about that in the structural series especially um because the mid Point information is often upsetting or unsettling in some way um but most stories that that low point is going to be fairly brief often we get the sense that the character having gained a little bit of awareness or a little bit of

perspective at the midpoint has allowed them to sort of open up uh something that has been impacting them emotionally all along and as a result there will frequently be an emotions come to light beat which we talked about in the structure series um and this will often take the form of a heart-to- heart between two characters and usually what this is going to involve is explaining the belief either maybe for the first time ever the character is able to outright State what their belief is or it might it might also be an explanation of the

origin of the belief or the backstory that created the belief um so for example donkey ask shk about the wall around his swamp he says you know who are you trying to keep out you know what's the point of this swamp and Shrek kind of gets a little emotional and he says you know that the world has a problem with him and it's less that you know he wants to shut out the world and more that he feels like the world will never ever be able to accept him and this is Shrek verbalizing his belief

possibly for the first time in his in his life potentially um another example is in liar liar when he goes to his son immediately following the midpoint he tries to get his son to wish on the cake that he'll be able to lie again um Fletcher outright tells his son it's not not possible to get by without lying that in the adult world you have to lie so that's Fletcher saying his belief again possibly for the first time ever so we might get a glimpse of the backstory we might get um often in a novel

we'll get a potentially a flashback to the origin of the belief or the event that created the belief um or we might get similarly a conversation or it might just happen through introspection but there will typically be some sort of expression of where this um belief came from or an inability to acknowledge the belief for the first time from there we will usually see the character um starting to get those glimpses of the benefits of the lesson that I was talking about that effect that we want to create with the midpoint they haven't learned the

lesson but they're starting to get these little glimpses so like I mentioned in the kid he's goofing around he's having fun he's kind of getting in touch with his inner child even though he doesn't know that that's what he's doing um in Liar Liar Fletcher tells the truth about a man that he works with and he absolutely roasts this guy but everybody thinks it's super funny and refreshing and he sees a benefit to telling the truth the interesting thing here with liar liar and this is something we always have to keep in mind with fiction

is sometimes we are Manufacturing in effect that doesn't necessarily reflect real life or reflect what would happen naturally so in the second quarter in liar liar he tells lies and he's punished punished punished punished for telling those lies that's necessary for the structure it's necessary in the structure for him to start seeing benefits of telling the truth in the third quarter or else why would he ever you know why would he ever accept the lesson of telling the truth because if telling the truth only results in bad things he'd never learned the lesson so is

it a little bit contrived absolutely however that's the type of thing we're often going to need to fudge in order to make the structure the character Arc and the plot structure make sense and work so sometimes we're looking for the effect sometimes that effect isn't necessarily going to be reflective of reality or sometimes we're kind of fudging things it's not going to necessarily be noticeable to the reader I don't think or the viewer I don't think the viewer watches liar liar and thinks well hey now why did it work you know why is he now

getting benefits from lying when in the second quarter he wasn't so it's just something to be aware of there is some choices going on and how things play out Beyond just how the character feels or how the character is acting so they are the character starting to get a taste of what life could be like if they were to grow if they were to take on the lesson but as the third quarter moves on because the character hasn't actually learned the lesson yet they actually have not uh had their character Arc they will still make

an attempt to solve their problem or to achieve their goal in a way that is doomed because it's in alignment with their false belief this is the failed attempt to succeed point from my structural guide um this is a final demonstration that the character needs to grow and is harming their own ability to be happy by adhering to their belief so for example Shrek rehearses giving flowers to Fiona to tell her how he feels which we're like wow that's great you know it it feels like it feels like he's growing but he has not learned

the lesson yet so when he sees or he overhears Fiona talking to donkey she's saying um how you know no one could ever love anything so hideous and ugly but she's talking about herself um but Shrek assumes that she's talking about him because he hasn't learned the lesson he doesn't believe that it's possible for him to be accepted and to be happy and comfortable with other people yet so because of that he fails and we see this uh also in Toy Story So Woody tries to get the other toys to help him get from Sid's

house so he's trapped with buzz in Sid's house he wants to get back to Andy's house um across the driveway uh he tries to get the other toys to help him through the window but they refuse to help him because um he's just using Buzz's arm to wave out the window but not Buzz he's not cooperating with buzz and because of what he did with Buzz earlier how the toys think that um you know that he pushed Buzz out the window and he treated Buzz so badly Buzz won't help him or cooperate with him now

he hasn't made any attempt to make amends with Buzz um because of all of these sort of bad behaviors that he's done because of his um inability to let go of his need to be the top toy he fails here in their escape an escape that could have theoretically worked but it does not work because he's still adhering to his false belief so usually um this is a moment that sort of in many cases especially in something more character driven this is a moment that's going to have a big reaction from the viewer or from

the reader because we we feel like the character's grown so we feel like this character should know better now you know they should be behaving in a better way now they should have learned the lesson so often there's a big emotional reaction that goes along with this for the uh viewer or the reader um normally after this failure we'll have a moment where the antagonist closes in so there it's sort of an e an um an escalation of the the exterior or the of the the plot line the not in the not interior the not

internal conflict so we'll see an escalation of that and the combination of those two things of the um failed attempt to succeed and then the things get even worse as the antagonist Clos in those two plot beats the combination of those things will thrust the character into into the lowest point and this is an extremely important moment for both the plot and the character Arc so the lowest point is where everything seems to be lost everything internal everything external everything seems to be lost um for example in Toy Story this is when Woody thinks he

and Buzz are not going to escape Sid's house he thinks they're not going to get back to Andy in time um and that's sort of the more external element is not getting back to Andy uh their their boy who owns them the the little boy um not getting back to his house before he moves and uh that's the plot low point so the emotional point is Woody telling Buzz basically that buzz is a way cooler toy than him and what chance does he ever stand to you know ever be popular why would Andy ever want

to play with him so that's a very deep emotional low point for Woody um in most cases this low point is going to involve a period of pouting or moping often the character will isolate themselves um they might engage in a bad behavior that an old Vice or an old way of being that maybe they had been engaging in during the third quarter um for example Shrek sort of returns to his swamp and he isolates himself and he sort of mopes there so it's interesting though because uh previously Shrek would have been fine with being

alone in his swamp he even wanted to be alone in his swamp so the interesting thing is often this low point will demonstrate how uh what the character wants has changed so Shrek doesn't want to be alone in his swamp now even though previously that was what he was trying to achieve um so during the failed attempt to succeed we see um this mistake that might look very similar to other mistakes the the characters acting in accordance with their belief instead of in accordance with their lesson we've been you know we've seen them do this

before but now they really really feel the consequences now here they really care in a way that they didn't necessarily care before about um what effect their behavior is having on other people and what effect it's having on their own life so we'll see this really deep low Point here but in the positive Arc which we're talking about today this sort of Rock Bottom low point will lead to the second plot Point um as opposed to the midpoint where the character has a realization that is flawed in some way it's incorrect in some way they're

not really fully taking on the lesson they're not really maybe fully understanding what the lesson even is that's not the case at the second plot point at the second plot point they realize the lesson they realize what they have to learn and they realize who they have to become in order to get the outcome that they want um the this realization is usually sparked through some type of inspirational or aha moment often that's going to be a uh a sort of pep talk from a side character it may be an intentional pep talk the side

character might be trying to inspire the protagonist or they might not be trying to and it's just something somebody says that sort of Sparks this inspirational moment for the character for for example in um the kid Russell sort of moping about his love interest in the kid being upset with him um as well as not having gotten rid of the kid which was sort of his main objective he goes out for coffee with this side character and this side character tells him you know it's not that you need to teach this kid a lesson it's

that this kid need this kid needs to teach you a lesson it's that you need to get in touch with your child self so in this case we have a side character basically just outright stating what the misunderstanding was at the midpoint and just outright stating what basically what the lesson is that the character needs to learn um and Toy Story the pep talk is sort of a combined effort between Buzz and Woody so when Woody and Buzz are trapped in Sid's house they're going to they have you know the rocket is trapped to buzz

they're going to blow up they're both going to you know die I guess I assume they die their toys I don't know um so uh this acts as sort of a dual realization moment because Woody inspires Buzz to take action because Buzz tells him you know you know why would Andy even want to play with me you know you're the cool toy you know you're a Space Ranger toy that's like so cool and Buzz is really down he's been down since the midpoint because of the midpoint for Buzz which we didn't really talk about but

at the midpoint for Buzz he realizes he's a toy he sees the commercial he realizes he's just a toy he's not a real Space Ranger and he's been really down since then so this sort of Sparks Buzz to be like you know okay you know I have value even though I'm not a real Space Ranger even though I'm just a toy and Buzz also inspires Woody by saying you know there's a boy boy who needs us there's a boy next door who needs us um and that sort of inspires Woody to feel like you know

I can still have value even though I'm not the favorite toy so it's a dual realization moment where wood he realizes you know he has value even though he's not the favorite toy and Buzz realizes he has value even though he's not really a real Space Ranger so that dual realization I think is really really cool I'm a big fan of the plotting of Toy Story I talk about it all the time but it's a really cool moment um but the pep talk is not a requirement sometimes it's just an aha moment based on new

information or evidence that was uncovered often this is uncovered possibly by accident Often by accident often it's a time of moping like I mentioned sort of isolating maybe introspecting in a heavy dark kind of way for example in the six sense Malcolm hits Rock Bottom when he thinks that he can't work with the little boy Cole anymore that he can't help him anymore more and at his lowest point he's sort of um moping he's sort of sad and he's listening to old um therapy tapes from another boy when he was you know earlier in his

career that he wasn't able to help and he's sort of moping about not being able to help that boy and also not being able to help Cole and while he's listening to these tapes he hears a ghost in the background and that sort of Sparks this realization for him that Cole is telling the truth about about seeing and hearing the ghosts so the key to this moment is that the realization allowed the character to emotionally grow as well as to move forward into the climactic sequence so the there's this big push into action as a

result of this realization so for example um donkey tells Shrek that Fiona wasn't talking about him when he overheard her saying you know who could marry something so hideous and ugly and he has that realization that he could be accepted and it also really pushes him into action towards uh getting to Fiona and stopping her from marrying far quad so we want to see this big big um explosive movement forward basically as a result of this um realization we want to see this big push into the fourth quarter climactic sequence um so what causes um

this is not as important a as with every uh every phase of the character Arc what causes it is not as important as the effect on the story so this could be an emotional realization that Sparks a plot realization or a plot realization that Sparks an emotional realization the important thing is we want you know we want it happening right around the right time in the story and we want it to be creating the the right effect on the story so this would push us into the fourth quarter in many cases the first quarter is

going the fourth quarter is going to be a bit of a whirlwind in the early parts so there might be a lot of action in the preparation phase in the approach phase so we talked about that in the story structure videos preparing to fight the antagonist and approaching the antagonist there may or may not be significant character Arc moments in those phases often there's not going to be or if they if they're there they're going to be relatively minor so there might be um some reconciliations with side characters there may be some demonstrations of what

the character is able to to obtain now or to do now that they have taken on this lesson so maybe they start to see some little benefits in their ability to talk to people or acquire information or things that they previously couldn't do because of their um false belief holding them back but in many cases we're not really going to see much going on with the character Arc during these sections it's typically going to be more um actioning more plot driven but what's really important and essential in the fourth quarter is the climax of The

emotional Arc or we might consider this to be an emotional confrontation but typically it's not so much it could be a confrontation but it's typically not so much a confrontation as much as it is a big gesture or an apology and in many cases it's going to be the protagonist going out of their way to make amends in some way to atone for hurting other characters by previously adhering to their belief um for example in Liar Liar Fletcher runs through through the city in this sort of crazy quest to get to the airport before his

son leaves so that he can apologize and that whole big gesture in the apologizing is the emotional confrontation or the emotional climax or the climax of the character Arc or however you want to conceptualize that um because of the character Arc often is relatively uh the the climax of the character Arc is relatively simple because it's typically an apology big gesture something like that often the confrontation with the antagonist can happen at basically the same time for example um Shrek breaks up Fiona in Far quad's wedding thus sort of confronting farquad the more external antagonist

while also con confessing his feelings to Fiona and sort of having that more emotional confrontation so sometimes they can happen basically at the same time but that's not always the case and in some situations you might have a scenario where the emotional confrontation is completely separate from the more plot driven external confrontation with the antagonist and this can happen for a variety of reasons I went over this in the structure series as well um for example in the six sense um Malcolm's external climax involves helping the little boy Cole sort of confront um his his

demons and be able to to um talk to The Ghost and sort of ask the ghost what's going on I won't get into the nitty-gritty of the pot um but his emotional climax or his emotional confrontation has to happen after that because it's with his wife and his wife is not even involved in that whole situation so you sometimes have situations where the emotional side of things and the more external plot side of things they're not going to be possible to happen simultaneously and that's completely fine we can have more than one confrontation going on

in the fourth quarter so it's okay to have more than one uh like we talked about in the structural videos um there will be some type of sacrifice some something that's given in order to complete the emotional Arc um we need to see whether when push comes to shove will the character really stick to this lesson or will they fall back on their belief so that's sort of what the sacrifice is meant to to demonstrate here is that this isn't just a superficial acceptance of the lesson that uh when things get tough and when it

requires losing something they are willing to let go of something in order to stick with their new lesson so um even though there's there's potentially a big cost here there really demonstrating their growth and um sometimes the sacrifice will be quite literal so it may be the willingness to give up a desired object or give up a relationship uh maybe give up an achievement maybe they were fighting for a trophy or something like that and they and they give it up because they learn something that requires them to give it up so the lesson requires

them to let go of this thing in order to um to adhere to that lesson rather than fall back on the belief uh sometimes the character will have grown so much that this sacrifice is basically a no-brainer so it's not always going to be this really painful horrible experience sometimes it's more or less obvious that the character is going to make the sacrifice so it's not necessarily a surprise when this happens and it doesn't necessarily have to be really harsh or really tragic to function as a sacrifice for the character Arc structure for example uh

Fiona gives up being beautiful and her preference for her human form at the end of Shrek we're not really like surprised RIS that she would do this at that point but it it it still sort of serves that function um in Liar Liar uh flescher sort of gives up his promotion at work because to stick with that promotion to take that promotion would require him to be willing to lie and he's now learned the lesson that he he doesn't want to lie anymore that he shouldn't lie anymore and so he there's no way he can

take that promotion and hold on to that lesson so he makes the sacrifice to let go of that he also makes the sacrifice of letting go lying entirely which is the letting go of the belief part it's it's taking on the lesson and he does overtly tell his son that he's giving up lying as well um the most important aspect of wrapping up the character Arc is that the gesture or the confrontation it it has to be something uh as well as a sacrifice it has to be something that the character wouldn't have done at

the beginning probably the biggest mistake you can make with the character Arc is to have this sacrifice and this big gesture be something that the character would have done all along it's just something that anybody would have done for example um perhaps this character is willing to I don't know say lose their job to make amends with their brother if they would have done that from the get-go from the very beginning then that's a problem with the ark the ark is not going to serve the function that it needs to be serving um if Shrek

always would have pursued Fiona and Fiona would have always been happy to stay in her ogre form that would not have shown any growth from the character so that would not work um similarly if if Fletcher was always would always have been willing to give up the promotion at work um and had always been able to stop lying it wouldn't have worked so we need this to be something that previously would have been impossible and that's really what shows that big growth um at this point the ark is basically complete so the character at this

point has had their Arc at the very end of the story we will typically get um the aftermath which sort of functions almost as a mirror moment so usually the circumstances of the beginning of the story uh show something very similar to what we'll see here in the mirror moment or in this aftermath moment so um often it's the opposite or it may be more um symbolically the opposite but but in many cases it's it's visually the opposite for example in Toy Story in the beginning we see Woody and the other toys huddled around the

walkie-talkies really worried about the new toys that are going to come in for Andy's birthday and then in the at the end we get the the toys playing and sort of dancing and having fun and sort of ignoring the fact that it's Christmas and new toys are coming in because now that the lesson has been learned there isn't that anxiety and that worry about what's going to happen with the new toys um and Shrek we get a very similar thing with he's partying in the swamp with all of his friends at the end but at

the beginning we see him alone in the swamp living his life completely in isolation so we get these moments that show what has changed since novels aren't visual the mirroring that we get in a novel might be conceptual it might be referencing back to something that was said um near the beginning or something that was thought near the beginning it um often not often but it it can take also the form of the character sort of having the an amendment to their view of success so maybe early on the characters imagining this view of success

where they're in this room full of people cheering for them because they're a celebrity maybe at the end in the mirror moment what we get is the is a room full of people cheering but it's because they graduated with a science degree or something so we get that that sort of concept of a visual mirroring going on uh but we're really demonstrating that it's been achieved in a different way than what was expected than what the character uh initially thought that they wanted I'm going to quickly run through the whole structure of the character Arc

to wrap things up please keep in mind that you should focus on the effect that each of these moments creates for the character sometimes in some stories certain moments are fudged a bit to give the right effect even when they might not literally fit exactly what I'm outlining here so let's do a speed run through the structure of the character Arc so quarter 1 the status quo the belief is currently serving or benefiting the character in some way the disruption happens the status quo is changed in a way that offends or contradicts the character's belief

then there's the debate though life has become less tolerable the character denies the status quo has changed or debates if it's bad enough to take action then we have the decision something happens that makes a situation so intolerable so incompatible with the belief and motivation that the character feels something has to be done the first plot point the character chooses to take action locks into the journey in an attempt to reinstate the status quo or at least to obtain a situation that is more tolerable a life more in line with their belief and motivation that

leads us to Quarter Two first we have the upside down world the character enters a new circumstance but they are the same old character they have not grown then we have fish out of water the character's belief does not pay off in this strange new circumstance it might even get them into trouble then we have Stakes demonstrated for the first time time the character is seeing consequences to sticking with the belief and or the belief is making it impossible or difficult to progress the plot then we have gaining knowledge the character is acclimating to the

new circumstance and gaining information or gaining understanding but they still have not grown then we get to the midpoint the character has a realization about themselves or their circumstance that changes how they act moving forward but they either are not aware of the true lesson yet or they aren't ready to accept it yet so that leads us to quarter three first we have the reaction the character has a brief reaction usually negative to the midpoint realization from here on out the character will start to catch glimpses of the benefit of learning the lesson even though

they haven't learned it yet then we have emotions come to light the character is able to open up for the first time and admit the belief out loud or through introspection often this comes with backstory explaining the origin of the belief then we have the failed attempt to succeed the character makes a last attempt to solve their problem while staying in alignment with their belief with disastrous results then we have things get even worse if there's an external antagonist the antagonist will close in in some cases this plot beat might be a second negative event

caused by the character then we have the lowest point everything internal and external appears to be lost For the First Time The Character truly truly feels the consequences of sticking to their negative belief they may have even gotten what they thought they wanted the goal but it feels Hollow then we have the second plot point the character has a realization about what they need to do and who they need to become the lesson in order to succeed often they realize what will truly fulfill their motivation their deep desire and it's usually not the goal they

initially wanted then we have quarter four uh first we have preparation and approach the character gets ready and heads towards the confrontation there may or may not be demonstrations of growth here such as the character apologizing to minor characters or having access to resources previously off limits before learning the lesson then there's the um confrontation the character makes a big gesture an apology an admittance of having done something wrong or they confess their feelings this can happen at the same time as or in different scene from the confrontation with the antagonist then there's the sacrifice

the character gives something up a literal sacrifice or an emotional sacrifice this thing must be given up because to have gain or keep it would be to return to the false belief instead of maintaining the lesson this must be something they would not have been able to give up before now and then lastly we have the aftermath we see the character in a situation that is the opposite literally or conceptually of their situation from the status quo to demonstrate the before life with the negative belief and the after life with the lesson if you are

on patreon or if you want to join patreon I will put this uh sheet up on patreon for you guys to reference later on so you don't have to try to copy it or take notes so that is it for this video I really hope that you found this helpful I apologize uh if it was a bit incoherent and for the lighting situation and for the fact that my camera's B died halfway through so I don't even know what's going on now visually but I do apologize for all the disruptions and the things um visual

things not being great and and also having to reference my notes and all that sometimes my brain is like a mashed potato and I can't remember what I'm trying to say without referencing my notes but I really wanted to try to walk through uh the character Arc structure for you guys I really hope that this was helpful in some way I tried to not be super repetitive uh so that this video wouldn't be 3 hours long but I know it's still extremely long and I'm a little worried that it's still confusing so if there's any

way that I can help clarify this further if you guys want more videos on character Arc structure just let me know and I'm happy to make another video hopefully that will help you guys um as much as possible if you want to help support the channel I do have a patreon the link will be in the description at the $5 an uptier there's a bunch of um worksheets and things like that on there there's a podcast that I do every other week where I um answer you guys' question often a lot more coherently than in

videos sometimes with the videos I just have a a harder time because I can't constantly look at my notes I sometimes just don't feel like I get out what I'm trying to say as clearly so I do recommend my podcast on there and uh at the $2 an uptier you can just hang out with us on Discord which is also really fun and um yeah so if you want to help support the channel I really appreciate it and I will be back with a new video in the near future and in the meantime happy writing

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