Character arc

A character arc is the transformation or inner journey of a character over the course of a story. If a story has a character arc, the character begins as one sort of person and gradually transforms into a different sort of person in response to changing developments in the story. Since the change is often substantive and in the opposite direction, the geometric term arc is often used to describe the sweeping change. In most stories, lead characters and protagonists are the characters most likely to experience character arcs, although it is possible for lesser characters to change as well. A driving element of the plots of many stories is that the main character seems initially unable to overcome opposing forces, possibly because he or she lacks skills or knowledge or resources or friends. To overcome such obstacles, the protagonist must change, possibly by learning new skills, to arrive at a higher sense of self-awareness or capability. Protagonists can achieve such self-awareness by interacting with their environment, by enlisting the help of mentors, by changing their viewpoint, or by some other method.

The phrase character arc takes its name from the narrative arc whose shape, often depicted as an oblong half-circle, emerges from the rising and falling qualities after the noument and denouement or tying and untying events in the common five-part dramatic structure of the Freytag pyramid or the three-part structure of many stories. Although the narrative arc resolves within a given text typically after a climax and "falling action," most character arcs do not fully resolve in a single text because life continues for that character beyond the confines of the text's narrative. A narrative arc usually does not contain an entire character arc because most characters' births and deaths are not depicted. For those whose birth is depicted at the beginning of the narrative (as in a Bildungsroman) or death is depicted at the end of the narrative (for example novels about the death of a protagonist or that involve the protagonist's death at the end), such a character arc dovetails with the narrative arc in one place. Both can occur for the protagonist of a biography or autobiography or in fictional texts that follow the protagonist from birth to death, if the character does not re-appear in an afterlife.

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