Mar 9, 2022
How to make a character's transformation arc believable.
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The following is an imperfect transcript of thisepisode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’swebpage.
[00:00:00] Last week, wetalked about languages, sort of, I guess the title of last week'sepisode was a bit misleading because it said all of the languages.And I realized that I probably should have included a list oflanguages, which is what the title implied. Anyway today, we'regoing to be talking about character transformation and how to makeit believable today on Writing in the Tiny House.
[00:00:28] Hello. Hello.Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Writing in the Tiny House.I am your host Devin Davis. And I am the guy living in a tiny housewho writes things and tells you about how writing works and what todo and how to do it. The point of this podcast is to empower you tobe able to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom toadjust that timeline if you feel you need to.
[00:01:17] So today, We aregoing to be talking about transformations. We are going to betalking about taking a character who's kind of awful or kind ofpersnickety or kind of negative or something and changing them in abelievable way. So one of the most famous story arcs or at leastmost known story arcs that follow something like this is the storyof Scrooge in a Christmas Carol.
[00:01:46] It is the story ofa man who sees his life and then sees what all of that is going tolead to and decides to change. Right now arcs like that are reallypopular. An arc that I also love instead of a redemption arc isalso a corruption arc where you take someone good and because ofcircumstances and because of personal weakness and because ofthings like that, choices and events and trauma, you turn them intoa villain.
[00:02:18] One of my veryfavorite corruption arcs is actually not in literature. It's in TV.Well, it's on Netflix, it's in the series arcane. The corruptionarc of the character Powder is fantastic. If you are not familiarwith the series Arcane, I suggest that you watch that series today.But all of these things require a character to start out one wayand to turn out another way.
[00:02:47] I've been readingthe book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and thishas been a completely transformative thing for me. As far aslearning how to developmental edit in a more grown up and in a moremeaningful way, it has been the best resource I have read in a verylong time. George Saunders is freaking amazing when it comes tosimply knowing his craft and how to explain how he knows hiscraft.
[00:03:21] If you areunfamiliar with the book, with the way that it's structured isthere are seven classic Russian short stories. I don't fully knowwhy Saunders chose to stick with seven Russian short stories, butthey are some of his favorites. I don't fully understand the choiceof that, but whatever.
[00:03:42] And he goesthrough and he picks them apart and he shows you what the author isdoing. He's showing you what they did well, and actually what theydidn't do well. And he picks each of these short stories as a wayto demonstrate craft, as a way to demonstrate something awesome.And talk about it. So what I recently read, it is a story aboutthese two men who get stuck in a snow storm and one of themsacrifices himself in order to save the other.
[00:04:13] And it's one ofthose things where the snow storm, they can't get away from it. Andthe man uses himself as a shield against the weather to save theother man. And the thing that Saunders brings to light in thisshort story, that makes the transformation of that man sobelievable. So this man starts off as a very self-centered personand he is distrustful. He and the other main character or theperson that he saves, don't have a super great relationship. Andhe's complaining about things like money and whatever else. He'snot a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. As far as the universe goes, he isin the center of his own universe. And he is the hero of his ownstory.
[00:05:06] I mean, yes, wecan say the same thing about each of us, but t hat's how thischaracter is. And so the whole point behind this episode of Writingin the Tiny House is to touch on what a good arc or a goodtransformation arc does, what it looks like. Just the mechanismbehind all of that. What I mean is it is important to understandhow your character makes choices that energy behind their day today. Their thought processes, the way that all of these things areformulated so that you can understand how they make choices. Andthe cool thing about a believable arc that leads to some form oftransformation is
[00:05:58] all of the choicesthat lead to this better outcome are still done in the manner thatthis person lives their life. That means that if a person isparanoid and they tend to obsess and they tend to stew, it is morebelievable for them to simply take that energy of obsessing andstewing and still do all of that, but point that energy towardbetter choices.
[00:06:27] So with EbeneezerScrooge, he was a person who is short. He lacked understanding. Healso was quick to decide And quick to make choices to bring about aresolution. And so that's how he ran his business. Everything wasdecided on the spot. His word was always final. And so even whilehe visits with the spirits of Christmas, past, present, and futureand all of that stuff, and in the end, he is a better person with abetter outlook on life and a better outlook on the meaning of lifeand the meaning of Christmas, which is the whole point of aChristmas Carol. He still is making decisions the same way he madedecisions. He commands a boy to go buy a Turkey. He is still, youknow, bossing people around.
[00:07:19] I mean, still inthe spirit of Christmas that he is still himself. So if you have aperson who tends to be loud and ornery and uses colorful language.Odds are, even though they are going to be making better decisionsin the end, they still will use the same language. They will stillbe loud. They will still do all of those things.
[00:07:44] If you take aperson who is a rebel and then turn them into a priest. I'm notsaying that isn't believable because we've all read stories whereit is. You need to pay attention to how that rebel made hisdecisions, even while he was in the throws of maybe breaking thelaw. Was he following his heart?
[00:08:06] Was he stillstanding up for what he thought was right? Was he still standing upfor himself. Was he using aggressive language and a lot ofself-confident stuff. Was he physically aggressive, things likethat. And if you can tie all of that back into how he is as apriest so that we can still see that he is there.
[00:08:28] That's what makesit all more believable. So again, with this story That is mentionedin A Swim in the Pond, in the Rain, this guy who is self-centered,who is kind of the hero of his own story. he still makes thosedecisions. He decides for himself that it would be best to usehimself as a shield against the weather for this other man, so thatthis other man can survive.
[00:08:56] It's still done inkind of that self centered way, but in one of those ways that westill see the change, but we still see the person. If that makessense, it's important to include the essence of the person as webring about this arc.. If we want to visit this corruption arc thatI mentioned there is a girl in the story of Arcane.
[00:09:22] Her name isPowder. She is tinkery. She likes to make things. She is verysubmissive and moldable and she doesn't want to be a screw up andso bad things happen. And the bad guy is able to capitalize onthose things and bring her to do bad things. And so we still seethe same girl.
[00:09:49] She still makesdecisions the same way that she always has just in this otherframework of now she's a bad guy and now she's like this henchmento the bigger, bad guy. And so we see this corruption arc, but westill see the character. So. This is kind of a shorter episodetoday, but the next episode. So I'm going to make this into a twopart series.
[00:10:16] The next episodeis actually going to be kind of the sad side of this, how to takeall of these important redemptive qualities and how to make themfall flat. Bye reactions from other characters in your story. So weneed to remember that the character is all tie into one another andsometimes because of.
[00:10:46] Overlookedsomething we can make this transformation, or we can make thesechoices or the impact of these choices fall flat, just because ofhow the other characters behave. And that is next week on Writingand the Tiny House.
[00:11:03]
[00:11:03] And that is it fortoday. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Talesfrom Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible andApple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copiesof these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become apatron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse tosupport both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure tofollow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and myTwitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending sometime with me today and have fun writing. We will see you nexttime.
