Mar 9, 2022
How to make a character's transformation arc believable.
“Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor, is available on ebook and audiobook. Follow the link to find them on Amazon:
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The following is an imperfect transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.
[00:00:00] Last week, we talked about languages, sort of, I guess the title of last week's episode was a bit misleading because it said all of the languages. And I realized that I probably should have included a list of languages, which is what the title implied. Anyway today, we're going to be talking about character transformation and how to make it 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 house who writes things and tells you about how writing works and what to do and how to do it. The point of this podcast is to empower you to be able to write a novel in 18 months and to have the wisdom to adjust that timeline if you feel you need to.
[00:01:17] So today, We are going to be talking about transformations. We are going to be talking about taking a character who's kind of awful or kind of persnickety or kind of negative or something and changing them in a believable way. So one of the most famous story arcs or at least most known story arcs that follow something like this is the story of Scrooge in a Christmas Carol.
[00:01:46] It is the story of a man who sees his life and then sees what all of that is going to lead to and decides to change. Right now arcs like that are really popular. An arc that I also love instead of a redemption arc is also a corruption arc where you take someone good and because of circumstances and because of personal weakness and because of things like that, choices and events and trauma, you turn them into a villain.
[00:02:18] One of my very favorite corruption arcs is actually not in literature. It's in TV. Well, it's on Netflix, it's in the series arcane. The corruption arc of the character Powder is fantastic. If you are not familiar with the series Arcane, I suggest that you watch that series today. But all of these things require a character to start out one way and to turn out another way.
[00:02:47] I've been reading the book, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders and this has been a completely transformative thing for me. As far as learning how to developmental edit in a more grown up and in a more meaningful way, it has been the best resource I have read in a very long time. George Saunders is freaking amazing when it comes to simply knowing his craft and how to explain how he knows his craft.
[00:03:21] If you are unfamiliar with the book, with the way that it's structured is there are seven classic Russian short stories. I don't fully know why Saunders chose to stick with seven Russian short stories, but they are some of his favorites. I don't fully understand the choice of that, but whatever.
[00:03:42] And he goes through and he picks them apart and he shows you what the author is doing. He's showing you what they did well, and actually what they didn't do well. And he picks each of these short stories as a way to demonstrate craft, as a way to demonstrate something awesome. And talk about it. So what I recently read, it is a story about these two men who get stuck in a snow storm and one of them sacrifices himself in order to save the other.
[00:04:13] And it's one of those things where the snow storm, they can't get away from it. And the man uses himself as a shield against the weather to save the other man. And the thing that Saunders brings to light in this short story, that makes the transformation of that man so believable. So this man starts off as a very self-centered person and he is distrustful. He and the other main character or the person that he saves, don't have a super great relationship. And he's complaining about things like money and whatever else. He's not a warm, fuzzy kind of guy. As far as the universe goes, he is in the center of his own universe. And he is the hero of his own story.
[00:05:06] I mean, yes, we can say the same thing about each of us, but t hat's how this character is. And so the whole point behind this episode of Writing in the Tiny House is to touch on what a good arc or a good transformation arc does, what it looks like. Just the mechanism behind all of that. What I mean is it is important to understand how your character makes choices that energy behind their day to day. Their thought processes, the way that all of these things are formulated so that you can understand how they make choices. And the cool thing about a believable arc that leads to some form of transformation is
[00:05:58] all of the choices that lead to this better outcome are still done in the manner that this person lives their life. That means that if a person is paranoid and they tend to obsess and they tend to stew, it is more believable for them to simply take that energy of obsessing and stewing and still do all of that, but point that energy toward better choices.
[00:06:27] So with Ebeneezer Scrooge, he was a person who is short. He lacked understanding. He also was quick to decide And quick to make choices to bring about a resolution. And so that's how he ran his business. Everything was decided on the spot. His word was always final. And so even while he visits with the spirits of Christmas, past, present, and future and all of that stuff, and in the end, he is a better person with a better outlook on life and a better outlook on the meaning of life and the meaning of Christmas, which is the whole point of a Christmas Carol. He still is making decisions the same way he made decisions. He commands a boy to go buy a Turkey. He is still, you know, bossing people around.
[00:07:19] I mean, still in the spirit of Christmas that he is still himself. So if you have a person who tends to be loud and ornery and uses colorful language. Odds are, even though they are going to be making better decisions in the end, they still will use the same language. They will still be loud. They will still do all of those things.
[00:07:44] If you take a person who is a rebel and then turn them into a priest. I'm not saying that isn't believable because we've all read stories where it is. You need to pay attention to how that rebel made his decisions, even while he was in the throws of maybe breaking the law. Was he following his heart?
[00:08:06] Was he still standing up for what he thought was right? Was he still standing up for himself. Was he using aggressive language and a lot of self-confident stuff. Was he physically aggressive, things like that. And if you can tie all of that back into how he is as a priest so that we can still see that he is there.
[00:08:28] That's what makes it all more believable. So again, with this story That is mentioned in 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 those decisions. He decides for himself that it would be best to use himself as a shield against the weather for this other man, so that this other man can survive.
[00:08:56] It's still done in kind of that self centered way, but in one of those ways that we still see the change, but we still see the person. If that makes sense, it's important to include the essence of the person as we bring about this arc.. If we want to visit this corruption arc that I mentioned there is a girl in the story of Arcane.
[00:09:22] Her name is Powder. She is tinkery. She likes to make things. She is very submissive and moldable and she doesn't want to be a screw up and so bad things happen. And the bad guy is able to capitalize on those things and bring her to do bad things. And so we still see the same girl.
[00:09:49] She still makes decisions the same way that she always has just in this other framework of now she's a bad guy and now she's like this henchmen to the bigger, bad guy. And so we see this corruption arc, but we still see the character. So. This is kind of a shorter episode today, but the next episode. So I'm going to make this into a two part series.
[00:10:16] The next episode is actually going to be kind of the sad side of this, how to take all of these important redemptive qualities and how to make them fall flat. Bye reactions from other characters in your story. So we need to remember that the character is all tie into one another and sometimes because of.
[00:10:46] Overlooked something we can make this transformation, or we can make these choices or the impact of these choices fall flat, just because of how the other characters behave. And that is next week on Writing and the Tiny House.
[00:11:03]
[00:11:03] And that is it for today. Just a reminder that "Brigitte,"Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor is available on Amazon as an ebook and on Audible and Apple Books as an audio book. And I provide advanced reader copies of these short stories as I release them to my patrons. So become a patron today by visiting patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse to support both my writing and this podcast. And lastly, be sure to follow me on social media. My Instagram is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time.