This post was first published in April 2019 and extensively updated in February 2025.
You’ve probably come across the idea of a “character arc” before now … but what is it, and why’s it called that?
A character arc isn’t the same thing as your plot. It’s the progression of your character as a person throughout your story.
You might also think of it as your character’s “inner journey” or think of it as them truly becoming the person
they’re meant to be.
It’s called an “arc” because you can imagine it plotted on a graph. Character arcs will normally follow an upward trajectory – where your character increasingly becomes a better person – though some will instead trend downward, where a character goes from good to bad, or bad to worse.
Character arcs can be divided up in a couple of different ways. The most common way to view them is as:
- Positive (the most common character arc for protagonists)
- Negative (associated with tragedies, or with antagonists)
- Flat (the character doesn’t really change —
common in crime series)
A slightly different take is to divide character arcs into:
- Moral ascending (the character becomes a better person)
- Moral descending (the character becomes a worse person)
- Transformational
(the character changes significantly, not necessarily by becoming morally “better”)
- Flat (as above, the character doesn’t really change)
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