KATE FLORA
Character Arc Versus Story Arc: Developing a Successful Series Character
Attorney KATE FLORA is the author of seven Thea Kozak mysteries, two Joe Burgess police procedurals, and a stand-alone suspense novel. Her book Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine was a 2007 Edgar nominee.The third Burgess mystery is Redemption (2012). Flora is a former president of Sisters in Crime. Until 2011, she was a partner in Level Best Books, which published seven anthologies of crime stories by New England writers.The anthologies included a Fish Award winner and an Edgar nominee.
My advice assumes that the writer who’s gotten this far understands the difference between character arc and story arc, but here’s a quick refresher: A crime novel involving a recurring character operates with two different arcs—the story arc and the character arc.
According to the conventions of the genre and to satisfy readers’ expectations, the arc of story must be relatively complete within each individual book, with the whodunit and whydunit resolved and justice served. Therefore, when planning the crime novel, a writer needs to have developed a plot in which she knows who the victim is; how, why, and where that person was killed; and what clues and what red herrings
2 will be planted throughout the book. She needs to know who will populate the story and what their purpose will be. Since conflict moves story, she will need to know what the protagonists’ and antagonists’ goals will be, where the lies and obfuscations will be, where the dead ends and brick walls will occur, what obstacles will frustrate the sleuths and how those obstacles will be overcome, and what seemingly unimportant information will ultimately prove important.
The arc of a recurring character in a series of crime novels differs from the story arc in the following way: While each individual story is completed within that book, the character’s story is not, and thus each book in a series is more like a chapter in the character’s life. Put another way, if the mystery must be neatly tied up at the end, the character’s story may be full of questions, complications, changes, and loose ends, which will be tied up or further unraveled in subsequent books. The reader expects to learn more about the series character and to see growth or change in the character as a result of the book’s events, but not final resolution. Over the course of each book, your character will go on a journey. Ask yourself, what is that journey, and how will my character be transformed?
3Many a writer, a few books down the road in a series, has expressed regrets about some of her initial choices about a series character. Sometimes this is because the character began as a one-off, only to be dubbed a series character by an editor. Sometimes it happens more gradually, when a writer discovers that a pregnancy that seemed romantic in book one results in an endless series of child-care dilemmas in future books. Sometimes the challenge is how to dump a significant other without offending readers who’ve become attached to him or her. Sometimes the writer herself becomes bored with her character’s boyfriend, or faces the challenge (as one might in the real world) of moving the relationship to a new level, or moving on to someone new. Sometimes the writer becomes bored with her own character.
Then there are the strengths and skills you give your character, or failed to give her, that she might need down the road. The weaknesses that she needs to overcome, or that hold her back at all-important mo-ments. The fears and insecurities that keep her from being all that she can be, or from trusting others and developing mature relationships. And there’s the ongoing challenge of your character’s job. Will it continue to suit your character or prove to be boring or inflexible?
Whatever the source of those challenges—and they will be legion as your series character moves forward with her life—many of them can be anticipated if you spend some time in advance prepping your leading lady (or man) before she makes her on-page debut, and knowing your character in depth so you can exploit her flaws and blind spots as well as strengths when she sets out to solve mysteries.
EXERCISE
A. GETTING TO KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS
As you fill in the Character Development Checklist, create a character sketch for each of your central characters. Yes, you’ve heard this before. And perhaps resisted it. But instead of dreading this task like hated homework, think of it as an exercise in discovery by trying the following as preparation for that sketch.
1. Select an item from the checklist and then write a free-association paragraph from your character’s point of view about that subject. Observe what your character reveals to you. What her voice is, the language she uses to describe her feelings about this particular subject.
2. Select another item from the checklist and repeat the exercise. Repeat as many times as you wish, and consider returning to this list as you prepare for future books and anticipate the ways your character will grow and change, and how she has been changed by the challenge of facing down bad guys and solving a crime.
B . EXPLORING YOUR MAIN CHARACTERS’ WORLDVIEW
1. Take your character with you while you’re riding in the car, and let her tell you what she is seeing. How does she relate to other drivers? To traffic? To natural features and to geography? Pay attention to what she notices.
2. On the basis of what you’ve learned from reading the checklists and thinking about how the points apply to your protagonist, write scenes putting your character in situations where she is in conflict with another character. How does she react, and how does she feel when the confrontation is over?
3. As you are plotting your story, consider what situations you will be putting your character in—dangerous situations, romantic situations, frustrating situations, states of pure exhaustion or fear. Then consider how your character will be changed by the experience. This will make the emotions of the situation clearer, first to you as the writer, and consequently to your reader.
Remember that it is always part of your job to attach your reader to the characters emotionally. This is how you hold them in the book, and how you make them want to come back for more.
