Character Arcs

"A character's want is the surface level goal driving them.  Their need is the lesson they gradually learn over the course of their story."  (A Closer Look)  "That lesson is almost always to learn how misguided their initial want is."

"At the beginning, show how the character is stuck in some way.  The characters are doing something, but it's not a fulfilling existence."

While I would use different vocabulary to approach this concept, the idea itself is perfect.  A character is a narrative element that has motivation that is driving it.  Rey is looking for a place to belong, Rey is looking for a way to unlock the potential inside her that will allow her to do good and therefore justify her belonging.  Rey has to find her own path to realize that potential rather than relying on some outside force.

Where this breaks down, however, is when we have a character with no motivation.  For example:  Ep 7: Fin is running from a life of  brutality and violence. Ep 8: Fin is trying to find a new life with the Resistance that is opposing the violent First Order.  Ep 9: Fin likes to follow Rey around.

You see how in this progression, Fin starts out with a motivation and is successful.  But in the second film, his motivation begins to falter.  By the third story, Fin has no motivation whatsoever, and is merely a presence on screen.

The second vocabulary change is in The Lesson.  Closer's Boseley suggests that the lesson is to learn how misguided the initial want is.  I think about this in terms of a character's Arc.  It's not a straight line, but it is a trajectory, a pathway that takes that person from their initial motivation to a place of resolution.  As suggested, that final resolution may not be what the character initially envisioned.  But in order for an arc to have taken place, the character must resolve the initial tension with which they begin the story.

The Force Awakens - Rey: initial tension:   waiting for someone to return and make her life better but she understands that something is wrong.  Progression:  realizing that the person she's waiting for is not coming back.  Resolution:  Accepting that she can no longer wait on Jakku, and instead will be happier struggling for something larger and better than herself.  Rey follows a classic arc in that she starts with initial tension, undergoes a transition that both brings enlightenment and starts her on a different pathway, finally resolving the tension and placing her in a new and more powerful situation.

Now, how can a character fail?   The obvious possibility is that they fail to undergo any of the elements of a character arc. They are the same at the end as at the beginning.

But the failure can be more subtle as well.  For example, a character seems to have an arc and goes through transition, but ultimately ends up where they started.  Similarly a character describes an arc that doesn't end up resolving the central tension that they started with.  Yes they end up in a different place, but the central tension remains.   

So in Rise of Skywalker, the Emperor offers Rey unlimited power as an inducement to undergo his ritual transformation.  But since Rey has never expressed any interest in unlimited power (unlike Kylo, for example), the audience doesn't see any tension in this offer:   What he's offering is not even a choice for her; it doesn't offer Rey anything that she wants.  To the audience, this seems confusing and not really a test of her character. But if this choice is devoid of tension, then the scene is also devoid of tension.  It's merely spectacle.  It's like the Bond villain gloating over his plan, leaving Rey and the audience feeling powerless. 

In addition, Rey never seems to find the heroic, altruistic place in the galaxy that she seems to be looking for.   Palpatine is defeated, Kylo is lost and Han, Leia and Luke are no more.  She strides away, alone on another desert planet, not much changed from where she began the series.

More subtly, the character appears to change over the course of the story, but the audience doesn't understand why the changes are happening:  the changes appear un-earned.  We see the changes but we don't follow the arc that led the character to their new perspective.  

Scenes.  We've discussed that Characters have arcs where the tension of their unresolved wants are slowly resolved.  Scenes also have a similar trajectory.  Scenes exist so that story elements can take place within them.  We sometimes call these story elements "beats.":  Characters can have beats just as scenes can.  A beat is the important thing that is happening in the scene that  leads the narrative toward its final goal.  Beats are often moments of tension that resolve in a particular direction, and through their resolution create a new framework in which the story takes place.

For example:  in SW: ANH, in the scene where Han and Luke are preparing for the impending arrival of the Death Star, Luke is dismayed that Han is running away from the battle.  The tension in this scene is that Luke has higher expectations for Han's moral character.  The story beat is that Han is simply out for himself and has no allegiance to any greater good or higher calling.  We need to lay down this beat here, so that we can resolve the tension in a later scene where Han returns to the battle to clear Luke for his attack run.

The outer motivation:  the visible goal

The inner journey:   how the character needs to change

Typically a character is caught between these two desires:  the outer, visible, obvious goal, and the inner state of things that is preventing the outer goal from being realized.  They are stuck in this exterior dilemma because of their unwillingness to abandon the safe status quo of their inner state.  this is the Inner Conflict.  Put simply, in order to resolve their outer problem, they need to work through their inner conflict.

Stage 1:  the setup  establishing who the characters are and we see the full realization of the character's inner identity. 

Stage 2:  the opportunity.  this is the chance that the character receives to begin working toward a different state.  Something happens to the character that forces them into Stage 2 is a new situation.  and in stage 2, the primary goal of the character is to figure out what's going on.  In stage 2 the character gets a glimpse of what living in his new inner identity might be like.  He sees a vision of a better world, though he isn't able to grab it yet.  and just as importantly, the audience sees that same vision.

At the end of stage 2, another event happens that drives the character to making a change towards this new vision.  Taking the first steps to achieve it.

Emotion grows out of conflict, so the more difficult the obstacles to overcome, the more invested and more interested the audience will be.   Another example is empathy.  We feel sympathy for the obstacles the character has faced in the past.  Putting a character in jeopardy makes us feel empathy for what a character might face in the future.

Stage 3 is Progress. where the character formulates a plan and starts going after that goal.  They face obstacles, which start to multiply, but they appear to be "making progress" toward the external goal

On the inside, on the inner journey,  the inner state begins to hinder their progress.  They begin to be confronted by the things about the inner state that have always kept them "stuck" in the past.  Contemplating changing the inner state is terrifying, however.  In this stage, the hero will vacillate between changing to a new inner state, and running back to the old one.  They will advance along their inner journey and then retreat, causing problems for the external goal.  Each advance will take them incrementally further.

At some point in this oscillation, the character will progress the internal transition to a point of no return.  Their interior journey will continue to a new state, where they can no longer retreat back to their original status, and they face a crisis.  Something will happen to demand or lead the character to make a deeper commitment to the goal. 

Moments of Dramatic Impasse:   a dramatic moment where two characters are striving against each other but neither can gain the upper hand in the current conflict.  They must find another way to achieve their objective

Moments of Dramatic Synthesis:The moment when characters who were previously at odds find a common goal or common ground, so they are no longer in conflict, at least for the present.  they can move forward together with a better sense of understanding.

Interiority:  the emotional and psychological space that they occupy at the moment.

Spinning Plates:  When the story begins to layer a number of elements of  tension on top of each other.  The danger isn't coming from just one direction, but from multiple threats.  There could be a physical threat, an emotional threat, and a psychological threat.

Out of the Frying Pan...  Escaping one predicament only to land in a greater one.

Stacking the Odds:  Escalating the danger the protagonists are in.

Character Foil:  A character in circumstances similar to the hero, presented with the same moral choices, makes different and less optimal decisions.  Used to demonstrate how badly things could have gone if our hero lacked moral character.

The Ending is Earned:   good payoffs come from good setups.  Action that is foreshadowed, action that is prefigured is always more satisfying.

What's the thing the characters could do at the end of the movie, that they couldn't do at the beginning?

Just because we know the ending does not mean this can't be a good movie, but we have to care about the people.  "We had characters with emotional stakes and different motivations that conflict with each other. What's interesting is having different characters with different motivations that play off each other and show their humanity.  Watching someone go to a place to get a thing that you know they are going to get is not interesting."

A Story.

The simple definition of a story is, a Character is placed in a Setting from which a Conflict emerges which Develops and then Resolves.  The development happens through cycles of tension and resolution.  These cycles are not linear, that is one doesn't follow after another when the first is resolved.  Instead, they can be happening on differing time scales and with differing story elements, often at the same time.

Cycles.

It is these cycles of tension and resolution that draw the audience through the story.  For example, the main character can develop relationships with other characters in the story.  If that other character is the main antagonist, often this tension is the main Conflict.  But the other character could be an ally as well, or a mentor or competitor, among many other possibilities.  

Even if the other character is an ally, there could be any number of sources of tension that make the interaction interesting.  For example, the ally could have a slightly different objective than the protagonist that could eventually express itself.  Or, the ally could have a weakness that everyone has to deal with.  A mentor may have information that affects the protagonist in unexpected ways ("you should become a knight like your father"or "Though you never knew her, your mother was also a grimm"), or a competitor's challenge could drive the protagonist to greater proficiency than they would otherwise achieve.

Cycles can break down, however, leading to failed storytelling.  Typically, a tension that is never resolved leaves an unsettled feeling in the audience that cast a shadow over the entire story.  This can lead to a feeling of dangling loose ends that need to be tied up.  The audience can feel that the resolution of the main story is overshadowed by the unresolved elements.

Arcs

The other engine of the story is the long term arcs.  Unlike the pattern of tension and resolution of cycles, character arcs and story arcs are linear progressions where the fundamental parameters change through the unfolding of the story.  This often happens on the level of the character, where the country girl takes her place in the big city, or the high school loser shifts his focus from his miserable existence to the struggles of others.   It could happen with the setting, where a dystopian isolation gives way to an open world filled with more possibilities, or an oppressive monarchy takes the first steps toward egalitarianism.

Arcs tend to be story-length changes that happen incrementally in a linear pattern, while cycles are more short-term moments of tension that can be resolved without major state changes.  The major challenge with these long term arcs is that they need to be built on a foundation of story elements that support the major state change that these arcs represent.  We refer to these supporting story elements as Justification.  A character that changes abruptly and without justification can seem shallow and the resulting story can feel unearned

Motivations

As we talked about above, each character has a motivation that drives their actions, even if that motivation is nothing more than simply to continue their undisturbed existence.  The motivations can be shaped in a number of ways.  We discussed the outer want and the inner need of the protagonist as long term motivations, but actually

Justification

Cycles are story elements that build Justification.  In a successful story, events are interconnected, with later events supported by previous ones.  When the audience is invited to participate in a story, they begin to piece together the events into chains of cause and effect.  We might think of them as a series of setups and payoffs.  When we step into these character's lives, we begin to understand that their decisions are motivated by their perspective on the world, and that perspective is shaped by what has happened to them previously. The more we see of these events, the more we can understand the character's perspective and therefore their motivation.  This complex interaction between motivation, history, and perspective supports or "provides justification" for their choices and actions.

Even if the audience doesn't agree with the character's choices and actions, the more they understand the motivations and history leading up to them, the more satisfied the audience will be as to the outcome and resolution of the story.  Unsupported actions or unjustified choices violate the most basic social contract of storytelling, that the events the storyteller is relating are all interrelated and necessary to achieve resolution.