The Anti-Arc
By Donald Maass | September 4, 2019 |
Imagine the world’s worst birthday magician. Let’s call him The Amazing Perfuncto.
The Amazing Perfuncto arrives at your child’s birthday party, late, and quickly sets up a folding table. Then, with no patter or cheesy jokes, he immediately slams down a top hat and yanks out of it a rabbit. “Ta-da!” is all that The Amazing Pefuncto says. He then puts away his equipment and sticks out his hand for his one-hundred-dollar fee.
Not so amazing, right?
What’s missing is the fun that comes from anticipation. There’s supposed to be a long lead-up, and an examination of the hat. See? It’s a regular hat. Try it on. Look inside. Nothing there. Then, with a waving of a wand and a group “Abracadabra” from the kids…nothing. They try again. “ABRACADABRA!” the kids scream in unison. This time, Perfecto fishes around inside the hat and…voila!…there’s a cute bunny rabbit inside.
Now, that’s worth a hundred dollars. Indeed, the delight and amazement of children is priceless. However, that delight and amazement doesn’t come from the rabbit emerging from the hat, but rather from the belief that a rabbit cannot possibly be inside. (It isn’t.) Then, when there is in fact a rabbit there—it’s a trick, trust me—the surprise is indeed amazing and The Amazing Perfuncto earns his adjective.
In other words, the effect is founded not in the final result but in expectation of its opposite. There first must be no possibility of a rabbit in order for the rabbit’s appearance to startle, amaze and delight.
I mention this because in fiction the same principle applies in constructing a character arc. Arc, of course, means the way in which a character will change. In discussing arc, we tend to begin with the needed change and its roots. We focus on back story wounds and burdens. Secrets. Shame. Guilt. Something has distorted a human being, and in order for change to occur then that back story wound must be faced, the burden lifted.
However, as therapists will tell you, understanding the deep source of suffering does not automatically relieve it. You can peel away a score of psychological onion layers, and the subject still will not change. Not necessarily. There is resistance. There are more reasons to stay the same than to change. In order to change, the subject must feel free to transform. That’s not so easy.
In fiction the amazement and emotional punch that come with change result not from the eventual change but from the growing, step-by-step understanding in readers that change—no matter how necessary, desired or hoped for—is not possible. Thus, constructing an arc of change for a character really means constructing a defense against that change.
We can call that the anti-arc.
Change is a broad term. It can mean change of belief, behavior or opinion. Those can mix and mingle, naturally, but in general it’s more dramatic when the anti-arc is built out of what characters say and do. What characters feel is important, of course, but focusing on feelings tends to turn narration inward, to twisting inner monologue. That’s okay, but outward actions and their consequences will more surely convince us that a character is caught in an anti-arc.
To put it differently, when a character is suffering inside, mentally swinging this way and that, torn between change and staying the same, then the reader is justified in thinking, just get over yourself! By contrast, when the anti-arc is externalized and visibly demonstrated then it’s hard for the reader to object. Self-destructive speech and actions are concrete, laden with consequences and cannot be taken back.
Why do people in general resist change? When what needs to change is a behavior, then inhibiting factors might include loss of control, uncertainty, the discomfort of being different, doubt about ability, the work involved, the humiliation in acknowledging past behavior, effects on others, resentment of the past, hatred of self (which of course is to be avoided). Plus, who wants to become the opposite of who one is?
“Belief” is a broad term as well. I’ll use it here to mean beliefs about self. When a belief—really, a misbelief—needs to change, there are a host of psychological reasons for that belief to persist, even in the face of reason. Clinging to a belief is comforting. If affirms and validates one’s view of oneself. It makes mental anguish a matter of circumstances. One’s suffering is caused by others, and therefore is not one’s own responsibility. Thus, why change? It’s impossible. Anyway, suffering inside is exciting while thinking differently about oneself is hard. Staying the same, by contrast, is easy. It’s rewarding.
“Opinions” in my terminology are beliefs about other people and things. Opinions are subject to reason, or ought to be, so you’d think that contrary evidence or any solid counter-argument would cause people to change their minds. That’s not true. People’s ideas about other people and things are nearly unshakeable. They are a rock of identity. To change your mind means that you were wrong, and who wants to feel that way?
While there are many reasons not to change, people nevertheless do. Why? Behavior changes in response to experience and events. A cycle of harmful behavior may turn one time too many. The awful reality of stasis may become clear. One may discover that old behaviors have led to being exploited. Trying out being different may turn out okay. Failing at something important may show that there is nothing left to lose.
Misbeliefs about self are, likewise, somehow shattered. The inner suffering born of inner conflict may become unbearable. A crisis may free up the possibility of change. A catharsis may release new power. Anger, sadness, distress or fear may so profoundly overwhelm a character that all prior reasons for staying the same are erased. A new purpose may be found. The secret rewards of staying the same may be replaced by greater rewards from change.
Opinions are tough to transform, but can. Fear of others or different ways of thinking can be eroded by exposure. Positive examples may be seen. Kindness may open a door. A universal awareness may arrive. An emotional experience may lower one’s defenses long enough to let in a different way of seeing.
Enough theory. Let’s turn this into practical applications, ways to build the anti-arc. I’ll pose the possibilities as fill-in-the-blank questions to be answered by your protagonist:
Some people might see it as a negative, but I _________, and that’s just the way I am.
You’ll notice that about me because I always __________.
I’m happy with who I am because __________.
I can’t change because I have a responsibility to __________.
The person I cannot possibly disappoint is _________? If I did, then __________would happen.
My problems are because of ___[whom]___?
My problems are because of ___[what]____?
If I were different, then I could not control __________?
If I were different, __________ might happen.
If I were different, I would lose __________.
I can’t be different because I lack __________.
If I were different, I would be angry about __________ and I don’t want to be.
If I were different, I would have to admit that I __________ and I simply can’t.
My way is the best way and everyone should be like me, because __________.
When I’m unhappy or suffering, I am rewarded with __________.
I don’t want to feel conflicted because when I do __________.
The thing that I wish I didn’t do over and over is __________.
The person who keeps getting me to change is __________.
The person who benefits the most from me being the way I am is __________.
The thing I am positively never, ever going to do is __________.
That’s because __________.
I am always right, never wrong, about __________.
That’s proven when __________.
The thing I don’t want to see about myself is _________.
The worst way in which that could be shown to me is __________.
My greatest fear is that __________ will happen.
It would be my fault because __________.
You would see me break when I __________.
What would make me rage out of control is __________. I would say __________. I would do __________ to __________.
The worst betrayal I can imagine is __________.
The person who would never take advantage of me that way is __________.
The greatest failure I can imagine is __________.
If that happened, I would have nothing left to lose because __________.
I never thought I would see the __________ side of __________.
The favor I would never expect is ___________.
The gift I don’t deserve is __________.
People aren’t good, and I know that because they don’t ever __________.
If I try a different way, the person who would humiliate me is __________.
When that person actually approves, it’s because __________ and as a result I can __________.
The secret thing I’ve always wanted to do is __________.
When I do it, the best part is __________.
The thing that feels the best to let go is __________.
The person I won’t let myself worry about ever again is __________.
The thing about me that needs to be saved is __________.
A better way to be allows me to __________.
My gift back to the world is __________.
As you can see, the anti-arc method is founded in building the impossibility of change. The stronger the imperatives are not to change, the more we hope for the change anyway. Then, when it nevertheless happens, it is magical.
Does an anti-arc work for your protagonist? How?
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
Thank you for your perfect timing again Don!
The short story I’m working on is about an upper middle class Mother who walks into her bedroom to find her handgun missing, It was supposedly taken by her young son who’d gone out trick-or-treating with a group of friends. Even with this very real threat to her family’s security, she still stubbornly refuses to change,
When you have a character whose opinions can’t be shaken (at least to start), is it necessary to soften that flaw with self-awareness or self-deprecating humor?
It is a psychological truth–also a horror–that we will hang on to our beliefs and opinions despite extreme reasons to let them go.
We will also obey, and so on. The research is full of proof that most often we are controlled not by our rational minds but by our instincts and biases. It’s genetic. It’s survival. It’s our human nature, which we must fight against.
When in fiction, characters do that it is inspiring. You really got me with the missing gun–whoa.
Randy, I realize that I overlooked the question at the end of your comment:
“When you have a character whose opinions can’t be shaken (at least to start), is it necessary to soften that flaw with self-awareness or self-deprecating humor?”
I commented on this very question several days back, in a post by Tom Bentley, but at the end of the day so I don’t think it was much noticed. I’ll restate it here:
I think there are factors that make crusty, critical curmudgeons work:
First, their barbs are harmlessly aimed. No one gets hurt.
Second, we agree with them!
Third, they tend to be funny.
Fourth, they are admirably saying it like it is, showing independence.
Not just every sourpuss works on the page.
Thanks Don
Your insight is going to be valuable as I move forward with this short story. (Which may end up as the first chapter of my next manuscript.)
One of your best pieces, Don — and that’s a high bar indeed.
We talk about a character’s “journey,” but that overlooks what might be the most important thing: where does the character “start” that makes it so important that he set out on this road? Especially, why does that place seem so comfortable that he almost doesn’t go at all — like millions of people like him never will?
Plato wrote about the cave of ignorance, but to people inside them those “caves” look like real safety, hard truths, or good-enough ways of life, and it’s those illusions that make them tempting. A story challenges its character and reader to change, but that challenge is only as good as its ability to capture why this person found it so hard.
*A Christmas Carol* isn’t about soaring over London. It’s about understanding how Scrooge locked himself up in that cold little house, and we need that insight to care when he finally looks outside.
Thanks, Ken, and you got it with “A Christmas Carol”. There are powerful reasons for Scrooge not to change, and it is for that reason that his transformation is so memorable.
Ditto with James about your timing, Don. I’m brainstorming book two of a series and what came up immediately was the issue of arc!! My MC changed from A to B in the first book but now has to go from B to C. Or so my logic runs. Could this new arc be a deeper level of her first shift rather than something new (which feels arbitrary)? She’s in a new location where she wants to break with her past and start fresh. That’s not in the cards, but she doesn’t get that yet. That’s where I’m heading so far. Any thoughts?
There are always more changes to go through. It’s one of the challenges of series writing, for instance. Think of it as going deeper, sure, but whether a new issue or an old one with a new wrinkle, there is resistance.
Have you thought about a relapse, where your character regresses, falling back into the old habits, even if only briefly. New insight can be gained that the original transformation may have been incomplete or inadequate in some way. The transformation in book two can be deeper and more satisfying.
Just: wow. Worth two cups of coffee, plus a croissant (which I’ll be deloghted to buy for you in Salem). I love the concept of an anti-arc, which—as both a therapist and a writer—feels spot-on. The resistance to change grows right along with the desire to change. The reader, feeling the build-up of both forces, can’t stop reading because SHE HAS TO KNOW HOW THIS DAMN THING ENDS. Thank you!
A croissant too? Wow. Thanks. And from a therapist!
Actually, I can to my understanding of the depth and (story) utility of resistance by reading the literature of therapists writing about therapy.
That’s really interesting because in fact as the client nears the point where change is becoming possible, the resistance to change often rises up with double its prior power. It’s like a law. So “resistance” is a good thing; it contains the needed energy. As in music, there would be no resolution without the dissonance that preceded it.
This resonated with me very powerfully on a personal level, and explains see things I’ve been going through recently….
Very, very instructive, encouragingly so — and immediately resounding with applications to my current work. And offering so much to keep thinking about. Thank you, Donald!
Most welcome.
Your posts are often illuminating, Don, but this one is on fire. I plan to take full advantage of its awesomeness, both personally and professionally. Thank you!
Hugs
Dee
Award-winning author of A Keeper’s Truth
Agent on Fire! Ha, we’ve been binging the Hunger Games movies with our kids, so I feel like Katniss, the “Girl on Fire”. Wait, well, I mean the “on fire” part not the “girl” part, but I think you see what I’m saying.
Glad there’s something useful for you here.
Thanks Don. Will be using your questions to check back with my MC and her anti-arc. Hope you’ve had a good summer.
Great summer, thanks, just over too soon!
Oh, I love these fill in the blanks! I wonder, Don, if you’d perhaps consider doing an entire 3-day writing retreat on character arc…say in September of next year? :)
Seriously, I’d love to chat about this as a possibility, because I think character arc is one of the things that really make a story a story, but many beginning writers I’ve edited lack this entirely in their main character and even seasoned writers could use new ideas about arcs and resistance.
Now, to print this out and get to work on the characters in my next project…
I second Erin’s request! (And I too love the fill-in the blanks!)
Well now, a whole weekend on character arc? Hmm. Let me see what I can do. Fall of 2020? Where would you like such a retreat to happen?
Albuquerque. Check your email. :)
Check, check.
You should have a few messages from me. They may have ended up in your junk folder.
I’m in for Albuquerque… I went to an amazing resort (Tamaya) for another writing conference one fall. Alternatively there’s another (much smaller) incredible location in Taos.
I’m at the beginning point with my next WIP so this truly is perfect timing. Not only am I looking at one protagonist– I’m considering four different protagonists as I weigh the story I want to write. You’ve helped me realize that each of them is hoping for something…. someone…. that they believe/fear is not really there–either someone from their long ago past or someone who has recently disappeared or someone they imagined and never existed. So fascinating I never noticed before that each has the impossibility of change. In one story, a woman whose father just died keeps thinking she sees a friend who she hasn’t seen since she left the foreign country where she grew up. Despite frequent attempts, she’s never heard from her friend and it’s caused her sadness and frustration and fear, so now even though she sees him, she’s resistant to change and believe the friend is right in front of her because she wants it to be true so much and is terrified she’s imagining the friend… who is at the heart of a family mystery and that’s the next misbelief she needs to challenge. Your questions will really help me as I figure out how I want to approach my new work — thank you!
Terrific, Julia, sounds like a wonderful story. Keep going!
I love this exercise and will print out the list for future books. Answering the questions provides a new kind of clarity. Your list will help when writing my synopsis too.
Thanks so much!
You’re welcome, Susie.
One of your best, Donald! Thanks for giving me lots to think about – my brain is about to explode.
Thanks, Maggie. Can I tell you…this past Sunday morning, I had no idea whatsoever what my post this month would be about. None.
Nothing like deadline pressure to get the synapses fired.
A funny thing. I am thinking about your post in regard to the writer creating the anti-arc for her character. It seems to me that she, the writer, has to be able to perceive some of her own settled habits of thought that may prevent her from seeing her story in new and more powerful ways. Protagonists and their creators can both be stuck in their mindsets and reluctant to change, can’t they? And then what? I think your questions may provide a way to break through!
Oh, you are so right, S.K.! As writers we are of course stuck in our ways and resistant to change. How could we not be? We are human.
The goal is to break through the resistance and write better.
Don–I don’t comment on your posts, because my anti-arc is alive and well (my little joke, although it’s actually no joke). But your insights in this post are too much to resist.
As you say, many reasons stand in the way of change, but people and fictional characters do change. The novel I am completing focuses on a man who rejects the whole idea of change as a fabrication of movies. It’s a wish fulfillment for something missing in actual life, and it’s necessitated in films by the need for things to be “wrapped up in a couple hours.”
This character has concealed his sense of self, but when the novel begins, he has been revealed. He is now being shunned by almost everyone he knows–wife and family, friends, etc.
In terms of what you accurately describe, this character attributes his troubles and isolation to the small-mindedness and failings of others. They’re responsible, so why would he change? Then what you call a new purpose presents itself. “Kindness may open the door,” you say, and that’s what happens. The character is essentially a kind person, one of those armored, cynical people who is generous and decent without knowing or wanting to know it. But his capacity for kindness is released, not through efforts to “do good” for other people, but through apparent happenstance: he is forced to take care of a dog. None of the resistance and skepticism he armors himself with in his human relationships need now apply, and he is freed.
Or so I hope.
Thank you for this remarkably compressed dose of wisdom for writers.
Your story sounds great, Barry. Finish up!
What a great set of questions to explore resistance! Thank you Don.
You’re welcome, Vijaya!
Your essay is one of the finest I have ever read not only on character arcs but on the nature of change, and one I will reread/study frequently as I work through my manuscripts. I spent 20-plus years as a front line child welfare worker—aka “Agent of Change,” and I can attest that change is hard and for some people impossible, even when the stakes are astronomical. The process of change is ugly, messy, and never fun. And when change does occur, it occurs in tiny, fragile bursts: two steps forward, one step back; sometimes two steps forward, three steps back. You might think that so much exposure to the reality of change would make it easier for me to construct worthy character arcs. Oddly, it hasn’t. I tend to back off when things get messy or rush to a fix, something that I could never do in the real world. (But, oh, how I wanted to!) Something I need to change….
You raise a really good point, Heidi, one I often think of when reading or watching TV. “Oh, come on,” I think, “that shift in character was so easy!”
Well, okay. TV episodes have only 44 minutes to tell a story and make a character shift, so I guess I understand. In novels, too, even though there is greater length there is also the fear of exhausting the reader. At a certain point, the change just has to happen.
What’s disappointing is when it “just happens”, by which I mean without struggle, or real resistance. Stories do collapse time and enact change more efficiently than in real life–or in therapy–but greater drama results when resistance to change is high and well founded.
Witness Scrooge, mentioned above. Thanks for chiming in!
Having already this morning taken your list to work on the second book of my trilogy, I’m once again astounded by the depths to which you take us in all your works, Don. (Still soaking up Emotional Craft.)
In a quandary with my protagonist after she’s already reached her goal of a vision for her people, the “what’s left?” questions halted my second installment in its tracks. Along comes Mr. Maass with the Anti-Arc solution. Filling in those blanks is HARD WORK–and I love it!
This sort of character introspection forces me as an author to examine my own insight into a well-established character who in Book 1 has already gone through the full arc of one catharsis and her own crisis of conscience. What this list has done in 30 minutes is to create fresh excitement and new discovery–both mine and hers–for the march forward.
Bravo, sir!
Book 2 arc can be a problem, and if the anti-arc is leading you to possible solutions then bravo back to you!
“There first must be no possibility of a rabbit….”
I think I should write this up somewhere. And then go through my WIP carefully smoothing away those little paw-prints in the snow.
Deborah, things I too often find in manuscripts are that the plot outcome is never in doubt, nor is a happy character outcome. It would be great if more manuscripts truly had me biting my nails.
Don, invariably you describe writing practices that introduce a novel (ha!) approach to a concept, and you explain it so fluidly that it makes something unexpected seem almost doctrinal.
I’d never thought in terms of an anti-arc, but as you explain it, there’s compelling weight in delaying or deterring character change unless it comes at cost and complication.
No need for a Paul at Damascus reckoning to lure readers, but instead the bunny out of the expected empty hat. Voila!
Paul’s transformation on the road to Damascus is sudden and profound. He does not struggle. He’s clobbered. It’s a great Biblical moment, yet for us I think not necessarily the best way to handle a character’s change.
That said, I’ll bet there are examples to prove me wrong.
Paul’s transformation seems more like a fantastic inciting event that get’s his story moving.
Don:
Another nugget of wisdom from the WU goldmine. “What does the character have to lose?” is a standard question writers are told to ask and answer in a story. By focusing on resistance to change (which often means loss of some kind), this post adds a fresh take to the old advice. Thanks1
Sorry to be a day late to this, Don. I think you’re going to enjoy THE COMPASS OF CHARACTER. It examines what you so artfully describe here as the anti-arc and embeds it in forces of Resistance–weaknesses, wounds, limitations, oppositional influences or obligations, moral flaws–that seek to protect the character from the pain of life, rather than take the risks necessary to pursue the promise of life. I’ll leave it there. But that chat over a beer we keep looking forward to keeps getting longer and longer. More beer!
Yes, more beer! Whiskey, too. Irish, if you must. I’ll not object.