10 Steps To Hero by Sacha Black

Author:Sacha Black [Black, Sacha]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: WRITING
Publisher: Atlas Black Publishing
Published: 2019-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

Most writing advice tells you, when creating your plot, to start at the end. And for good reason. If you know where you want to end up, you can plan a route, create a map and hot foot it to the magical mountain of story greatness.

If it makes sense to start at the end when creating your story structure, then why not when creating your hero, too? Logic with me for a second. If you know what state your hero ends the book in, then you know the type of person she needs to be to defeat the villain. If you know that, then you know she has to start the story in the opposite state. For example, if you know she needs to learn to trust others and build a team around her to win, then she must start alone and arrogant.

The start and end of your book are like north and south for your character arc — they represent polar opposite character states.

Let’s work through a real example.

Example: Protagonist Andy Dufresne, from The Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King. In this story, Andy finishes the story a free man, which mean he must start trapped and imprisoned. These polar states are often on multiple levels. For example, Andy is trapped physically in prison, but he is also trapped in the psychological torture of being wrongfully convicted as well as the betrayal of his wife. But, by the end of the book, the opposite is true — Andy is psychologically, financially and physically free, but also guilty of committing a crime to get there.

And those two juicy nuggets, dear wordsmithers, give you the bones of a character arc.

You say tomAto, I say tomAHto - arcs and structure

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