hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2670.txt

Episode: 2670
Title: HPR2670: Character Arcs In Storytelling
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2670/hpr2670.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 07:14:47

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This is HPR Episode 2670 entitled Carriptorarchs in Storytelling and is part of the series
Random Elements on Storytelling.
It is hosted by Lost in Drunks and is about 15 minutes long and Karimma Clean Flag.
The summary is Lost in Drunks looks Carriptorarchs and her own in Storytelling.
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Hello, this is Lost in Drunks and you'll have to forgive the audio quality I'm in the car right now.
Today I would like to talk about character arcs in Storytelling.
Now, this will touch on some of the material that I've covered in the past, specifically the payoff.
Because a character arc is intrinsically tied up with the payoff of a story.
However, a character arc can come earlier than just the end of the story, depending on who they are and what role they serve in the story.
A character could die off sometime early or sometime in the middle of the story, but that serves a purpose and we got to see what was happening with that character.
Sometimes the arc exists solely to serve the plot or to serve another character.
So in the case of the character that's killed off a lot of times, the only reason they even exist, the only reason they live or die in this story is to motivate another character to do something.
Maybe going to fight for revenge or clean up the streets of Gotham or something like that.
Motivate is probably the wrong word if I'm talking in a more general sense.
Because in dramas, a lot of times it doesn't provide motivation.
It provides an opportunity for the character to progress in this story and to move themselves forward.
Now, the thing about a character arc, I think it's important to understand, is that character arcs are not about progress.
They're not about regression, they're about movement, change.
A character doesn't have to become better, they can become worse.
They can apparently end up right back where they started after having gone through an awful lot to get back there.
And once they're back, they see where they started, they're home, they're hometown, they're job, whatever it is, they see it with new eyes.
That was a journey, that was an arc.
So you don't have to progress, you don't have to become more powerful, a better person or any of that in a character arc.
A character arc just denotes change, action of some sort, something is going on with this character.
Usually, we're talking about an emotional state. Now, that emotional state oftentimes will be triggered by external action.
That is to say, something is happening outside of the character or, in fact, the character is doing something outside.
It's not an internal thing, it's not emotional at that point, but it can be.
Action can be emotional, and it can be external, and it can be initiated by the character, and it can be inflicted upon the character.
But action, again, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily mean a negative thing.
Some people use the word conflict, I think conflict can give the wrong impression, it can mean to characters fighting, to or more characters fighting.
But it could be a character who's in conflict with themselves, it could be conflict in their heart, something that they should do, but they feel another way, it could be confusion.
I'm not sure conflict and confusion are the same thing. I suppose you could define one as being the other or vice versa.
I don't know, that's, I wouldn't get into that debate.
But all of these things can help in the character arc, but they are elements within it.
Action for that character is an element within the character arc, and the character arc feeds into the payoff at the end of the story.
Not just the main character, a lot of times we'll have multiple character arcs going on for different people in the story.
Not everybody in the story needs one, they might all have one, but if we don't get to see it, it doesn't really matter what it is.
So there are characters who aren't truly nothing but background, they're there simply to help the story move along.
They're like a chair, they're like a door, they're like a window, they exist for the other characters to use in order for this story to be done.
So you might have a story where your main character walks in and orders a coffee at a coffee shop, and the barista makes the coffee and they might chat a little bit and then you never see the barista again.
Now in real life, and if you're trying to simulate real life in your story, you don't have to, but if you are, then that barista has a character arc, that barista has something that they believe is important and they're going somewhere.
And you may touch on that, but you don't have to, that character could just be background.
That character could do nothing but serve the coffee and vanish and it won't impact the story at all, because if that's not the story you're trying to tell, adding a character arc for the barista at that point actually can damage the tale, it can make it so confused and muddied that it can't be followed.
That can be a problem in character driven storytelling.
Soap operas have this problem because soap operas are nothing but character, and they can have this problem where you have too many characters or too many stories so that you cannot follow what's going on in this soap opera.
Some people I knew they would get up and go to the kitchen or go to the bathroom or do something else when the story that they're not interested in would come on, because they didn't care about those characters or they actively dislike those characters or they dislike the story, but whatever the reason, they were not interested in that.
That was too much for them, they didn't want it and they left and there was enough to pick from that you could do that.
You could get up and leave when a couple of characters walk down the screen and then come back and follow what you really wanted to see.
That's a user solution to a programming problem if you want to put it that way, television programming in this case.
Too many stories or stories that aren't interesting, too many things going on, well of course daily soap operas had an hour to fill every single day, so they had to cram a lot in if they wanted to fill out that hour.
That's a problem particular to that medium, but other kinds of stories can have it too, very long novels, literature and such.
Too much of that can get in the way of your story, unless of course that is the story.
See, you can have a story that is mostly internal with tons and tons of other characters doing whatever they're doing, having all of their arcs.
Too many things going on, but the only purpose for that is for those arcs to have an impact on your main character.
That would take a master craftsman to do it, but there are stories like that.
The character arc is important, but it isn't all important.
Certain types of stories don't need one.
Action movies, for instance, some of the old Schwarzenegger films, some of the old Stallone films, not even the old ones, some of the new ones, these characters never change.
From start to finish, the character is the same person.
It's like a wind-up doll. We know exactly what to expect, and we're watching this wind-up doll walk across the room.
It's just so much fun to see it in action.
No character surprises, none whatsoever.
Other characters in those movies, they might change, but your main character never does, because in a way they're not really a character.
They're an element of the plot.
The plot requires that you have this, generally, this big killing machine that can run out and wipe out all the bad guys.
And still be the same person they were at the end, that they were at the beginning, without any change.
Is that an example of good storytelling? Well, it depends on who you ask.
I mean, Cabando, that Schwarzenegger starred in a million years ago, that's never going to win any special awards for acting or for writing or any of that.
None of that is all that compelling, but there are many people who like it.
And in the end, that's what a story is for. It's entertainment.
You can educate people, you can bring up important human drama elements to people's tales, but in the end, fiction is to entertain.
And if you can get something else out of it, that's great.
So if people are enjoying something like Cabando, you can say you don't like it, but that's it. It's all subjective.
So if someone is enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter if that character, the main character in Cabando, never changes.
It's the same guy. All of those adventures that he has, and he has to go out and save his daughter, and he brings in this stewardess that gets involved and helps him and all of this stuff, but none of it changes him.
He's the same guy. He was at the end that he was at the beginning.
He's still as good a father as he can be, and he's still a killing machine, and he's nice to the nice people, and deadly to the bad people, and that's just who he is.
And he's quick with a quip, and that's that. Credits. End of movie. Same guy.
And there are a lot of novels like that, especially these days with a lot of indie publishing. You get a lot of stories like that.
Why? Is it because they're bad stories? Well, I might think so. You might think so, but not everyone does.
See, people are writing stories like this, they're writing novels like this, because they like them. This is the story they like.
They're telling tales about characters without an arc. It's just a story.
So, character arcs, depending on the story you're telling, they actually are not required.
Now, if you're telling a story about character, not about action, then yeah, you do need it, because the action is built into the arc.
The action is internal. Even if there's guns and shooting and explosions and running around and daring do, if it's a story about characters, the characters cannot remain the same.
Even if their circumstance doesn't change. Even if they try really, really, really hard to do something and they fail and fail and fail and end up exactly where they started, they themselves are not the same characters.
They are not the same people, because they've gotten a lesson, they've learned the futility of what they're doing.
That has changed them. That's internal action.
Now, a character arc, which is action for the character, it's movement, probably some of the better ways you can use that, is not just for the character, but also for the story.
The character's internal journey that helps move the story forward, that's probably the best way to integrate plot with character.
That not only do the events of the plot change the character, but the character changes the events of the plot.
It is their character arc or part of their arc to alter what's going on around them. That gives your character agency, it gives them power within the story.
Now, you may want to story where the character is powerless, and I suppose you can do that in your story by simply not giving them anything to do, but that's boring.
And you end up with a character arc, the personal journey this character has is entirely internalized.
And if that is the sort of tale you're telling, that's fine, but if there is a plot to follow, if there is action outside of these characters, and all they've got is their internal stuff, it better be dynamic.
You really run the risk of separating this character out from the rest of the story, and that can be unbalancing.
It depends on the tale, depends on how it's handled, but it can be unbalancing.
A lot of times, what you really want is for the character to be actively engaged in what's going on, and however it is that the story is changing them, they're doing the same to the story around them.
The things they choose to do, the things they start to believe about themselves and what they're capable of doing, these things will affect what they do and what other people do in that tale.
So that the story progresses because of the character arc.
When that arc is over, if it's the main character, and we're following the main character unto the end, the character arc has to dovetail with the payoff of the larger story.
For some stories, for some movie, it's a novel, comic book, whatever it happens to be, for some of those things, the character arc and the payoff are one and the same.
When we find out what happens to this character, that's it, that is the story, it's over.
There are many things like that, you can have mysteries, especially that'll like that, when we find out what happens, thrillers are like that.
When we've seen their character arc, that's the end of the story.
But it doesn't have to be that way, it doesn't have to be that way, and some of the better tales, there's a real give and take when it comes to the impact that the character has on the plot and vice versa.
There are many times that the plot of the tale spins around the character arc entirely.
There is an old movie, it was a television movie called The Morning After.
It's a little hard to track down now, but it's start Dick Van Dyke.
Now he was known for comedy, but this was a very serious drama.
He plays an alcoholic, and we see his character arc as he goes through this.
This is not a redemption tale.
Remember I said a character arc is not about progression, it is about movement, and this guy moves down.
He starts off as a guy who's got it all, I think he was an executive of some sort, he's got a wife, he's got family, he's got a great house in the suburbs, he's got everything going for him.
But he also is an alcoholic, and he doesn't get past this, it consumes him.
And the last image you have of him is he's a homeless guy on the beach as the sun is coming up, drinking, he's lost everything, everything, everything to the bottle.
That was a tremendous character arc, but it certainly had nothing to do with progression.
Anyway, these were just some thoughts about characters and character arcs, very random.
If you have any comments, please put them on the site for this episode, or better yet, create your own episode of Hacker Public Radio, because you have opinions, you have interests, and we want to hear about them.
This has been Lost in Bronx, take care.
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