Okay, so I just finished 80 pages of my first feature and have hit a road block. I have begun brainstorming an idea for a fantasy meets fiction story set in B.C. era. I am beginning to flesh out a protagonist, ex-soldier turned civilian, he's a gardener. Basically my question is this, how does the character arc relate to the three act structure. I get that in setting up the world we establish the protagonists current condition, but where is it exactly in the screenplay that we see the character begin changing? Is it at the first turning point? Or is it at the big defeat in the midpoint? I hope these questions don't come off as overly vague, any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Ryan
What's important is for you to stop thinking about character and story as separate things.
You know how Einstein discovered that space and time were actually one connected thing -- space/time -- and that you couldn't really think about one without thinking about the other?
Same deal. Don't think about story over here and character over there -- start thinking in terms of one connected thing -- character/story.
What is character in dramatic terms -- it is the working out of a dramatic problem embodied in a particular person or persons.
What is story? It is a dramatic problem worked out by a character or characters.
In other words, story and character are really just two different ways of talking about the same thing.
For purposes of a story, you can't mistake character for "personality" -- they're two different things.
Character drives personality and character, in narrative, is defined by need.
What your central character needs defines your story.
But "need" consists of two different aspects -- there is an inner, or thematic or "sub-textual" need, and an outer or story need.
You need to get the treasure. You need to win the girl. You need to defeat the Evil Wizard. You need to escape the maniac.
Those are all story needs.
But for your story to have any kind of resonance, what's going on on the outside of your character has to reflect an inner story and an inner need -- what's going on inside your character - and that reflects the theme of your movie.
And that defines your so-called character arc.
What is it that your character needs, not in terms of the physical requirements of the story, but in terms of his fundamental humanity. What, in thematic/symbolic terms (and just to let you know, everything in a story is basically symbolic) -- does your character represent?
It is almost as if every story is a kind of thesis -- a test of a certain idea. And you are going to embody the test of that idea in the form of characters in a story landscape.
That thesis may be about courage, about pacifism, about faith, about the nature of truth -- hey, you're writing it. You have to decide what the story is that you're telling -- and thus the "thesis" that your characters, moving in the landscape of your story world, are "working out."
Until you understand that -- and sometimes you only really come to understand it through writing it -- you aren't going to know what the "character arc" is - because that arc is going to define the theme of your movie.
It's sort of like an equation. Person X with Need Y must make certain choices and take certain actions to satisfy that need. Those choices may involve changing his nature and achieving his goal -- and that may be a happy ending or an unhappy ending, depending on what he's after. Or he may he may be given the chance to change and not change and get what he's after or not. Or he may be given the chance to change -- and he may stay the course -- and maybe that's the right thing to do (many movies with heroes that represent the forces of society or justice don't change over the course of the movie).
Ultimately, the external story is ostensibly about the achieving of the external objective -- but each plot turn in the quest for the external objective has its equivalent turning in the sub-textual, the internal struggle -- what does the character need as a human being.
Sometimes you may need food to survive -- and that's the external struggle -- but what you really need is to make the decision to let someone else have the food -- your kids or your family or whatever -- because what you *really need* -- is to not to live, but to do the right thing -- and that was what the struggle was about all along -- not the struggle to survive, but the struggle to be *human* which brings the character to that final moment and that final decision.
And that's what you have to think about -- external objective -- internal objective. How does one reflect the other, how does one conflict with the other -- and how do they both unfold over the course of the story.
As far as structure is concerned -- just think in these rough terms.
First act sets up the struggle. Second Act develops it. At the end of the Second Act, your protagonist should be presented with what seems to be an insoluble problem -- and the Third Act solves that problem (or fails to, if that's how the story is going to go -- but if that's the case, he should at least have had the ability to solve the problem. The failure should result from his having made a wrong choice).
NMS
