brightlotusmoon

[brightlotusmoon]

🧪 Character Arcs 101: what they are, what they aren’t, and how to make them hurt

by rin t. (resident chaos scribe of thewriteadviceforwriters)

Okay so here’s the thing. You can give me all the pretty pinterest moodboards and soft trauma playlists in the world, but if your character doesn’t change, I will send them back to the factory.

Let’s talk about character arcs. Not vibes. Not tragic backstory flavoring. Actual. Arcs. (It hurts but we’ll get through it together.)

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💡 what a character arc IS:

a transformational journey (keyword: transformation)

the internal response to external pressure (aka plot consequences)

a shift in worldview, behavior, belief, self-concept

the emotional architecture of your story

the reason we care

💥 what a character arc is NOT:

a sad monologue halfway through act 2

a single cool scene where they yell or cry

a moral they magically learn by the end

a “development” label slapped on a flatline

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✨ THE 3 BASIC FLAVORS OF ARC (and how to emotionally damage your characters accordingly):

Positive Arc They start with a flaw, false belief, or fear that limits them. Through the events of the story (and many Ls), they confront that internal lie, grow, and emerge changed. Hurt factor: Drag them through the mud. Make them fight to believe in themselves. Break their trust, make them doubt. Let them earn their ending.

Negative Arc They begin whole(ish) and devolve. They fail to overcome their flaw or false belief. This arc ends in ruin, corruption, or defeat. Hurt factor: Let them almost have a chance. Build hope. Then show how they sabotage it, or how the world takes it anyway. Twist the knife.

Flat/Static Arc They don’t change, but the world around them does. They hold onto a core truth, and it’s their constancy that drives change in others. Think: mentor, revolutionary, or truth-teller type. Hurt factor: Make the world push back. Make their values cost them something. The tension comes from holding steady in chaos.

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🎯 how to build an arc that actually HITS (no ✨soft lessons✨, just internal structure):

Lie they believe: What false thing do they think about themselves or the world? (“I’m unlovable.” “Power = safety.” “I’m only valuable if I’m useful.”)

Want vs. need: What do they think they want? What do they actually need to grow?

Wound/backstory scar: What made them like this? You don’t need a tragic past™ but you do need cause and effect.

Turning point: What moment forces them to question their worldview? What event cracks the surface?

Moment of choice: Do they change? Or not? What decision seals their arc?

🧪 Pro tip: this is not a worksheet. This is scaffolding. The arc lives in the story, not just your doc notes. The lie isn’t revealed in a monologue, it’s felt through consequences, relationships, mistakes.

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🛠️ things to actually do with this:

Write scenes where the character’s flaw messes things up. Like, they lose something. A person. A plan. Their cool. Make the flaw hurt.

Track their beliefs like a timeline. How do they start? What chips away at it? When does the shift stick?

Use relationships as arc mirrors. Who challenges them? Enables them? Forces reflection? Internal change is almost never solo.

Revisit the lie. Circle back to it at least three times in escalating intensity. Reminder > confrontation > transformation.

─────── ✦ ───────

🌊 bonus pain level: REVERSE THE ARC

Wanna make it really hurt? Set them up for one arc, and give them the opposite. They think they’re growing into a better person. But actually, they’re losing themselves. They think they’re spiraling. But they’re really healing. Let them be surprised. Let the reader be surprised.

─────── ✦ ───────

TL;DR: If your plot is a skeleton, your character arc is the nervous system.

The change is the thing. Don’t just dress it up in trauma. Don’t let your character learn nothing. Make them face themselves. And yeah. Make it hurt a little. (Or a lot. I won’t stop you.)

—rin t. // thewriteadviceforwriters // plotting pain professionally since forever

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

[brightlotusmoon]

Me: I am going to weed myself to sleep.

My cat: I am going to assist by draping myself on your torso and vibrating to the tune of the weed.

[brightlotusmoon]

Good point. It's been a while since I thought about that. I was reading The Tao Of Pooh as a kid, but I probably forgot a lot...

So when you're friends with @brightlotusmoon there is one topic and thing that'll probably always be near the front of your mind(at least for me) and that would be psionics. And... Well if you're me then you might fall into a mini research rabbit hole for psychics. And then you might morice some patterns between all the psychics you see in tv shows or on tv shows about psychics. I noticed 3 big ones specifically

#1:relations to ghosts or spirits

Whether it be a burger loving spirit medium always arrested for murder or a troubled girl in a world scared of ghosts(for very good reason) so badly that they cultivate psychic skills at a very young age, it seems to be the second most common type of pattern for most psychics. Whether it be working against them or siding with them you'll find maybe a good 30 to 40% of media psychics being involved with the world of ghosts. Whether they're a real or fake psychic.

Shows like mob psycho 100 and lockwood and co give us an expansive amount of people all over with some spirit sensing power or having a connection to ghosts. Or it could be focusing on specific groups of psychics like the ace attorney series heavily using spirit mediums(particularly coming back over and over again to the fey family) or even ghostbusters frozen empire introducing the idea of a firemaster(someone who has telekinetic control over fire and is even able to build upon an existing flame no matter how small... Even if they have very little training as seen in the movie) like i said this is the second most common psychic i see being used... Then what's the biggest one? Well that would be

#2 being or working with detectives

Psychic People who either are detectives,or work with or for detectives is without a doubt the biggest pattern I've seen. And it's mostly a medium but you sometimes also get the clairvoyant and precognitive ones as well. Your psychic detectives,your dead boy detectives(crystal was the only psychic in the show but we didn't get all the time we could have) your psychic kids and your psychic investigations. Your dead files(the one my mom remembers us watching) and any ghost hunter/ghost investigator show or movie has a 50/50 chance of including a psychic.

And you definitely have your stand alone psychics in certain shows like crystal place in deadboy detectives or amy in dead files.

I'd say a good 40 to 50% of tv show psychics are psychics working with detectives or are detectives themselves. But that's only 70 to 90% of the equation... What about the rest? That's covered by

#3 the unchained

Odd title for this category but it's for the psychics who aren't bound on their shows as working with spirits or working with detectives. But still having psychic powers. Your x men psychics and your general non specialized psychics if you will.people like jean grey and the slew of marvel psychics, or all the espers of mob psycho 100,the psychonauts from well... Psychonauts, or the psionic system of earthbound. Or even shows with only heavy focus on solo characters/a tiny handful like raven Simone or the halliwell sisters prue and Phoebe who had powers related to telekinesis and seeing the future.or how could i forget my recent favorite divination expert lilia calderu(okay so lilia is a witch but so are prue and phoebe. But she ran a psychic shop so she's a technicality) People who have psychic power and can(and usually do) use it for good. But it's not always the case I'm afraid.

Hmm... I kinda wish i had a few more examples for each of these category of patterns. I'm satisfied with this but still.

May you all enjoy my little post... And hey if you got any Psychic shows or notable psychics to add to a certain category im not against seeing what you all find

[brightlotusmoon]

Rambling is awesome, I love rambling, keep rambling, I love this entire conversation.

I've been influenced by Hindu mythology, by Taoism and Shinto. So that's gonna come through in my writing.

So when you're friends with @brightlotusmoon there is one topic and thing that'll probably always be near the front of your mind(at least for me) and that would be psionics. And... Well if you're me then you might fall into a mini research rabbit hole for psychics. And then you might morice some patterns between all the psychics you see in tv shows or on tv shows about psychics. I noticed 3 big ones specifically

#1:relations to ghosts or spirits

Whether it be a burger loving spirit medium always arrested for murder or a troubled girl in a world scared of ghosts(for very good reason) so badly that they cultivate psychic skills at a very young age, it seems to be the second most common type of pattern for most psychics. Whether it be working against them or siding with them you'll find maybe a good 30 to 40% of media psychics being involved with the world of ghosts. Whether they're a real or fake psychic.

Shows like mob psycho 100 and lockwood and co give us an expansive amount of people all over with some spirit sensing power or having a connection to ghosts. Or it could be focusing on specific groups of psychics like the ace attorney series heavily using spirit mediums(particularly coming back over and over again to the fey family) or even ghostbusters frozen empire introducing the idea of a firemaster(someone who has telekinetic control over fire and is even able to build upon an existing flame no matter how small... Even if they have very little training as seen in the movie) like i said this is the second most common psychic i see being used... Then what's the biggest one? Well that would be

#2 being or working with detectives

Psychic People who either are detectives,or work with or for detectives is without a doubt the biggest pattern I've seen. And it's mostly a medium but you sometimes also get the clairvoyant and precognitive ones as well. Your psychic detectives,your dead boy detectives(crystal was the only psychic in the show but we didn't get all the time we could have) your psychic kids and your psychic investigations. Your dead files(the one my mom remembers us watching) and any ghost hunter/ghost investigator show or movie has a 50/50 chance of including a psychic.

And you definitely have your stand alone psychics in certain shows like crystal place in deadboy detectives or amy in dead files.

I'd say a good 40 to 50% of tv show psychics are psychics working with detectives or are detectives themselves. But that's only 70 to 90% of the equation... What about the rest? That's covered by

#3 the unchained

Odd title for this category but it's for the psychics who aren't bound on their shows as working with spirits or working with detectives. But still having psychic powers. Your x men psychics and your general non specialized psychics if you will.people like jean grey and the slew of marvel psychics, or all the espers of mob psycho 100,the psychonauts from well... Psychonauts, or the psionic system of earthbound. Or even shows with only heavy focus on solo characters/a tiny handful like raven Simone or the halliwell sisters prue and Phoebe who had powers related to telekinesis and seeing the future.or how could i forget my recent favorite divination expert lilia calderu(okay so lilia is a witch but so are prue and phoebe. But she ran a psychic shop so she's a technicality) People who have psychic power and can(and usually do) use it for good. But it's not always the case I'm afraid.

Hmm... I kinda wish i had a few more examples for each of these category of patterns. I'm satisfied with this but still.

May you all enjoy my little post... And hey if you got any Psychic shows or notable psychics to add to a certain category im not against seeing what you all find

[brightlotusmoon]

I love that people just screenshot tiktoks. Fuck videos

[brightlotusmoon]

[brightlotusmoon]

Gonna quote what @sacredartist33013 just said in our chat

Ive been thinking about how i handle the turtle force and that makes me think... What if there was a Phoenix force realm version. Where there is a realm made from the force itself(that's kinda how im doing the turtle force) which well... Considering that one phoenix egg idea i have stored in dusty archives.

I'm also thinking about what kind of name somebody goes by if there is an avatar of the turtle force. Jean goes by phoenix and variants of it so the obvious answer would be variants of turtle.

And still... I wonder about the mikey with the phoenox force saga(and why the grand forces always attach to the red heads(wanda and her chaos magic,jean and the phoenix,Madeline and the goblin force,even april and za naron or whatever that aeons name was)and wonder what would happen to him. Or how he even gets possessed to begin with.

I'm magic obsessed but i swear you pull me right into the fanciful world of psionics and its often beautiful colors when it does colors and auras

So when you're friends with @brightlotusmoon there is one topic and thing that'll probably always be near the front of your mind(at least for me) and that would be psionics. And... Well if you're me then you might fall into a mini research rabbit hole for psychics. And then you might morice some patterns between all the psychics you see in tv shows or on tv shows about psychics. I noticed 3 big ones specifically

#1:relations to ghosts or spirits

Whether it be a burger loving spirit medium always arrested for murder or a troubled girl in a world scared of ghosts(for very good reason) so badly that they cultivate psychic skills at a very young age, it seems to be the second most common type of pattern for most psychics. Whether it be working against them or siding with them you'll find maybe a good 30 to 40% of media psychics being involved with the world of ghosts. Whether they're a real or fake psychic.

Shows like mob psycho 100 and lockwood and co give us an expansive amount of people all over with some spirit sensing power or having a connection to ghosts. Or it could be focusing on specific groups of psychics like the ace attorney series heavily using spirit mediums(particularly coming back over and over again to the fey family) or even ghostbusters frozen empire introducing the idea of a firemaster(someone who has telekinetic control over fire and is even able to build upon an existing flame no matter how small... Even if they have very little training as seen in the movie) like i said this is the second most common psychic i see being used... Then what's the biggest one? Well that would be

#2 being or working with detectives

Psychic People who either are detectives,or work with or for detectives is without a doubt the biggest pattern I've seen. And it's mostly a medium but you sometimes also get the clairvoyant and precognitive ones as well. Your psychic detectives,your dead boy detectives(crystal was the only psychic in the show but we didn't get all the time we could have) your psychic kids and your psychic investigations. Your dead files(the one my mom remembers us watching) and any ghost hunter/ghost investigator show or movie has a 50/50 chance of including a psychic.

And you definitely have your stand alone psychics in certain shows like crystal place in deadboy detectives or amy in dead files.

I'd say a good 40 to 50% of tv show psychics are psychics working with detectives or are detectives themselves. But that's only 70 to 90% of the equation... What about the rest? That's covered by

#3 the unchained

Odd title for this category but it's for the psychics who aren't bound on their shows as working with spirits or working with detectives. But still having psychic powers. Your x men psychics and your general non specialized psychics if you will.people like jean grey and the slew of marvel psychics, or all the espers of mob psycho 100,the psychonauts from well... Psychonauts, or the psionic system of earthbound. Or even shows with only heavy focus on solo characters/a tiny handful like raven Simone or the halliwell sisters prue and Phoebe who had powers related to telekinesis and seeing the future.or how could i forget my recent favorite divination expert lilia calderu(okay so lilia is a witch but so are prue and phoebe. But she ran a psychic shop so she's a technicality) People who have psychic power and can(and usually do) use it for good. But it's not always the case I'm afraid.

Hmm... I kinda wish i had a few more examples for each of these category of patterns. I'm satisfied with this but still.

May you all enjoy my little post... And hey if you got any Psychic shows or notable psychics to add to a certain category im not against seeing what you all find

[brightlotusmoon]

When the weed kicks in and loosens up everything and soothes the inflammation, I keep being surprised that it's working. I keep surprising myself with pain relief.

It's been two years since my last eyeglasses prescription, so once I have money I'll go. Husband suggested that my cannabis saturation may have altered and even improved some things. I've been having a lot of eyestrain so he's probably right. It's just deeply frustrating when it's multiple things like tendons and neuralgia and sinus. The last thing I want is misdiagnosed migraine.

If my mutuals have any tips, especially regarding the spasticity...

[brightlotusmoon]

I am so flattered and honored, because I as I said I spent my life obsessed with psionics. So to have someone ride that wave and see me as a mentor is... fantastic. Makes me even more determined to finish the main novel and all those fanfictions.

And just as I meet @vanda-maksimova who would definitely know psionics hahaha.

So when you're friends with @brightlotusmoon there is one topic and thing that'll probably always be near the front of your mind(at least for me) and that would be psionics. And... Well if you're me then you might fall into a mini research rabbit hole for psychics. And then you might morice some patterns between all the psychics you see in tv shows or on tv shows about psychics. I noticed 3 big ones specifically

#1:relations to ghosts or spirits

Whether it be a burger loving spirit medium always arrested for murder or a troubled girl in a world scared of ghosts(for very good reason) so badly that they cultivate psychic skills at a very young age, it seems to be the second most common type of pattern for most psychics. Whether it be working against them or siding with them you'll find maybe a good 30 to 40% of media psychics being involved with the world of ghosts. Whether they're a real or fake psychic.

Shows like mob psycho 100 and lockwood and co give us an expansive amount of people all over with some spirit sensing power or having a connection to ghosts. Or it could be focusing on specific groups of psychics like the ace attorney series heavily using spirit mediums(particularly coming back over and over again to the fey family) or even ghostbusters frozen empire introducing the idea of a firemaster(someone who has telekinetic control over fire and is even able to build upon an existing flame no matter how small... Even if they have very little training as seen in the movie) like i said this is the second most common psychic i see being used... Then what's the biggest one? Well that would be

#2 being or working with detectives

Psychic People who either are detectives,or work with or for detectives is without a doubt the biggest pattern I've seen. And it's mostly a medium but you sometimes also get the clairvoyant and precognitive ones as well. Your psychic detectives,your dead boy detectives(crystal was the only psychic in the show but we didn't get all the time we could have) your psychic kids and your psychic investigations. Your dead files(the one my mom remembers us watching) and any ghost hunter/ghost investigator show or movie has a 50/50 chance of including a psychic.

And you definitely have your stand alone psychics in certain shows like crystal place in deadboy detectives or amy in dead files.

I'd say a good 40 to 50% of tv show psychics are psychics working with detectives or are detectives themselves. But that's only 70 to 90% of the equation... What about the rest? That's covered by

#3 the unchained

Odd title for this category but it's for the psychics who aren't bound on their shows as working with spirits or working with detectives. But still having psychic powers. Your x men psychics and your general non specialized psychics if you will.people like jean grey and the slew of marvel psychics, or all the espers of mob psycho 100,the psychonauts from well... Psychonauts, or the psionic system of earthbound. Or even shows with only heavy focus on solo characters/a tiny handful like raven Simone or the halliwell sisters prue and Phoebe who had powers related to telekinesis and seeing the future.or how could i forget my recent favorite divination expert lilia calderu(okay so lilia is a witch but so are prue and phoebe. But she ran a psychic shop so she's a technicality) People who have psychic power and can(and usually do) use it for good. But it's not always the case I'm afraid.

Hmm... I kinda wish i had a few more examples for each of these category of patterns. I'm satisfied with this but still.

May you all enjoy my little post... And hey if you got any Psychic shows or notable psychics to add to a certain category im not against seeing what you all find

[brightlotusmoon]

normalize taking drugs just to fit in and make your friends think you're cool

[brightlotusmoon]

Yuuuuppp.

Example: my roommate C, who was born in the mid 70s right after the death of her grandfather, which prompted her mother to force her to become like the grandfather, as well as to essentially turn her into a personal slave with no chance to develop as a separate person. No extracurricular activities, no creative artwork, no dancing, only working approved jobs, no doctors because it would reveal the severe abuse, no political activities because that might encourage free will, forced into the Army*, medical discharge thet resulted in worse endometriosis and multiple surgeries, and even then the mom demanded servitude. The mom died in 2019, we moved in to help pay bills, and my friend is just starting to really break free. She's in her late forties and finally allowing herself to live however the hell she wants.

*(the grandfather was Secret Service for JFK)

[brightlotusmoon]

The little vibrating massager wand sitting right there on my nightstand: You know I can be used on neck and head muscles, right?

Me: In my defense, you were buried in a drawer. Out of sight out of mind.

[brightlotusmoon]

the more things change the more they stay the same

[brightlotusmoon]

I think I was having this sort of discussion here when I first went on Synthroid a few months ago. Low thyroid is often under diagnosed and not enough people get tyrosine in their diets. My roommate is missing half her thyroid and does much better when she remembers to take tyrosine tablets. I promised I would help her keep up. Good thing you can get it in gummies because she doesn't like capsules.

That reminds me, I have tyrosine 1 gram capsules I should be taking every morning. Tyrosine supplementation was studied in US soldiers alertness, stress reduction, and skin dryness and hair strength. It's an amazing thing, tyrosine. Yes, go research, let me know your findings.

My artist parents have been taking serrapeptase for nerve damage, since they paint every day, and Mom said that after a month they felt better. I need to remember to take serrapeptase again. Without food, btw! I have a literal closet full of supplements in pill, powder, and chewable form.

Ate a bunch of cheese, feeling less depressed.

[brightlotusmoon]

Ahaha yeah, I am starting to experience some pain relief, the muscles in my neck are relaxing, and it feels WEIRD. Like, oh, wait, the pain is disappearing, the pain was the normal, pain isn't supposed to be normal.

Mph. Long nap. Woke up with my neck stiff, a severe eyestrain headache, probably dehydrated, didn't take meds. Time for meds!!

Husband had me eat a small meal with plenty of garlic salt, then massaged my head until it no longer felt crushed and ripped by long claws. I took baclofen and gabapentin. Time to vape the weed again. It could be worse, it could be a migraine, it could be trigeminal, ever had all three?

[brightlotusmoon]

Yeah, exactly.

Once I started taking a low dose of Synthroid, my dairy cravings shrunk and I stopped desperately wanting cheese at midnight.

There's also that ADHD thing where our brains require more energy, more resources, so we go for sugar....

Ate a bunch of cheese, feeling less depressed.

[brightlotusmoon]

Yeah. It's the puritanism.