This is Story Fanatic, a collection of articles covering story structure and analysis for
creative writers. Published weekly.
This series focuses on the four primary concepts that shape and form an effective and meaningful Main Character. Screenplays that lack that special connection with an audience are often the victims of a poorly realized central character. The following articles explain how to structure a story with a dynamic and solid Main Character.
Complete stories, the ones we love and cherish, are those that are trying to say something beyond the spectacle. Where the Main Character ends up at the end of a screenplay or novel plays an essential part in providing that meaning.
Character arc is often referred to as the transformation a Main Character undergoes throughout the course of a screenplay. This is incorrect. Effective story structure dictates growth, but not necessarily transformation.
Every book on screenwriting eventually issues the command that Main Characters must always take action. But is this always the case? Main Characters face their own personal struggles, but it is how they approach those problems that helps to define them. Action is not always the way.
Effective story structure requires a screenwriter to establish the mental processes a Main Character employs in the pursuit of his or her own personal problems. Why? Because the order of events that unfold are determined by what “kind” of a mind the central character has.