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Screenwriting Help E-Mail (Previous)
Please send your e-mailed
questions to: Script
Advisor. If you wish to view additional archived
E-mails, please go back to the Previous
E-mails of the Week section.
This
week's question:
DccH, I keep hearing and reading about character
arcs, transformational arcs, and all kinds of arcs,
which is so confusing and complicated. Do you
agree? Errow
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This
week's answer:
"Arc
Enemies"
Errow, I really appreciate you sending your
question. (And thank you for the extra
"c." I've always wanted to be double
"C.") It's true: the latest screenplay
"buzz word" is exactly that:
"arc." Characters now have arcs.
Before, they just went through transformations.
And, even before that, they just changed. The same
kind of thing happened to plots. Screenplays used
to have plots. But now they have storylines.
What's next? Will characters become something
else, too? Maybe, one day, they'll be called
"storyline arcing participants."
If you ever feel deluged by all this, just think of
"arc" as something you and another
screenwriter of the opposite gender could enter with a
bunch of animals and sail away from it all on a forty
day cruise.
DcH
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