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?
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