How to write a character arc that readers will believe? Make sure your character resists change!
Imagine Simba from The Lion King eating bugs in the jungle when suddenly he thinks, “You know what? My father’s death wasn’t my fault. Great. I guess I’ll go home.”
It sounds silly, but I see writers doing this a lot.
They’re missing one critical element in their stories that can kill the whole climax.
Today, I’ll show you what that element is and how you can make sure your story isn’t missing it, so your reader actually believes in your hero all the way to the end.
How to Write a Character Arc: Make the Lie Visible
The first thing I see missing that can cause this problem is that your character fails to act from the lie they believe.
In a previous post, I talked about the heart hook and how your main character needs to have a deep emotional wound, something that happened early on that caused them to believe a lie.
But what I often see missing in writers’ stories, even if they know what their heart hook is, is that they don’t have the main character act from that lie.
You have to make sure that, on the page, your character is acting like a character who would believe this lie.
Imagine Simba from The Lion King.
His emotional wound is believing that he caused his father’s death. He’s carrying around the guilt of that and believing the lie that he can never go home.
Then he acts from that lie by deciding to live in the woods and eat bugs alongside his new friends.
We see him avoiding his own kind and trying to be something he’s not. It’s plain that he’s living from the lie he believes.
How to Write a Character Arc: Show the Choices the Lie Creates
Shrek, for example, has spent his whole life being feared and rejected because he’s an ogre. So he believes the lie that no one could ever truly love or accept him.
It’s safer for him to live alone and scare people away before they get close enough to hurt him.
Shrek doesn’t just carry that belief around somewhere in the back of his mind, journal about it, or get depressed about it.
He acts from it.
He lives alone in a swamp. He puts up warning signs. He frightens off villagers. When Donkey tries to become his friend, Shrek keeps pushing him away.
He acts like he prefers being alone because that’s easier than admitting that he expects everyone to reject him.
Let Your Character Drive the Story
Once you have the emotional wound—the heart hook—it’s so helpful because your character will then act from that lie.
You know exactly what they’re going to do because you know, from your knowledge of human nature, that if someone believes they’re going to be rejected, they’re just going to reject other people first.
So what happens to Shrek?
He starts falling for Fiona, and because he’s still acting from the lie, he just can’t believe that she might actually feel the same way about him.
You remember the scene where he overhears Fiona talking to Donkey and she says something like, “Who could ever love a beast so hideous and ugly?”
In that moment, she’s actually talking about herself, but Shrek immediately assumes she’s talking about him.
Why?
Because the lie doesn’t just affect what your character does. It affects how they interpret everything happening around them.
If you want your reader to believe the journey your main character is taking, this is critical.
Katniss (from “The Hunger Games”) believes that caring about people will get them hurt. So she interprets everything around her from that point of view.
She interprets being in the Games as requiring her to wall herself off even more because she wants to survive and get back to Prim.
Simba believes that he cannot return home, so he must become someone else. Here comes Pumbaa, this other creature, and he eats bugs. So Simba tries to do that too. Maybe he can be that and fit in with them.
He interprets his world based on the lie he believes.
Shrek already believes he’s unlovable. So when he hears only part of that conversation, he doesn’t stop and ask what Fiona actually meant.
He hears exactly what he expected to hear.
How to Write a Character Arc: Let the Antagonist Press the Wound
Then Shrek does what he does because he believes this lie: He lashes out and hands Fiona over to Lord Farquaad.
Farquaad is a great antagonist because he keeps pressing on that wound too. He treats Shrek as if he’s beneath everyone else, a disgusting creature he can use and then send back to his swamp. He keeps pressing on that wound that tells Shrek he’s no good, nobody is ever going to like him, and people are always going to reject him.
That’s a good antagonist.
Shrek’s eventual change wouldn’t mean nearly as much if he had spent the whole movie confident that Fiona would love him. We believe his struggle because we’ve watched him make choices from the lie he believes over and over again, even when those choices cost him the very relationship he wants.
The first step in your story—when you’re working with the heart hook or emotional wound—is to make sure we’ve seen the lie your main character believes operating in the story.
It should affect who the main character trusts, what they avoid, the mistakes they make, and how they respond when the antagonist applies pressure…everything.
How to Write a Character Arc: Do Not Let One Moment Do All the Work
Let’s say you’ve got that. Your main character has this wound they’re carrying around as a lie, and they’re acting from that lie. They have been doing that throughout the entire first half of the story.
What happens next?
This is the other place where I see writers making a big mistake.
Usually, it happens something like this: The main character is sitting alone after a difficult day. Maybe they’re looking out the window, walking through the woods, or staring into a fire. They think back over everything that has happened and suddenly realize, “You know what? I’ve been wrong this whole time.”
There it is—the lie they’ve believed for the whole story is gone. Poof.
Sometimes another character gives them an inspiring speech. Maybe they remember something their mother told them when they were six years old and suddenly everything becomes clear. Or maybe they read an old letter or see someone else make the same mistake and suddenly understand the truth just like that.
Any of those things could be part of a powerful realization.
The problem comes when that one moment does all the work.
How to Write a Character Arc: Think About How People Really Change
Think about real people for a minute.
How often have you told someone exactly what they needed to hear and they immediately said, “Wow, you’re right. I’ve spent my whole life looking at this the wrong way. I’m completely different now. I’m going to change everything right at this instant. Thank you so much”?
That doesn’t happen, right?
If you’ve ever tried to help your friend see their partner for who they really are, for example, you may be able to see from the outside how bad this person is for them when they can’t.
Have you ever gotten up the courage to say, “You know what? This person is just no good for you,” and they said, “Yeah, I know. Okay, I’ll leave tomorrow”?
Then they did?
No. That usually doesn’t happen. Human nature takes more than that to make a change.
We are not good at change. Typically, we have to be really pushed toward it.
There’s a brain reason for this. The brain likes the familiar. Studies have shown that even if the familiar is unpleasant, we will often choose it simply because it’s familiar.Human beings are complicated that way, and that’s the way the brain works.
Remember Why the Familiar Feels Safer
If you try to tell your friend what you can see they should do, they’re probably going to argue with you. They may tell you why their situation is different. They might even explain that the thing that happened wasn’t their fault or why they had no other choice in what they did.
They may be hearing the truth from you, but they’re just not ready to believe it yet.
Your character has to be the same.
They have to be realistic for your reader to believe in them, think of them as real, and stick with them throughout your story.
You have to remember that this lie your main character believes didn’t come out of nowhere. It grew out of something painful that happened to them. That lie may have been protecting them for years.
How to Write a Character Arc: Show How the Lie Has Served Them
If you think of Katniss, for example, she believes that caring about people is dangerous because she’s seen people leave, fall apart, and die. Walling herself off has helped her survive. She’s done it for years. It has helped her be the one who brings food home for the family, keeps the house fairly clean, and takes care of everybody when it should be her mother doing it.
This lie serves her for a long time. She’s not just going to drop it in an instant.
Shrek believes no one could love him because people have feared and rejected him his entire life. His belief has served him. He’s been able to survive living by himself, scaring people off, and being the big, tough ogre. That’s given him some semblance of a life, and he’s been able to survive that way.
It’s familiar. So he’s not just going to drop that belief in one second of realization.
Simba believes he can never return home because he thinks he caused his father’s death. That serves him for a long time. He makes new friends. He survives and grows up into a young adult lion.
How to Write a Character Arc: Make the Lie Stop Working
These lies your main characters believe serve them for a while.
Your antagonist’s job is to make sure the lie doesn’t serve them anymore.
But that takes time. It takes repeated effort, repeated actions, and repeated pressure against your character before they’re finally going to let go of that lie. They’re not going to let go of it easily.
This is what I see missing in a lot of writers’ stories. The main character simply has a peaceful realization. They just realize the truth of the matter in one moment. That’s not realistic or authentic.
You have to pressure your main character. You have to have them acting from their lie over and over again until they’re at the end of their rope and they just can’t do it anymore.
That’s what you have to do to make your character’s journey believable and keep your reader with you.
How the Brain Works to Keep the Lie
The human brain builds expectations from what we’ve already experienced in life. If you learned early on that loving people led to pain, your brain would start watching for proof that loving people leads to pain. When something happens that doesn’t fit that belief, you’re not just going to adopt it as a new belief.
You’re probably going to explain it away.
“That person was only being nice because they wanted something.”
“I just got lucky this time.”
We humans are very good at holding on to the explanation we already have. We cling to it because it’s familiar and has protected us for a while. That’s what the brain does, especially when that explanation makes us feel safer.
When Katniss is walled off, she’s safe. There’s no pain and no having to watch people leave, die, or fall apart.
When Shrek is walled off, he’s safe. There’s no risk of rejection.
When Simba tries to be somebody else, he’s safe. He doesn’t have to try to win back who he really is. He can eat bugs and have no worries.
The lie serves your character for a while. They’re not going to let go of it easily.
If they let go of it too fast, your reader is going to say, “Wait a minute. I don’t believe that.” It feels as if the author reached into the story and changed the character’s mind because it was time for the climax.
The Research Behind the Brain’s Resistance to Change
There’s actually some fascinating research behind why a reader may not believe this sudden realization.
As we read, our brains build a mental model of the character. We notice how they normally behave, what they expect from other people, and what they do when they feel threatened. Then we use that information to predict what they’re going to do next, just as we do with real people.
That’s why it’s so important for your character to act from the lie they believe and do it again and again so you can set up that pattern for the reader.
Researchers have found that when a character suddenly behaves in a way that doesn’t fit the traits the story has already established, readers actually slow down at that point. Their brains stumble over the inconsistency.
The reader may not consciously stop and say, “Well, this character’s psychological development hasn’t been properly established.”
They’re more likely to think, “I don’t buy that. They’re not going to do that.”
Of course, you don’t want your reader to do that. You want them to stay immersed in the story.
How Characters Resist New Evidence
Our brains are always comparing what we expect to happen with what actually happens. If Katniss believes that caring about people gets them hurt and Peeta is kind to her once, what does she do?
She doesn’t immediately have this realization: “You know what? I can love Peeta. This will be great.”
She explains it away. Maybe he’s manipulating her. Maybe he wants the audience to like him, and this is part of his strategy. That’s how she interprets it.
Her brain doesn’t have to throw out her old belief. It can simply take the new information and make it fit inside what she already believes.
That’s what our brains do. This is how humans operate. We cling to these old beliefs really hard, and it’s not easy to change them.
Research shows that people can hold on to a belief even after the evidence that created it has been proven false, especially if they’ve already built an explanation around that belief.
That’s super important for your character because their lie isn’t just one simple, incorrect thought. It’s the story they’ve been using to explain what happened to them and why they’ve been behaving this way.
Simba doesn’t simply think, “I shouldn’t go home.” He’s built his whole life around the explanation that he killed his father and everyone is better off without him.
Shrek doesn’t simply think, “I’m unattractive.” He believes that years of rejection have proven no one is ever going to love him.
One speech, one memory, or one quiet moment isn’t going to wipe that away.
So what does work?
How to Make Change In Your Character Feel Believable
Your story has to slowly make the lie harder and harder for the character to keep believing.
That is what a story is.
It’s a process that happens over the course of many scenes, not a quick realization in one scene.
I see this so many times: “My main character realizes…”
Why do they realize it?
There has to be a ton that comes before that realization for it to be believable.
First, the character should see evidence that challenges the belief.
But that’s not enough. When that happens, they’re going to resist the evidence. They’re going to explain it away and fall back into their old, comfortable patterns. They may even hold on to the lie more tightly for a while. That often happens.
Second, the old belief begins costing them something.
This is really important. Cost.
Maybe it damages a relationship, causes them to make the wrong decision, or helps create the very disaster they were trying to avoid. The strategy that once protected them has to stop working.
Third, the antagonist keeps pressing on the wound.
The pressure increases again and again throughout the story. If your story is stuck, it’s probably because your antagonist isn’t doing enough.
The antagonist has to keep coming. Keep pressing against the wound. Keep giving this character a reason to stop believing the lie.
How to Write a Character Arc: Push Them Toward the Key Decision
Understand that your character isn’t going to stop acting from this lie or believing it until they get to the point where they can’t keep living from it without losing something that really matters to them.
All this pressure brings them to a key decision moment.
By the time the realization of the truth actually comes, it might happen in a single moment. But that moment is only the final step in the road. Everything that happens before it is what brought it about. The realization should be the last domino to fall, not the first.
So what about your story? What evidence has been building against the lie your main character believes? How have they resisted it? What has the lie cost them?
How has your antagonist kept pressing on their wound so they reach that ending point where they just can’t keep living from the lie anymore?
When your story has done that work, the realization won’t feel convenient.
It will feel inevitable.
* * *
If you’re looking at your story right now and thinking, “I’m not even sure where this realization belongs or whether the rest of my structure is strong enough to support it,” that’s exactly what my Story Structure Diagnostic is for.
I’ll look at your story structure, your conflict, your emotional arc, and the ending and show you where the story is working and where it may be breaking down.
If you’d rather work through these kinds of problems with ongoing support, come join us inside Writer’s Brain Studio.
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Featured image by wayhomestudio on Magnific.