I’ve written so much about writing, it’s easy to forget what I’ve explained and where. It kind of sucks for me, because when I’m dealing with writers, I often have to sit there and spend forever remembering where the hell I explained a specific concept…
Or worse, I take the time to explain it to them from scratch, then find the exact thing I was covering the next day (or they find the article themselves), where I went into greater and clearer detail. Big time Homer Simpson moment…
Any who, I wanted to drop this quick tip today and went to Story To Script to look through what I’ve covered on Character Arcs and man, there’s a lot of good stuff over there: The Realization of the Character’s Flaw, Attitude Action Lines, the complete character arc roadmap which covers not just the character’s core flaw but weaknesses and hurdle “blocks,” their moral crisis, and the new belief which is actually split into two bits for further detail.
So it’s the last bit, the “new belief,” that I want to talk about…
Helping a writer on their new sci-fi/superhero series, even though we discovered the fundamental bits required for a solid character arc, they were having trouble manifesting the hero’s flaw in a way that actually connected to the narrative.
(Actually, newer writers fumbling their hero flaw is a super common trouble area, so don’t feel bad if you feel found out.)
So they landed on the character’s flaw as #33 from my handy-dandy character flaw list;
- Sullen (angry)—bad-tempered and sulky; gloomy.
So basically, every scene where the hero lost his temper… Cursed at someone, threw a can of soda at the wall, punched somebody in the face, the writer fist-pumped with joy that he was capturing the character’s arc.
Wellllll…
Not so fast.
Manifesting the characters flaw with consequences of the effects, you detailed in the character brief, YES are expressing the arc, even if not directly tied to the Master Theme, or your Core Concept Story Goals (the deeper currents of the story).
However, if you don’t actually capture those consequences, then just any random manifestation of the hero’s flaw DOES NOT capture or reinforce the arc.
ok, ok, I don’t like to make client’s uncomfortable using their work as examples, so let me superimpose my main character from Robot Kids, so I can explain a little further.
In fact, I’m gonna go off into this side tangent for a second to explain this specific problem a lot of writers struggle with before I hit you with the main tip, or whole point of this article.
Stay with me.
So, the main character Kai from Robot Kids, his flaw effect that sabotages himself, is that “his anger” steals all his creativity and originality.
Kai’s flaw effect that sabotages his relationship with others, is that “his anger” leads him to instantly stereotype strangers.
Forget for the moment, if these flaw effects sound good or make much sense with the flaw of anger. (I’m running with Anger, not Kai’s actual flaw in the Robot Kids story because I don’t want to confuse you with a second character arc flaw.)
Anyway, the validity of the flaw effects is not on trial here, the way we’re using it is.
Let’s say Kai races along on his hover cycle and needs to drive through a bad sector of the city. He’s got a map, that shows all the areas owned by different gangs, and maybe some other key information about that areas. So Kai enters the sector, his bike flashes low fuel and he gets a communication on the network of some really bad news, maybe we even put a time limit for him to get through the sector or something really shitty attached to that bad new takes place.
Kai gets super pissed at his situation.
Since his flaw is “anger,” Kai gets off his bike and throws a trash can through the glass window of a closed store, then finishes it off with a lead pipe, screaming and cursing like Ben Stiller in Mystery Men.
This is perhaps a great showcase of rage, but it doesn’t have ANY connection with anything narratively speaking… and definitely not, with the flaw effect of “stifling his creativity and originality.” In fact, he broke the window in the rough shape of a unicorn. It’s cute, worthy of an in-script quip, delivering the actual opposite of his flaw effect.
Compare this to,
Kai busting out his map and looking for a way he can navigate the dangerous territory safely and in time, to beat the time limit. There IS a solution at hand. And it’s within his means to think out of the box and discover it, the narrative sits there for a moment, presenting the factors like glowing puzzle that swirl around his head like math problems swirled around Russell Crowe in a Beautiful Mind, but instead of working the problem to its conclusion, Kai screams in a fit of rage, tears the map in half and blasts straight through the middle of the sector.
The middle of the sector happens to be littered with mines and home to the sector’s toughest gang. Kai’s hover bike gets big-bada-boomed, he get’s he ass beat near to death, loses his only weapon, misses the deadline triggering the really shitty outcome, and falls into the nastiest of sewers adding insult to injury.
This latter version shows Kai’s flaw of “anger,” blocking his creativity.
Granted it’s not the tightest example, I’m doing this all off the top of my head just to show you how the mechanics work. But hopefully it illustrates the point I’m trying to make.
While expressing the character’s flaw with relevant consequences as we just discussed DOES support the arc. An even more effective way is to actually connect instances where the character flaw gets the best of them, to the deeper meaning of the story. Your Master Theme and Core Concept goals.
And now we get to the original point of the article 🙂
The New Belief, a critical part of any arc, From Story Craft for Comics,
“We’ve defined the flaw and its effects on the hero and those around him. The arc is only complete when the hero has an expansion of consciousness (usually during the Sound of Ultimate Suffering, discussed later) and both expressions are changed. I capture this expansion of consciousness in the character’s profile in what I simply call the “new belief.” Exactly as it sounds, the new belief is a specific new way of thinking or looking at the world that completes the hero’s arc.”
While you absolutely must discover your character’s New Belief when you first develop their complete arc, you can’t actually connect anything with the character arc to the new belief until much later in the story… As the new belief represents the character in their changed and final state…
The far side of the arc.
When this client was having trouble connecting his hero’s flaw manifestations to the deeper currents of his story (primarily the Master Theme and Core Concept Goals), I reminded him that all roads also have to point or lead to the new belief…
But more practically, I pointed out that he could look at the opposite of the New Belief, as his hero’s Old (flawed) Belief.
In other words, this Old Belief could act as an active anchor point for any of the flaw manifestation scenes earlier on in the story. Really any time before the character, actually realizes the New Belief.
In Robot Kids, Kai’s New Belief is;
“Painting the world in black and white is an excuse for dismissing responsibility for your own actions.”
Translation, something like, crimes of morality can’t hide behind the law.
I’ve never put the “Old Belief” concept to paper for folks, because it’s really self evident when you’ve been writing with fundamentals for any amount of time. After all, if you know the New Belief, then you already know by default, the old belief is simply the opposite of that.
And the Old Belief, often doesn’t need to be something super specific. Old Beliefs, are less Black and White (see what I did there), and more grey, giving the character more wiggle room to act… “inappropriately.”
That said, for people struggling with the character arc, it actually can help to actually articulate and write down the old belief. In these instances, capturing the old belief succinctly and keeping it handy for all the moments your protag “loses his shit” (at least in our example scenario).
Kai’s Old Belief might be;
“There are no higher principles above the laws a society sets for itself. And everything outside the rule of law is iniquity.”
If we return to the scene of Kai on his hover cycle… we did it effectively in the second example above tying it into the consequences of his flaw effect.
Here, we go a step further and tie it directly into the deeper undercurrents of the story, in this example, falling back on his Old Belief.
Kai busting out his map and looking for a way he can navigate the dangerous territory safely and in time, to beat the time limit. He grows angry at the situation and the time he’s wasting trying to figure out his next move. Kai takes note of the the main causeway, a large market that spans almost the entire length of the sector. Only open to foot traffic, he’d be able to blast through the market in record time if it was clear. If not clear, he’d move slower than any of the other street routes, unless he just mowed people down on his hover cycle. Kai checks his watch and sees that curfew has just gone into effect. He knows people don’t always clear the market exactly by curfew, even though it is technically the law. With a cold, T-1000 look of quiet rage, Kai tears the map in half and blasts straight through to the market causeway.
In his best Dolph Lundgren voice he mutters, “If they die for violating curfew, they die.”
Cue up some most excellent negative consequences for his choice… like, maybe one of the people he runs down is his favorite cousin. lol Or maybe he does wind up critically injuring a whole lot of people and gets plastered on the news, becoming hated by the public for this one act. Or maybe the gangs see it and decide to unite together to stop him.
Point is, however the consequences fall, the expression of the character’s flaw lands with maximum potency because we didn’t just capture the flaw expression itself, but framed it within the deeper narrative context of the story. ▪
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Nick Macari is a full-time freelance story consultant, developmental editor and writer, working primarily in the independent gaming and comic markets. His first published comic appeared on shelves via Diamond in the late 90’s. Today you can find his comic work on comixology, Amazon, and in select stores around the U.S.