Good morning everyone and welcome to the first task of the week. As you all know a good book is not only the account of what physically happens to a character but the emotional journey they go on as they proceed through events. The physical events are called Plot and the emotional journey is called Story.
While we dipped a tow into story by adding an emotional heading to the main points in an earlier Task, today we are looking at the emotional arc of the main character and any secondary characters that have an emotional arc as well.
I know Emotional Arc can sound scary and official but it really is quite simple. For this task we are just going to break down the arc into three pieces, a beginning, middle and end. And we are going to write a brief bit about how our character(s) feel at that point in time.
For example, we return to Bob.
Beginning
- Bob feels trapped and overwhelmed. He is stuck in a job he hates, bound by responsibility and an unwillingness to let the company go down through mismanagement or to cause his father in law to have another stress induced heart attack because of the business, despite the fact that they have never gotten along. The fact that he is helping someone he doesn’t like because it is the ‘right’ thing to do also weighs heavily on him.
Middle
- Bob feels used and under appreciated. He brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy and they were happy to have his help then but they hate losing control and fear he has too much control so they undermine him when all he is trying to do is help them out. No one appreciated him and they take advantage of him. At this point he still feels trapped as well because he knows if he gives in and leaves they will fail. There is a little bit of determination that will start to creep in once he realizes Henry wants him to quit so he gets no severance.
End
- Bob feels free and realizes that he doesn’t have to keep supporting people who don’t want him to support them. Helping family may be the right thing to do but if they don’t want it, you have to let it go. They will have to sink or swim on their own and he can not be responsible for them any more. There is release with that and a joy in finally being able to focus on what he wants to focus on.
And so there you have the emotional arc of Bob. It is the roadmap of our story. Now it is your turn.
Task #27: Write the emotional arc of your main character. If you have more than one main character or secondary characters who grow and change along the way, write out their emotional arc as well.
And we are off. I will see you tomorrow for another task as we move towards actually writing this novel we are building.
Ten til Midnight 