The Character Arc

Most every book on writing has a section about the character arc. It is one of those annoying buzzwords that seminar instructors who teach screenwriting repeat so often it starts to make the fillings in your teeth hurt. In a nutshell it is how your character changes over the course of the story. Don’t get me wrong, the character arc is important but it is only one element of a good story. But if the changes that occur in your protagonist are not supported by the plot to the point where you get the reader’s buy-in, your novel will fail. 

Also, different rules apply to a character in a series than to one in a single novel. Say you’ve created a hard-boiled detective with plans for multiple titles. If his character arc in the first book takes him from a tough guy to joining the seminary, it’s going to be tough to put him back on the street shooting and punching people in the next one.

In Dan Brown’s books (The Da Vinci Code, etc.) “Robert Langdon” has a near non-existent character arc which made him available for other starring roles. Brown has sold over 20 million books.