[b]Round VS Flat, Static VS Dynamic: Is a Character Arc Always Necessary?[/b]

Something we’re told constantly when we set out to make a good character is to have a character arc. Give your character a journey where they mature and grow into the best version of themselves, or in some cases, the worst version. That has more or less been how main characters have been written since time eternal. Naturally, we try to mimic this in role playing so that our characters can be just as strong as their story counterparts. 

If you’ve ever tried this, you know it’s much harder in practice. 

What can end up happening is that the RP takes an unexpected turn. Maybe something happens that makes your original idea impossible, or a player drops and their character is retired. It can create a lot of extra work.Even if things go well, you’re still need to decide how this thing is going to unfold. You don’t want to drag things on only for the interesting stuff to happen at the end of the RP, but if you resolve things too quickly, your character will have completed their arc with no room to grow moving forward. Because a character stops being interesting once their arc ends, right? 

Not necessarily.

When writing stories, any given character can be defined with a number of attributes based on their personality and arc. There are subtle differences between each, and some mistakenly use them interchangeably. In fact I did so in the last article before re-writing it! These attributes are:

Flat: Character that has a simple personality and is easy to understand. They fill archetypes perfectly and can rarely surprise a reader.

Round: A more complex character that cannot be immediately understood. They often have conflicting ideas and a reader will have to be observant to understand how they tick. 

Static: Characters like this do not change as the story goes on. They will always be as they are.

Dynamic: A character with the capacity to grow and change as the story progresses. Their personality can be altered by the events of the story.

Flat and round refers to a character’s personality, while static and dynamic refers to their growth/arc.  

The temptation is to say characters with complex traits (round/dynamic) are better than those with simple (flat/static) ones, but this isn’t always the case. The sad truth is that not every character is going to get the same amount of time to shine. A protagonist will likely be featured in many chapters, if not all of them. Other characters won’t get this level of exposure. Good writers know this, and make most side characters flat. Because they have no complex motives, you don’t need to see a lot of them to understand them. These characters are often static for the same reason. They don’t have an arc to further develop, reducing the amount of page time they need to be effective. Moreover, characters that never change are allowed to be their best selves right away. They don’t need to undergo an arc to be interesting, or maybe their arc concluded before the story started. 

There are some examples where flat and static characters fill the protagonist role, like Sherlock Holmes. He’s already capped his deduction skills as a detective, and his personality isn’t hard to figure out. He’s all about the thrill of chasing down his mark and discovering whodunnit. If you want something more recent, Goku is another example. He fights to protect earth, and his motto is to never stop training to push what the best version of himself is. Goku has faced countless foes and hardships, but this never changed his core beliefs. Same with Looney Tunes and other early forms of episodic television. It’s rare for the characters to change much from one episode to the next. Nor do we need to see more than an episode to understand how the character thinks. 

The reason why it’s important to make a distinction between one type of character or another is because of their needs. Characters with complex traits are internally focused. It’s watching them grapple with their flaws and struggle to change that endears us to them. Simple characters do not have that advantage. They are externally focused, and while they may be inherently charismatic or interesting, it is watching them resist change or make the world change that endears us to them. If you want your simple character to be more interesting, then you need to challenge them. This is one of the reasons why the pupil/teacher trope works so well. Actually, let’s demo that right now.

Once again, I’m going to borrow Rilla Müller for this example. She’s an inventor of steam gadgets and racist against Italians due to what they did to her family. Moreover, she needs to learn how to better pilot her mech suit if she wants to be of any use in the upcoming war. To this end, the higher ups decide to have her train with legendary mech suit pilot Fiorello Bianchi. Yes, that is a very Italian name, and Rilla is very not okay working with him.  

It’s a rocky start, as you can imagine. Rilla is a round, dynamic character, so her prejudices prevent her from getting what she wants. Her hate for Italians prevents her from listening to Fiorello, even though it would help her get the vengeance she seeks. Meanwhile, Fiorello is her flat/static support. He’s an accomplished mech pilot and he performs as well as he can every time. He also has little difficulty focusing on his objective during a mission. When she disobeys him, he still does his best to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed. He resists the urge to let her get her just deserts. He frequently adapts to her reckless behavior and may outright save her on occasion. There it is on display: Rilia struggling with her inner flaws, and Fiorello struggling against his pupil’s personality.. 

Over time, Fiorello will be able to help Rilla overcome her flaw. It should be something Rilia is ultimately responsible for, but Fiorello can help guide her. Through him, she may realize that there are exceptions to the rules sometimes. Maybe she starts to take him seriously as her teacher and grows as a pilot. Then there will come a time when Rilla is tempted to give into her racism again. Say she comes across a group of Italians in a burning building. It would be easy to let the fire claim “their kind,” the race of people responsible for her parents death. But she makes the harder choice and risks her health to save them. The act endears us to Rilia because she was strong enough to change, but it also endears us to Fiorello for making her realize she could.

But Rilla isn’t done as a character. She’s grown, and her social dissonance has been corrected, but that just means she’s a bit more like a simpler type of character. If she completes her arc “too early” in a story, that just means her needs as a character have changed. You could find other aspects of her to grow and change, but you could also just treat her like a simple character. Don’t make her change, have her try to change her environment. She’s an accomplished inventor, so maybe she can help someone else with their mech suit. Maybe trick it out or something. And just because she’s overcome her bias doesn’t mean she can’t still struggle with it. Other factors in the story might tempt her to revert, but she resists them every time. 

There you have it. Character arcs are cool but by no means something that is essential to have a good character. By having them struggle to resist change or change others it is possible to endear our characters to readers. So strive for external changes for your simple characters, and they’ll never need an arc.