The crickets seem to be fading a little this morning.  Probably not going to be around longer than a few weeks.

Pop onto Twitter for a round there, then off to work.

When I sign off for the day, I get a little bit of cycling on the story in.  But I have my weekly writing meeting tonight.

Meanwhile, Dean Wesley Smith is running a new book called the Wet Blanket Reality on how writers view writing.  Dean Wesley Smith – Opinions and Writings  One of the things that I learned from it was about Character Arcs.

Though I read all kinds of writing books when I was growing up—and those would have been the ones tailored for people who wanted to be professionals—I never saw any character arcs mentioned at all.  First time on the message boards and writers were pontificating about their character arcs.  I was asked what mine was and then lectured sternly because I didn’t have one.

Turns out they come from MFAs.  It’s telling that they don’t show up in the early writing books. The definition appears to be identifying character change. 

And I scratched my head and wondered why (and please note, that is a rhetorical question.  I don’t want anyone coming in to explain why). 

This is Kristine Katherine Rusch’s comment on character arcs:

The best characters live on the page because the author thinks of them as people. If you think of their “arc,” you’re thinking of them as words on the page. I mean, really. Do you think about your neighbor’s story arc? Sorry. No. Thinking about things like character arc breaks the magic of storytelling.

The Wet Blanket Reality, Chapter 1

That fits my thinking about the character arc at the time.  It felt like adding an artificial layer on top of the story that didn’t need to be there. Seems to be a state of our society that more is always better…and it’s not.