Design Thinking for Writers: Create a Character Arc

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Naomi and I'm an author and it creativity coach. I'm also the founder of writerly play and society, young inklings. In this class, we're going to be creating what I consider to be the heart of a story, a character arc. If you're a writer or any artist that uses story in your creative work. This class is for you. This class is actually the second in our design thinking for writers series. The first is called design thinking for writers, create a compelling character. So if you don't have a character idea yet, you might want to start with that class and then come and join us for this one. That class will also give you a rundown of design thinking more generally, because we're going to build from there in this class at the start of any creative project, especially one, as long as writing a novel, it's natural to wonder, is my idea any good? Is it worth investing my creative time and energy? And when writers use designed thinking tools, they're able to prototype their ideas ahead of time. They can gather early feedback and that allows them to build their way forward with creative competence. Now, you might be thinking, wait a second, I do not want to show my first draft to anyone. That makes a lot of sense. Most writers don't want to share their messiest first drops with people. And that's why we are making prototypes in this class. We're actually going to make a prototype of a character arc which makes your ideas visible. It's different to present a storyboard to someone to get feedback than it is to present them with pages and pages of text when you show them your ideas and this kind of forum with words and images, you can get the kind of feedback that focuses on your ideas and how they resonate rather than on the writing craft. And later, once you're sure your idea is working and you start drafting your story, That's the time to bring in your critique partners. Have them help you with the writing craft elements of yours. So in this class, we will be developing a character arc that you can share with someone else. And it will allow you to feel confident about the character arc that's at the heart of your story. The character arc on which you can build your plot. Writing can be hard, especially when you're feeling alone. In this class, we're here to have fun together to develop a compelling character arc and to build your creative competence along the way. Let's get started. 2. How We'll Use Design Thinking: Design thinking is revolutionary for writers, is because it shifts our starting place just slightly. So let's take a look at what a typical writing process might look like. Maybe you have inspiration strike, and you start rolling in idea around in your mind. You might test it out with a friend or to tell them about your idea and if they're liking it, you think, okay, I'm going to draft. And you start on page one and you start putting your story down on the page, maybe you take a little bit of time to plan, but basically what you're trying to do is produce a number of chapters. So that when you have that number of chapters, you can take it to your critique group. And they will start to tell you what they see on the page and what they don't see on the page. And basically they're trying to help you fix what's already there. And probably you are not asking them questions that focus on your goal for the peace. Not quite yet, because you might not even know what your intended readers experience is yet. You might still be figuring that out. So you continue on, you keep drafting, revising, hearing from your critique partners, getting feedback as you go. But all about the writing that's on the page. And by the time you're finished, you send it out to potential agents and editors. And at that point they start saying, is this resonating with readers, or is it right for the market? And often they'll say, actually it's just not quite right. At that point, they're deciding the ideas that are underneath everything in your story aren't quite right. This is a very disappointing result because you've spent all this time creating this piece that now doesn't work because of its foundation. So what if instead, you start from a design thinking point of view? So you get this fun idea, you're getting really excited about it. You create a vision for your idea and the kind of reading experience you want to create with it. Then you talk to a couple of people who are your potential reader, someone who loves cozy mysteries or who is completely into fantastical worlds and share with them a little bit about what you're working on, maybe your character. And once you've tested your idea a little bit, you've gotten a sense of what they think and how it's resonating. You can make a few prototypes. You can create a character sketch, a character arc like we're doing in this class. Maybe a map, a storyboard of your plot, and keep testing, make sure that your ideas are solid. And from there you can start drafting with creative confidence to know that where you're going is really working. Along the way. You can continue to prototype and also share pages with your critique group. And then once you get to the end of your project, you're talking to editors and agents. They may say the same kinds of things. Maybe they'll say This doesn't fit for this reason or it does fit for this reason. But you will always know how to evaluate that feedback is, is what they're asking me to do, moving me towards the goal that I have, that reader's experience? Or are they taking me off track? And from that point, you have the ownership over designing the experience that you want for your reader. Whether you publish traditionally or you self-publish, or you do something in-between. In short, design thinking gives you ownership over your creative process, how it goes, whether something is working or not working for your story and doesn't ask someone from the outside to tell you what's right and wrong. It allows you to evaluate based on your true north. The stages of design thinking are these. It starts with empathy, which tends to be first connecting with yourself. And seeing how do I connect with this idea? Why is it compelling me? That's special to the writing process, I think because in many design thinking process is we really do start with the external user. But I think that as writers, it's very important that we start with that internal vision first. Then we move into checking in with potential readers. So empathizing with those people who would be experiencing our work. From there, we define what we are trying to do. Then we ideate. So we have our creative problem and we can think about all of the possible solutions, maybe far beyond what we would come up with at first. Then from there, we can decide on what we want to prototype and we can test it. And then we start to iterate and make our pieces better and better. If you took our first design thinking for writers class, you have already prototyped and tested a character idea. So this character arc is a type of iteration we're starting to build on that character. But you'll also notice that there are reasons to go back to earlier stages in the design thinking process. When you are prototyping and testing, you might circle back to empathy or you might need to redefine your goal. And those are all just natural parts of the creative process. So this step is going to be all about using that design thinking process and those design thinking mindsets to give you the creative confidence to start your project with the solid foundation. In our next video, we will talk about what a character arc might look like so that we get a big picture view before we dive into the creation process. 3. What is a Character Arc?: So what is a character arc and what is the difference between a character arc and a plot? What we're going to do is we are going to design a character arc that shows the internal workings of the story. So that part of the story that's about the character growing and changing from the first scene through the climax and the end. I think the best way to unearth that part of your story is to use the hero's journey. So if you've never heard of the hero's journey, it is a framework that was codified by Joseph Campbell. He actually researched stories from around the world. And he pulled out elements of story that tended to show up over and over again. And you'll notice that on our character arc, we actually don't have all of the stages of the classic hero's journey because I think that some of those are not necessary for your character arc. You can certainly build them into your plot if you'd like to. But basically the way that we will look at character arc is thinking about how your character starts in their ordinary life with a little bit of restlessness, with a little bit of something that they need. And then the call to adventure shows up. So there's something that enters their life that gives them the opportunity for something to change. And they might dive in, they might be excited about that, they might resist. But for the story to move on, something moves them across the threshold. At that point of the story, we start to see what's at stake for your character. And then we have a series of challenges that build upon each other toward the climax. And then we have a moment where your character is tested after the climax to see if the changes that they experienced and the ways that they grew in that climax moment are actually sticking. Then we move to home again, or that last moment of the story where we get to see the character almost echoing what was happening at the beginning of the story, but seeing how they're different in their new life. Now, the hero's journey is not really a plot because you probably need a lot of complications and scenes and interesting twists and turns to actually build your plot. But if you have this underneath that plot, it's like having the heartbeat underneath the structure that you will eventually build for your plot. So that's why we're going to start with this. We'll build the storyboard. And as we're building, we're going to use, we have boxes and lines because I want you to both draw and write because that will allow someone to look at your storyboard and absorb it. If you wrote everything out in long form text, it would be harder for someone to quickly view your storyboard and give you thoughts. What I encourage you to do is to use very simple drawings when you fill in these boxes. So it stick figures are absolutely okay. And in fact, they're great idea because if you have something that looks like a rough little sketch that's just showing an idea, then your feedback partner is much more likely to give you real feedback, as opposed to looking at a fully rendered drawing and not wanting to change something about it because it just looks so beautiful. You could even use circles and squares and triangles to symbolize your characters if you're not willing to go all the way to stick figures and use those as a metaphor for what you're creating as well. Think about it as a round shape, kind and gentle and is a triangular shape maybe a little bit more antagonistic. And then putting those characters into a scene or a moment that helps the person who's looking at your storyboard understand what's emotionally happening at that moment of the story. That's what we will be building and that's the overall frame. We're going to start by identifying that key element that you need to start the whole character arc, which is, what is that restlessness? What is that need that your character has at the beginning of the story? And we'll do that first step in the next video. 4. The School of Contrasting Beliefs: To begin a hero's journey, or characters need room to grow. And usually that starts with some kind of mistaken belief that they have at the beginning of the story. Sometimes people will frame this as what is your character need most of all or want most of all? And I find this question to be quite a daunting one. Knowing what my character wants most of all at the beginning of a story before I know them very well is a pretty difficult thing for me to figure out. And so I had been searching for a long time for a tool that would help me to do that. And we are going to walk through a tool that will allow you to process the steps between what might my character be struggling with to having something that you can build your character? Argon. Madeline Lengel wrote stories have a richness that go way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go. I agree deeply. I think often when we find something that's going on for our character, It's something that either is also going on for us or has gone on for us in the past. That's one of the reasons why finding one of these mistaken beliefs and seeing the possibilities for change can sometimes be hard to nail down. That's why we'll use this practical tool to create a possible mistaken belief to build on. I found this tool in a book called How the way we talk can change the way we work by Lisa Lascaux, Leahy, and Robert Keegan. This tool was originally built as an opportunity for employers to improve work culture and give their employees ownership over their personal and professional growth. And that sounds kind of funny. But what ended up happening was I adapted all of these questions more to think about our characters personal growth. And I call it the School of contrasting beliefs. Because what this tool does is it helps us narrow in on what might be a contrasting beliefs that were holding inside of ourselves that is limiting us. I love it because you start through the doorway of complaint, which is a pretty easy thing for us to tap into. When we get to do is we get to start by letting our character complain for awhile about their circumstances. For this exercise, I'm going to use a character named Kate. She's in a story that I'm writing that is temporarily named how to catch a hob goblin. And the story itself has two main characters, Kate and coal. And I'll be referencing both of them through our activities in this course. But as I start in, I'm going to let her be the one who complains on this page for us. So what you'll do is you'll take this question. If you could change one thing about your life, what would you change? We ask it of our characters and set a timer for maybe two or 3 min and just put down stream of consciousness on the page as though you're writing from your character's point of view. I'm gonna go ahead and do that if you'd like to do it with me, you can pause the video and write for a few moments and then come back and see the next step. I'll be right back. Alright, so I've taken my time to write from Kate's point of view and she is complaining about the fact that her parents don't trust her. She wants more freedom. She knows that she has magic inside of her. She's since this all of her life and she's had some experiences where magic has been drawn to her and her family. And she hasn't known how to draw upon her own magic to combat the sort of unpredictable and chaotic things that are happening around them. And she wants to learn how her magic works so that she can protect herself and her parents. But they are trying to protect her and they don't believe in magic, they don't believe her. And so she is just complaining about this lack of freedom, which is a pretty common thing for kids to feel. But then also that sense of responsibility that she has and the fact that she doesn't feel like she has the freedom to do what she knows that she needs to do. So once I have my list of complaints, The next question is, what value is being pointed out by this sort of cloud of complaints that my character has. And we can put that in this first box. I believe in the importance of what does she believe in the importance of? Well, she believes in the importance of people trusting and believing one another. Now, I can certainly go back to that. I can think about what elements of that I can flush that out further, but that gives me a starting point. So she believes that it's important for people to trust and believe one another no matter their age is she doesn't feel like adults should necessarily be able to say that children can't be trusted because of whatever reason that they might have. And so then what we can do looking at this question is asked a difficult question of our character. And that is, what am I doing or not doing that's contributing to my circumstances. So sometimes that is contributing to the situation that they have with with the people around them. So in Kate's case, she has this dynamic going on with their parents where they're not trusting her and she's rebelling and she is pushing them and that is creating some challenge, challenges with their relationship. So she is pushing back, which is one thing. It's probably not acting particularly mature or trustworthy. So that could be part of what's happening here too. But I think also on a deeper level, she's not trusting her parents. So flip side. She's saying that people should trust and believe in one another, but she's not trusting her parents on the other side of things, and she's also not really trusting anyone. She's only trusting in herself. And so I'm going to put not trusting others here as well. Okay. So then the next step is to ask ourselves, when we're asked her character, when you think of doing otherwise, are you aware of a fear or worry and what is that fear? If I ask Kate, okay, So if you just trusted other people, what are you worried about? What would be so bad about that? And her answer comes to me immediately. Sheath, she thinks that anytime that she has trusted her parents to tell them about her beliefs about magic, they have taken her to see a psychologist they haven't believed, or they've thought that she is mentally ill and they're worried about her and they clamped down even harder. So her fear is people will worry that I am not mentally well and will further restrict me. Okay. So now she can look at this and say, what does that mean? I'm also committed to to me, when I look at this, I think she's committed to people believing in her or she's committed to having, having that sense of self where people see her for who she is, for being seen and heard, for who she really is and not being misunderstood. So I may also be committed to being truly understood but seen and heard and understood. Then the assumption that I'm making, the assumption I'm making is if I tell the truth, I will not be understood. I will be potentially disconnected from the people that I love most. I will be turned away. So the assumption she's making is if I tell the truth and ask for what I need. And trust people. They'll abandon me, maybe abandoned or dismiss me. Okay. So now we have a really strong contrasting belief for Kate. We know that what she wants, what she thinks she wants is for people to trust her. And she's kind of voicing that in the common preteen type of way. She's saying, nobody trusts me, I never get to do anything. All of those things are coming out of her mouth. But what's underneath all of this is that she feels that she actually tells the truth and she actually trust others with the kind of trust that she needs to put in them, that she will be abandoned so that deep fear is driving her. I now have this really strong starting place where I can build the first scene of my character arc and then build up to a climax that will hopefully test this particular assumption and see if she can shift her relationship with it. Now one important thing I want to say before I move on is that whether you're using this for your character or using it for yourself, this assumption may not be entirely false. Sometimes it is partially true and partially not true. And that's what our characters need to discover. And we might not know how our characters will discover it or how they'll work through it. But by having this idea, we know where we're building toward in the story. So I've got this for Kate. I'm not going to build one for coal right now, but I will tell you that for coal, his issues are more around feeling like he has to do his job so that people will love him. He has been tasked with a really important mission and he thinks that if he does it well, he will finally have a family where he can belong. So both of them have these really deep character arcs can develop through the story. Go ahead and finish up your character arc. I want to show you actually one tool I've provided for you. First of all, you can share your notes and ideas on this page. So if you just want to have some time to think about what this might mean are the implications or write down your questions. And then the final page is a timeline. I think this is a really helpful one because you can think about where did this idea begin and what are the key moments that have contributed to this belief or this fear that my character has. And think about specific moments that you can identify and those become a firm foundation for you as the writer and can even be brought into the story if you want them to. Alright, so it takes some time with this. Feel really ready, and once you are ready, we will move on to our character arc prototype. 5. Your Character's Ordinary Life: It's time now for us to start building our storyboard for our characters. So as I mentioned in the last video, for me, I'm going to work with my two characters, Kate and coal. And the story is how to catch a hob goblin. The story includes characters from Midsummer Night's Dream. So we have titanium and Oberon and puck in the story. And for Kate at the beginning, we have this mistaken belief of if I trust people, if I tell them the truth, if I request what I need from them, then at the very least, they might dismiss me and at the very worst, they might abandon me. She might not be able to put this feeling or this belief into words at this point. But she is still desperately guarding her secret because she doesn't want to have those fears come to be. So in the ordinary life, I know what this foreseen is because I see in my story when I started thinking about it, I already knew what that first moment would be. I could see Kate getting out of a car at a brand new house. They keep moving around and I knew she would be going into the backyard following the center of magic. So I'll go ahead and put Kate here. And remember I said I'm just going to do stick figure is nothing really major here because I just want somebody to see what my character is doing, right? So I'm just gonna do this and I'll do Kate's follows. Sense of magic, hopes to secretly discover how to use her hidden powers. Okay, so I've got the beginning. It might ordinary life for Kate. Let's look at what it is for coal. The first scene that we see, Colin shows him he's actually at a magical tree, so I'll put that there. I'm going to have Colby a little bit different shape than Kate. It's a little more boxy. And he actually has really curly hair, so I'm gonna do this, do it ok. And he is a little bit too big for the tree right there, but he is actually carrying out his job, which is to guard this tree. There's a cocoon in it where puck is. And he's promised titanium that he will be there when PUC hatches on midsummer night. And that moment will be the time when he can convince puck to come back into the land of the ferries and ideally solve a major problem that's going on between Oberon and the others that are in that world. So coal is guarding the tree and beliefs that only by doing his job, can he find belonging. Now I just want to say one thing. If you do not know these for scenes of your story, you certainly don't have to put what the exact moment is. You can just identify this is the heart of the scene. What needs to happen in this scene is that my character needs to show that they are feeling that they're hiding their secret or that they are at odds with their best friend or whatever those things are. And you can draw a more metaphoric representation of that and come back and decide how will you show that scene later. So in the next video, we're gonna move on to the next stage, which is the call to adventure. See you there. 6. A Call to Adventure: Next in your character arc is the call to adventure. So this is the moment where your character has the invitation to start to change. And for Kate, her secret is hidden. So it's pretty natural that the call to adventure is going to be that her secret is revealed. And for this story, what happens for Kate is that she, I'm gonna just gonna put Kate here again, just simple shapes. And I just am going to put some magic around her because what actually happens in this moment is that she uses her magic against coal. And it's because he's just use magic against her and she's so angry that she just tossed his magic right back at him. She doesn't know how she did it. She didn't have any control over it. And now this stranger who she definitely doesn't like because he used his magic against her, is also in this moment with her. And she sees that he is now holding her secret and can do anything he wants with it. So Kate's accidentally reveals her magic. Too cool. I'm not sure if I said that this is the first time that they're meeting, and so this is a really significant moment for her and it also sets up the character dynamics between the two of them. For coal, the call to adventure is actually the exact same moment. But he is angry at her because she has used magic against him. And in particular, he is worried because he's got this whole mission with the tree at all. And what's concerning here is that she now is in his world and she is magical and powerful and he's been trying to control the situation so that when the hatching happens, he can do his job and having this wild factor or someone else is totally up ending his plans. So cool fears, Kate will ruin his plans. So that's my call to adventure for both of these two characters, I want you to think about, what is it for your character, what's inviting your character to now need to take some new action for both of my characters. They're not necessarily stepping into a new world or anything. It's not like a doorway or a magical portal has shown up. But because the situation has happened, they're both forced into a new, a new normal, a new reality. And from here, they are going to be crossing the threshold. And the rest of the story is going to start to unfold, figure out what that might look like for you and come back for the next video when we think about what does happen with the characters, step across that threshold. 7. Across the Threshold: So as far as the character arc goes crossing the threshold, it often looks like a world-building seen it looks like a variety of things in the plot, but for the character, what it is is the moment your character really feels the stakes of what's going on in the story for them. So sometimes if your character is in a portal fantasy, they might step into a magical world and they might see the danger of this world and see the possibility as well. So for me in crossing the threshold, what I really wanna do is define what the new normal is for each one of these two characters. Now that this crisis has occurred for both of them. So for Kate, when she crosses the threshold, she comes home, she locks herself in her bathroom and she tries to figure out, how do I make this magic work. I did it, and I wanna know how I did it. And so she starts experimenting and trying to figure out how to make her magic work and realizes overtime that she can't access it on her own. She's still doesn't have the capacity to do that. So not only is she outdid with her magic for this person that she doesn't really know or trust. But also she doesn't have the capacity to do the same when she's on her own, so she's very frustrated. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just going to put this moment of dejection for kids. It's like I did for coal. Just kinda thinking about the emotional. The moment. I don't need to have every single thing. But I'm just going to show how frustrated and worried that she is. And we'll have Kate tries to use her magic, can't control it. Now, notice that the way that I have labeled this in my character arc with k trying to use your magic and she can't control it. That seem could take place in a lot of different ways. And keeping it vague and abstract like that for my possible feedback partner is going to really help because there'll be able to look at it and connect with the emotion of the moment and not get tied into the particulars. And later I can decide what might that look like. Is it just one scenario or is it multiple scenes happened at this moment when she's trying and trying to use her magic. So moving over to coal. Coal has a pretty rough moment after he fears that Cates magic will ruin his plans. Because he heads out to the hob goblin tree and his great aunt, who's actually a ferry, Alba comes out to see him, put her here and she tells him, kate is likely going to be the person that he needs to make his mission happen. So he realizes that he might have to trust Katie All this time. He's thought it was a mission that was totally his. But all along, his great aunt and titanium has been talking about him potentially needing a human helper, and he never knew about any of that. So cool. Hears that. Others believe he needs to work with Kate, which sets him up to be in a situation where he has to struggle with this desire to do it all himself and potentially to trust her given the dynamics of the situation. So what I want you to do is think about what your crossing the threshold moment could look like and also the emotional weight of that. What is the important thing for your character to feel or experience at this moment? And remember, you're not alone in this planning and ideating process where altogether working on our character arcs. So you can certainly post your character art sheets even if you're not finished. If you put them in the project area, you can actually re-upload your project when you're entirely done. So I really encourage you to just put the first page up and let others give you some feedback. Let me give you some feedback. You can also, in the questions and commentary, you can note a few things and asked me a question. I'm happy to correspond with you, so please feel free to share what you're doing. Share your questions, share your wins, and we will all cheer you on and also help you along the way. Alright, so go ahead finish this first side of your page and we'll move on to page two in the next video. 8. A Series of Challenges: So we've reached the murky middle of the story and the heart of our character. So we are going to look at challenges 12.3. This is the big part of the story that builds from crossing the threshold all the way up to the climax. So obviously this covers a lot of ground. The reason that I'm having you look at challenges 12.3 in relation to each other is because as part of a character arc, it's easier to think about them as a sequence as opposed to isolated incidents. So the tool that I often use when I'm thinking about this is the stages of learning where you think about a character being an unconscious incompetence. And then at some point they realize that they don't know something. And so now they have conscious and competence and they might be trying to build that skill or that knowledge. Then they move to a stage at some point of having conscious competence, right? So they have built the ability to understand and also have competence. And then at some point that knowledge and that skill becomes so ingrained, so well-known that it moves into unconscious competence. So they are just doing this. They just live this way in their lives. And so sometimes when I'm thinking about those sort of big stages of growth, I can think about that as a way to start. Now with Kate, as I started thinking about this, the words that came to mind for me were understand except and let go. I'm going to actually write those words here by the challenges. So I can keep myself on track, understand, accept, and let go. So we know the Kate's challenge is that she doesn't trust anyone or she doesn't trust people. Very much. Challenge one I think is going to have to be understanding that in order to understand her magic and to take steps forward and to thrive in the situation that she's in. She is going to have to trust coal. She's already revealed to her secret to them, so she's going to know that that's true, but I would imagine She's not going to fully trust him. She might know she needs to trust him, but might strike some kind of deal with herself to only trust him conditionally. So I'm actually just going to use a very, a very symbolic thing here instead of drawing a lot about so she understands. But I'm going to use the word conditional here and my box. So I'll say Kate knows she needs to work with coal, but trusts conditionally. She has a whole plan of how she's going to take things back to her herself, but she's able. As k begins to accept in the second challenge, I think what needs to happen is she needs to trust coal it a new way. So I'm going to represent that just by showing Kate here behind where coal is and having him kind of front and center. And that will be a great way for me just to remember that she's kinda letting him take the lead in this moment. And that is an act of acceptance for her. Kate allows cool to take the lead at a crucial, I think it's important to remember that she won't let him take the lead for the whole time. It will be a shared responsibility between the two of them. But at this moment, allowing him to do that is her really taking that next step for herself. And then finally, the last challenge is getting to the place for she not only can trust someone else, but is willing to not hold onto her magic so tightly. In the climax of the story, I think she probably is going to have to be willing to potentially sacrifice her magic. And so I think challenge three is getting to the place where she is willing to hold it with open hands. So actually in the story, at some point, her magic gets trapped in side of the bird. And so what I'm gonna do here is I'm just going to draw that little bird on her hands. And we will just see her holding it and being ready to let it go. Kate's is willing to hold her magic with open hands. Alright, so what I want you to see here is that I have used pretty metaphoric moments. I've also not gotten too deeply into the specifics of how each one of these scenes will go. And you can see how they're each a little journey of their own with a beginning, middle, and end. So Kate knows she needs to work with coal, but trust conditionally, that's the start of something. And then she's gonna be trusting him conditionally until at some point something changes for that child to where she starts to realize I can just trust him conditionally. I also have to trust him fully. And then again, we have another journey to get to the place where she's willing to hold her magic with open hands. Now, I'm going to actually work on coal off camera. And I would like for you to take some time to work on your character and see if you can get them through challenge 12.3. Okay, have fun, and I'll see you in a little bit. 9. Wrestling the Dragon: So for very long time called the climax of the story, wrestling the dragon for me, it makes that moment really come to life in my imagination of what is my character needing to do? So there's really this standoff moment for themselves. And when I think about Kate, for her, she's having to be willing to hold her magic with open hands. But I think that wrestling the dragon is the moment that bird takes off out of her hands. Now her magic is no longer with her, and she's truly someone new or different because it's not there. So for this particular image, I'm just going to show the bird flying away into the sky. And Kate watches her magic go. And I know in the climax there will be implications of this and part of her sacrifice can have plot implications as well. It might help bring the resolution to pass. But the real important thing for her in this moment is to really allow that to happen and to still hold onto the truth of who she is and to hold onto her own belief in herself. So Kate watches her magic go, but still has confidence because that's the other important element of this moment for her. Now, I worked on coal off camera. His first challenge is also to be willing to work with Kate, just like it is for her. But then coal faces the challenge to betray her or no, which he does decide to do because he really does want to hold onto this mission of his own. And that leads him into a downward spiral where he really does believe that he's got this close. Actually, I don't know if I've said this. He's half hob goblin and so he is, He's got this trickster magic in him. And so he does believe that there's something mysterious and maybe even a little bit rotten about him. So for coal in that third challenge, he is in a downward spiral where he feels like, once again, he has done the rotten thing. And he believes this to be true about himself. He believes that he is a rotten character. He has hob goblin magic inside of him, which is very tricky and Ms. Devious. And so he feels like maybe there's no point in me making a great decision. So I think for him that wrestling the dragon moment, that climax moment will be him believing that He might just be a bad person and there's no reason that it matters what decision he makes, but then he makes the right decision, the, the, the winning decision, the ethical decision, the moral decision. Anyway. And he allows himself to believe that he might be an okay person. So what I'm gonna do, think that in order to make that choice, he's gonna have to believe something new about himself. And so I'm just going to put a heart in the middle of him for this moment and forgot to give him little shorts. So there is his character and he's accepting. So I'll say cold, call it accepts that he has both good and bad in him and chooses what he feels is right. Now you can take your ideas for the climax and put them into your wrestling the dragon storyboard box. Keeping in mind that whatever you've built in your challenge 12.3 will inevitably lead to this moment. And this moment is where you have your character face that true emotional struggle that was identified all the way back when we talked about are contrasting beliefs. So here's where their relationship with that particular belief may shift a little bit, or at least there's the opportunity for that. Keep in mind that you don't need to know the particulars of the scene and you don't need to know how it's going to turn out. So what you're really trying to figure out is what is the struggle in this moment? And then later, you can figure out the particulars of how the story actually goes. And through the drafting process, you're likely to make lots of discoveries. Just like Madeline Lengel said, often our story knows more than we do. So trust the process, allow yourself to put down what you think is most important here. And as you go, it will become more and more clear to you. 10. The Magic Flight: We're nearing the end of our character arc and we're in the stage of the magic flight. I think this is a really fun element of your story because after the climax sometimes it feels like Okay, now the story is over. But because your character has gained something, probably something intangible in that experience, in that encounter, we need to test it to show the reader if that newfound confidence or internal quality is going to stick in the magic flight for Kate, the thing that I need to test is, is she now able to truly trust how I'm going to set that up for myself because I really don't know what the parameters are going to be at this point. I'm just going to put two doors. And I'm going to have trust or not trust. I will need to figure out what kind of scenario I can create for her that has these two doorways and she has to choose between. So Kate, Let's choose to trust or not trust. In a high-stakes situation. Now, for coal, it is going to be more about his sense of self-worth, his sense of belonging. And so it is going to be about reuniting or figuring out what his family is going to look like. So I'm going to so all this time he's been hoping that this scenario is going to allow him to earn love. And by the end of it, he's going to realize that part of it is his decision to make. Who is he going to love, who is he going to trust? So I'm going to go head and give him two characters here. And I'm actually going to put, there's a number of characters who could be his family at the end of the story. And I honestly don't know how that will all play out. So I'm just putting these characters here. And I'm going to have the opportunity later to decide who he will choose, who he will connect with as his family. So cool. Realizes, he can choose who his family will be in a more expansive way. Alright? So as you're thinking about the magic flight in your story, I want you to think about what is it that your character needs to prove to the reader at this point of the story, what do they need to show that they have truly grasped, they've truly changed? And that is the scenario you want to set up so that it really tests it and helps the reader to see that in action. 11. Home Again: We've made it to the end of our character arcs. So we have Kate and thinking about how will she be home again. Now usually with my character arc, I start this by thinking about what could be an echo of the very first scene. So for Kate, she was looking for magic. She was following the scent of magic and trying to figure out how it would work. I think that I want to give Kate some sort of gift of magic, even if it's a small amount when she leaves Ferry and comes back home to her bill home. So I think what I want her to be doing is using magic in a way that is helpful and kind to others. So I'm just going to put key using her magic. But it's going to be smaller. It's going to be a very small gift as opposed to an overwhelming amount of magic. Kit uses her magic for the benefit of others, which will demonstrate her showing some trust as well as thinking a little bit more expansively Vinci was earlier in the story. And for coal, what I think I'll do is I will think about how he has found his family, whatever that family is. But in the very last scene, instead of doing some sort of missions so that he can earn love. What if he's found what his role is, what his job is within this new dynamic that he's in. But now he's not doing it to prove anything. He's doing it in a more fully realized way. I don't know what that job will be for coal, but at the beginning he was working with the magical tree and working with titanium. I think what I'll do is I will put actually, you know, what I'll do is I'll put him here with some books because that was one of the things about his great and all. But she ran a bookstore. And so maybe he is the keeper of magical books, but not for any specific need. And we'll just put some books on the shelves. Alright, so we have coal here and he is carrying out his task of taking care of the books, but not so that he can earn anything in particular, but just for the joy of doing something that he lives. So coal does work. He loves confident that he belongs no matter what. Alright. So I want you to think about what your final moment could look like emotionally and put that into that final box. And remember, it is time for us to share these in the project area. So a quick word about that. When you put up your story character arcs into the project area, you might have one. Or if you are working with a dual perspective store, you might have to like me. You can just put it in there and people will fully understand what is going on. You can just put in the images and add in what your question might be. One crate question is, where does this character arc resonate with you? What does it remind you of? And as the commenters, as the people who are giving feedback to one another on our prototypes. I think that sometimes telling one another's stories of times when we've experienced something or when we've read about a character experiencing something and it really mattered to us, can help build the writers understanding of how they can really make that moment come home. So for instance, if I was giving feedback to myself about this trust or not trust moment, I might say One moment when I really learned, when I was really faced with a trust or not trust moment was this, and this is how it felt to me and this is what I chose. Those kinds of little gifts that we give one another of perspective help the writer to better see the landscape and the scope of what they're writing about. And that allows them to move forward with their story and add more emotional reality to it. Not just for how they feel that experience, but how a wider circle of people do. So I encourage you as you're looking at the character arcs in the comments area or in the projects area. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments. We want to encourage one another. We want to stick to the questions that people are asking and give them the kind of feedback that will keep them excited and motivated to keep moving forward. So be brave. Post your project. Give some feedback. I will be in there to give feedback as well, and I'm so excited to see what you create. 12. What's Next?: Congratulations, you've finished your character arc and hopefully you've already posted it in the project area and you're getting feedback from your peers. I can't wait to come and take a look at what you've worked on and give you some feedback myself. One of the things I love most about these design thinking classes is that of course, we have the practical result of having great well-thought-out character arc that we can now build upon. But beyond that, you have built some really important mindsets and tools that can serve you in many different ways. I want to return to this idea of making a prototype. I remember when I first started using templates like this in my classes, people would say, Oh, I need to fill out a worksheet. And I always resisted that. I always called them tablets because I didn't want people to think of them as homework. I really do think it's important for us to see our creative process as an opportunity to play and feeling like it's homework in any way is not at all helpful. But what I realized over time as I started to study design thinking is that beyond not liking the word worksheet, what I realized is that these tools are not just templates or worksheets, their prototypes. And by that I mean, they are a representation of your ideas that you can show to someone else. So I hope that you've done that because that was the whole point of creating your prototype. You can do that obviously in the class area, but then also in the real-world, show a few people and hear what they have to say about your character arcs. Notice where they lean in, Notice where they have questions. Those are all great pieces of information for you. If you're enjoying this design thinking approach, I want to let you know that we have been speaking about design thinking and also about drafting on the creative lift podcast recently. So you could take this character arc idea and you could take it through the whole drafting process from page one through the end. What an exciting thing. So if you're ready for that, come over to season five of creative lift and you can hear more about how to do that. I also invite you to rate and review this class that makes a huge difference and helping other people find the course on the Skillshare platform. And so I'd be so grateful for your support in that. We will be following up on this class with a number of additional design thinking for writers classes, as well as further writerly play classes that create these kind of interactive writing experiences that take you through the process of thinking to get from point a to point Z. So I hope that you will come back and join us. You can follow me on Skillshare to know when the next class is available. I'm so excited for you to have this character arc prototype and be able to take your next steps forward with it. Remember as a design thinker, your bias is to action. So that means you have a prototype, it's time to test it, to iterate, to build forward, and to see where your ideas lead you. I'm very excited to see where that goes and happy creating to you.