Everyone says that your main character needs to go through an arc. Except that's not always true. And I can think of several characters who don't - James Bond, the Man with No Name, most Spielberg protagonists (my screenwriting professor pointed this out - and she has a point, because getting over your fear of water by killing a shark doesn't really count, does it?).

But the thing is, no one really talks about how to write characters like these. Unfortunate, because I'm writing a character like this. Anyone got any tips?

In my amateur view, the way I see it there are 4 basic models: the underdog, the fallen, the survivor, and the classic hero.

The underdog starts at the bottom, the deck stacked against him, but has(or quickly develops) an irrepressible desire to get to the top. Or the will to win.

The fallen is a character who has been on top and was knocked to the bottom. Like Gladiator. We either see him fall early on, or we pick up the story with him on the bottom, like a former heavyweight champ who's now a bum. He usually has to recover his will to get back to the top first.

Those stories usually have an arc.

Then there is the survivor. This is an everyday man/woman thrust into extraordinary circumstances of survival. He may learn something about himself through the course of the journey, or about the world, but but he doesn't change, and shouldn't...because his appeal is that he is us, the everyday man. Think Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor.

Similar to this model is the classic hero. He has a heroic nature, so he is a hero when we meet him and a hero at the end. To change that is a mistake. He may learn things, but his appeal is his very nature, which doesn't change.

In fact, with the survivor and the classic hero, the character pressure comes from forces that test him, try to change his nature. Maybe the hero is tested by temptation or corruption, the chance to sell his soul in order to survive or succeed.

But the point is that he cannot change. If he does, that is defeat, and we know this as we watch his journey. So it's kind of a reverse of the arc approach to story building. His character is under tremendous pressure to change...and he must resist it.

So I would suggest this: no doubt you are putting some great external pressure on your character, some antagonistic force. Make sure that this pressure is so great, that it tries to force the hero to change his very nature. That threat to his soul is the greatest threat he faces. Maybe the antagonist knows this and tries to take advantage. Think about the Joker trying to connect to Batman and bring him over to the dark side, or Vader and Luke.

Make your hero feel great pressure to change who he is...but then in the end the hero succeeds by resisting.

Also, if you want, maybe he learns something critical from another character that helps him resist. A corny example would be he sees a child do something heroic and suffer for it, and it teaches him to hold onto his purity, to not give in. I didn't word that well, but I'm rushed.

Quoted from Rolandabc Everyone says that your main character needs to go through an arc.

...well it isn't true if you & your tutor say it isn't true.

Not all characters need to go through an arc, and it depends on the nature of your story. James Bond: no arc needed because most of the audience are looking for cool stunts and pretty women (and it's pretty much exactly the same story in each film).

But is your story partially based on character development? If so, then some kind of arc is probably needed. If you figure that your character will be different at the end of the story - that is, if they are to be impacted by the story, then it's useful for you to have a character arc - from when did they begin, and where will they end?

What arc they have, and how dramatic it will be will depend on your interpretation of the story and how much impact you want it to have on the character.

The Kaufman character in Adaptation discusses this. Played by Nic Cage too. Before he went all fucknuts.

It does depend on the story. It isn't quite as important as some books say it is.

I don;'t know what your story is so it's hard to advise. But someone repeating behaviour that's bad for them and they don't seem to learn from is common.

Smokers keep coughing and lighting up. Alcoholics can't pass a pub and gamblers keep going until their pockets and accounts are empty. Criminals come straight out of jail and end up going straight back in.

R

Quoted from Rolandabc most Spielberg protagonists (my screenwriting professor pointed this out - and she has a point, because getting over your fear of water by killing a shark doesn't really count, does it?).

Brody arcs. For sure.

I'm from the school of thought that not every protagonist with a prominent flaw (which most, but not all, will have) needs to arc, but that they should be offered the chance to.

So what I mean by this, is that they should encounter a problem/ scenario which forces them to make a choice: do they change, and thus arc, or do they continue living with their flaw?

But as it has been stated, not every story requires a protagonist with a flaw... but if the protag do have a flaw, I feel that they need to be offered the opportunity to change.

You should always be looking for opportunities to give an audience an advantage over your characters. If a protagonist has a flaw that he/she isn't aware of, yet the audience is, you've engaged the audience to want to see a change.

A change doesn't have to occur in the end, but it should be justified by the theme.

Also, it's the choices your protagonist makes within their arc that should catch the audience off-guard.

Quoted Text You should always be looking for opportunities to give an audience an advantage over your characters. If a protagonist has a flaw that he/she isn't aware of, yet the audience is, you've engaged the audience to want to see a change.

Excellent point. Tension comes from the audience knowing what needs to happen. If the audience knows your character needs to change to succeed, this creates tension. Or, if the audience knows that your character needs to resist change to succeed, then this also creates tension.

Quoted Text but if the protag do have a flaw, I feel that they need to be offered the opportunity to change

...or also the temptation to change when we know he should not. Sometimes the point of a story is for a character to succeed or survive without being changed. Resisting the change is the point of the story, the source of the tension. In such a scenario, to follow your example, we should see temptation set up for this character to sell his soul basically.