Story Magic

76 - Negative arcs

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about negative arcs.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • The differences between positive and negative arcs
  • How to shape effective negative arcs
  • Considering character choices and consequences
  • Giving characters the opportunity for change


Ready to make readers so in love with your characters they can’t stop biting their nails in anticipation?  Grab The Magic of Character Arcs free email course: https://www.goldenmayediting.com/arcsmagic


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Rachel:

Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.

Emily:

I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And I'm Rachel, and today we are.

Emily:

Going to talk about negative character arcs, my favorite.

Rachel:

Daily.

Emily:

I love me a villain story. No, I'm just kidding. Well, I'm not kidding, but we've talked a lot about positive arcs and we talked about negative or static arcs with Louis Jorse. But we haven't actually done a podcast episode on negative character arcs yet. And we get questions about it all the time because folks are just fascinated, I think, by, you know, a character who fails to change and what that looks like on the page and how you show that. So that's what we're going to talk about today.

Rachel:

Yay. This is a good one. I think you chose to have your. Maybe this is a little bit of a spoiler, maybe not. But like, your main character experiences a negative arc and it's becoming, I think, more accepted and more interesting because characters are getting more interesting and more dynamic. But these are usually like, as you said, villain stories, not necessarily like main character stories, but the more the world braces morally Gray, I think they become more popular from that main story perspective.

Emily:

Yeah, it's also becoming, I'm noticing, very popular in romance duologies because you have two characters, you're trying to get them to love each other. And if you have a happy ending at the end of book one, then it's a lot harder to take it to the next stage in book two. So in a lot of, I just read the heartless hunter and there's the Bridge Kingdom. All of those romance duologies tend to have these negative arcs at the end of book one because it sets up your characters to kind of have to work through the mistakes that they made in book two, which is fun.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah.

Emily:

Cool. So I feel like maybe we should start by talking about positive arcs, because the basis of the arc, the basis of how a character changes, isn't different between a positive and a negative arc. What's different is the choices that your character is making and what happens at the end of the book that either pushes them over the edge into I'm going to accept this new version of myself or I'm going to fail to. And so maybe you could start by kind of walking us through what is a character arc, what is a positive character arc, and what's the foundation we're starting with.

Rachel:

Yeah. And we have tons of episodes on this. Like, we talk about character arcs all the stinkin time. So go back through the backlog of episodes and listen to almost any of our episodes. And I'm sure we're gonna talk about character arcs. But an overview is a character arc is about change, one character changing from a belief, a behavior, to a different belief, a different behavior by the end of the book. So you take your character from believing something flawed. This would be their flawed belief. This is their lie, their misbelief. We call it their internal obstacle. And throughout the course of the story, they undergo a change to a healed belief. They learn a truth. We call it the story point. Lisa Cron from story Genius calls it the story point. That's the healed belief. They have a worldview that is influencing their poor decisions, their bad choices, their flawed plans throughout the story. By the end, they change. They believe something different, and only after they change are they able to succeed at their goals are they able to get what they want. That's a positive arc. Yeah.

Emily:

And we break this down, like she said, in a lot of our episodes, but also in our free magic of character arcs guide. And so if you have grabbed that yet, we talk about it at the end of every podcast episode. But it is goldenmayediting.com arcsmagic arcsmagic and so definitely grab that if you are looking for a primer on the basics of arcs. But I feel like what distinguishes a positive arc from a negative arc is that in both of them, your character is trying to get something right. They have some kind of human desire that is deeply rooted human desire that they are seeking, whether that's love or respect or fulfillment or safety, and they have a flawed belief about how they're going to get it. And so in a positive arc, that flawed belief leads them to make lots of mistakes. And then once those mistakes catch up to them, they realize, oh, I had the wrong approach to getting this thing that I really want, this wrong approach to being loved, to earning love. And then they change their belief and they get that thing. And in a negative arc, your character is going to fail to change their beliefs and as a result, they're going to fail to get that thing that they want. And so that's what makes it a negative arc. And that's what delivers your story point as like a cautionary version of it is like, if you act this way or if you believe these flawed beliefs about how you're going to get love or respect or fulfillment or whatever the goal is in the story, then you're not going to get it in the end.

Rachel:

Yeah. And the question still remains with positive arc and negative arcs is, are they going to change? Will there be some sort of change in this character, in the way they look at the world, in their behaviors and ultimately with negative arcs? No. At the end of it? No, they don't. But we still have that question. We still have that tension. What are they going to do? Are they going to keep making these choices to get what they want? Are they going to get what they want even if they're bad? Or are we not going to see them get what they want because they're bad? As the author, we have, as the author, I think this is why it's so important to understand what your story point message is, because you have a lot of playground, you have a lot of room of, like, how do you want to portray this message? How do you want to show this message through your character's choices and through the consequences that they experience? And that's what brings us to the cautionary tale message. We have a couple examples of, like, we're going to talk about Michael Corleone and we're going to talk about Anakin Skywalker and Jaime Lannister. But like, in the Godfather, you have a, you do have a cautionary tale story point, but Michael gets everything he wants. So, like, he kind of succeeds, but we know he's a villain. Like, we see his downward slope from the very first scene. We still wonder, is he going to be like his family, or is he going to be, is he going to live for himself instead, which is what his father always wanted for him? So depending on your story point message and how you want to convey that message to your reader, you may play around with what act three is going to look like for your negative art character. What kind of consequences they're going to face. Will they or won't they get what they want, and how do the consequences of that book convey your message?

Emily:

Basically, it's been so long since I've seen that movie. But doesn't he lose his wife kind of, or ruin his relationship with his wife? So he gets everything that he wants but kind of loses what he thought, what he used to want?

Rachel:

Yes. So at the end of the godfather, and I do know that the book ending is different than movie ending. Gotcha. So in the movie at the end, he straight up lies to his wife about his involvement in the business, the family business, and whether or not he was involved in basically the murder of his brother in law, which he orchestrated and was very much involved in. So he lies to her and is like, don't ask me about my business, Kay. And then he's like, I'll let you ask me one time. And she's like, did you kill him? And he says no. And obviously he was involved. She knows he was involved. And by lying to her face, you see in her that he's lost her. But you don't see whether she leaves or not. You just know that he's broken that relationship. You also know, from Michael's perspective, he doesn't give a fuck. He doesn't care. But throughout the course of the earlier story, he has really cared about love. He was married before. He was with Kay at the beginning of the story and wasn't able to be with her because of the family. He got married, he was happy. His wife died, and then he got back with Kay because it was basically his only option, which that's not true, but that's the story we're led to believe, is hedgesthem. He wanted to get back with her to, like, to form a family again. So, yeah, he loses emotionally. He loses his wife, but he gets to be the godfather.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's all about looking at what are the cause and effects on the page, like, you know, what are the decisions that your character is making and what are the consequences of those decisions? And by giving those choices, those consequences, what are you saying to your reader about how the world works and how we should or shouldn't behave? I think that that is key. And then, like you said, you can play around with so much by doing that.

Rachel:

Yeah, I think in the book version of the Godfather, and I could be wrong about this. I've not read the book, but I think Kay leaves him but comes back. I think she, like, she leaves, but she comes back. And so I'm not certain of the circumstances of why she comes back, but that, to me, is less powerful because he still has her kind of signaling.

Emily:

That his behavior is okay in that point.

Rachel:

That's, I think, a good example of, like, how consequences can say one message versus another message because she left. If she had left and never come back. Excellent. That shows me he broke that relationship, but she came back. And so then you're like, well, does Michael learn anything from that? Do we see?

Emily:

Does K. Do we learn anything from that?

Rachel:

Did he learn anything from that? Because nothing really happened to Michael. Nothing bad happened. So maybe we should all go down this. This terrible path to becoming the godfather of our families. Yeah, I think the movie ending is really poignant in those final scenes of the door closing on Michael's face. And Kay's face physically, literally showing the door closed on their relationship. There is also a godfather two and a godfather three, um, which I am not looping into this conversation, talking about the end of Godfather one. That's it.

Emily:

There is no future.

Rachel:

I know. I'm pretty sure Godfather two is, like a fantastic movie. I've only seen.

Emily:

I've heard that too. My husband's been trying to get me to watch it for, like, years. Don't at me, people. I've heard it's amazing.

Rachel:

I've heard it's really, really good. And, like, Robert De Niro does a fantastic job and I've seen about half of it, but I usually always fall asleep.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And. Yeah. Anyway, it's great.

Emily:

We're going to get some grumpy mail, probably from you guys about this.

Rachel:

I don't want to hear it.

Emily:

Awesome. So maybe we could break down. What are some of the things to think about and steps to take if you are trying to build a negative character arc?

Rachel:

Yeah. Are we?

Emily:

So I'm jumping around.

Rachel:

I think, like, what's really compelling about what's really important and, like, what makes characters on a positive arc or a negative arc really compelling is understanding their backstory really, really, really well. And with negative arc characters, I think it's even more important because we are asking the reader to go on this journey of, like, this character is not going to end up in a good spot. And whether or not they know that we still need them to be bought into their reasoning, their beliefs, their goals, their fears, really specifically. So I think making sure that you spend time getting to know their backstory, getting to know why they are the way that they are and what is it that they believe and why are those beliefs, the internal obstacle beliefs specifically, so deeply ingrained in them? And why could they never let that go? Because the question for a positive arc is they think they can't let that go, but they do. But in a negative arc, they don't let it go. They don't change, they don't heal. So we have to really understand why they can't let that go.

Emily:

Yeah. Cause their wounds are always important. Like, really understanding why your character, like, what has happened to make your character flawed and. Yeah, like you said, when it comes to a negative arc, we really, especially if you're asking us to empathize with them, and I would argue it's always important, like, even if it's a secondary character who has a negative arc, like, we're not big fans of Harry Potter right now, but I think an easy example is like Malfoy, right? We get to see Draco Malfoy with his parents on the page, and we get to see how he's treated, and we get to see how he's pushed to compete and seek power and seek to one up people. And we see that he does that as a way to get love. And so we understand, right, even if Harry doesn't, we understand why he's making the bad decisions that he's making on the page. Cause we can empathize with his childhood, his upbringing, right? And if we didn't have any of that, he would just be like this little snotty brat that we would hate, but we wouldn't. There's something about, especially with morally gray characters, being able to see little glimpses, and it doesn't have to be a lot, but just little glimpses into why are you the way you are? So that they feel more three dimensional on the page. And then if we're in their head, you definitely want to give us that. If it's your point of view character who's going to have a negative arc, we really want to see who hurt you, how and why did you take away the beliefs that you took away from that situation for exactly the reasons that you mentioned?

Rachel:

Yeah. Anakin Skywalker is another good example of this. In Revenge of the Sith, which is the first, the third movie of the prequel series of Star wars, we've already seen movies one and two, right. We've seen Anakin as a child. We've seen him in the first movie, the Phantom Menace, Anakin is saved from this desert planet by the Jedi. He is freed from being a slave. He is told he could potentially be the chosen one. He could have this ability to save the galaxy, bring balance to the galaxy, which everyone misinterprets. But he's told you're really, really special, and you have a lot of power, and we need to mold it in the right direction. And then in the second movie, he doesn't have the ability to save his mother. So his mother dies. He can't save her in time. And he has had prophetic visions or dreams of her death, and she dies. He couldn't save her. So then in the third movie, he's much older now. Anakin starts having these dreams that his wife, Padme, will die. And there's so much reason behind why he thinks that's true, why he thinks like there's. Of course, I am powerful enough to have prophetic visions. My visions come true. Therefore, Padme will die. But this time, I won't let it be like my mother. I have the power to save Padme. I didn't have the power to save my mother when I was younger. So that is really the crux of starting Anakin on his negative arc of him believing that he needs to have the power to save his loved ones to save Padme. And he hears from Palpatine that if he gains enough power and he learns the Sith ability, he can save those he loves from death. So we have, like, these two things where his wife is at risk, and he's being told that if he learns these sith abilities, he'll have the power to save her. So in his head, there's no reason why he would question that he needs all the power he can get in order to save Padme, and that sets him on this path of trying to acquire power. This movie is not perfect because I actually find Anakin's goals extremely lackluster. In Revenge of the Sith, he does nothing. Anakin does nothing except for rude. Until about halfway through, he's just mad. He's just angry. He's moody. He's like, oh, no, bad Babe's gonna die. And then everybody else is doing stuff. It really bothers me because Anakin himself doesn't start doing things until about halfway when he's told that he'll never be a Jedi master or he can't be a Jedi master right now, and he's actually, like, a really petulant child about it. So I don't love all of Anakin's character. This is not a perfect movie. But you also understand why being told in that moment that he can't have the power of a Jedi master would make him search for power elsewhere, because he believes that he needs power to save Padme. So then he pledges himself to the Sith, triggering the downfall of the Jedi. He kills all the younglings. He goes on a massacre spree. After that point, he starts, he's just totally unhinged. It's crazy. And he thinks all of this is going to give him the power that he needs to save Padme. But the kicker is, Padme is horrified by these terrible actions and follows him and then jumps out at him and is like, you're being bad. Stop it. Meanwhile, Obi Wan has followed Padme. Anakin believes that Padme has betrayed him. Anakin kills Padme. Anakin attacks Padme. Anakin himself brings about her death, so his visions become true. He was right. But because he went down this path, he did not learn the message that power does not save. It corrupts. So he becomes corrupted, and through this corruption, he ends up killing, or he hurts her. He mortally wounds her enough that she ends up dying because of his actions. And he's left. He fights Obi Wan. You've not seen this movie? Have you not seen this movie?

Emily:

I have. I have. Yeah.

Rachel:

So they have that big fight. All of act three is basically a lightsaber fight, and it also drives me crazy. Come on. So they have this massive, dramatic. So dramatic. This dramatic lightsaber fight. Anakin loses. He gets defeated. Obi Wan wins. Obi Wan is uncorrupt. We have their own issues with Obi Wan, too. But anyway, he gets burned alive and thus becomes Darth Vader. He has completed his villain arc, but he had multiple choices to not do the things that he could have done, because he also could have just told Obi Wan, hey, I'm having these terrible visions. I don't know what to do about it. Yoda even has a moment with him where Yoda is like, I'm picking up some weird vibes from you. Are you okay? And he's like, I just want power. Like, he has a lot of opportunities to change, like, to look at a different way, but he can't see it. My whole point with this example in the story is that we believe he would never turn away from this path because we have seen the pain he experienced in his mother's death by not being able to save her. So that's his backstory in movie three. It happened in movie two. So we're still drawing on the importance of what he experienced in his past that led him down. This version of, like, I cannot see a future where I'm not powerful. I need power. That's his whole, like, his whole schtick in the third one.

Emily:

Yeah. So we see how deeply he wants to save the people that he loves. So we see that goal so clearly, and then we also see how he has this flawed belief that he needs power in order to do it. And that helps us buy in. Right. To all of these terrible. Not buy in, but, like, understand all these terrible decisions that he's making, and they don't feel, you know, out of left field. So let's come back to, though, what you were talking about with. With, like, he has all these opportunities to change. Because that's the other thing that I think is really important, is, like, first you have to figure out, you know, what does your character want? Why do they want it? What flawed beliefs are leading them down this darkest path. And then there's a difference between someone who's just dark and someone who's on a negative arc. Would you agree with that?

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah.

Emily:

I feel like an example again. I hate to pull from Harry Potter, but it's so clear. Like, you have Malfoy, who has the opportunity to change, but you have Voldemort, who doesn't. He's just Voldemort. Right. He's like your standard flat villain. We get his backstory, so we understand why he is the way he is, but he's a right. He's not coming up against opportunities to change his ways. And so that's not a negative arc. And so what you're looking for is you want to create the opportunities for your character to go down alternative paths. They need to encounter sort of like forks in the road where they could choose to be better and, like, be enticed by it almost, and, like, how enticed they are. I feel like it's kind of a spectrum you could play with. Maybe Michael Corleone at the end of the Godfather isn't really noticing those paths, doesn't really care about them, but someone like Jaime Lannister keeps coming up against these forks in the road where he has really hard decisions to make between doing the better thing or following his flawed path. So when we're creating a negative arc, we want to make sure that the character has the potential for change. That's very important for it to feel like an arc. We want to be able to, like, as the readers, we want to be able to root for this person. And in order to. Because that's like, that's the excitement of it is like, will they? Won't they? And in order for that to feel like, will they? Won't they? We need to have the potential for the will they part of the equation. Like, will they change? And so what does that look like on the page? Like, how do we make sure that our characters have that opportunity?

Rachel:

Yeah, I think that we just need to keep giving them the choice. Like, in Anakin's example, they, Anakin has multiple opportunities to one, come clean about being married to Padme, which is kind of like the first problem here. Jedi supposed to have attachments. He got secretly married to Padme. At the end of the second movie, Obi Wan is like, oh, Padme's pregnant. Did you know? Like, he has so many opportunities to tell Obi Wan, oh, that's my baby. Babies. We don't know they're babies yet, but he could have said that. Then he sits down with Yoda. He could have told Yoda. Then he sits down with mace window. He could have told Mace window. Like, he has so many opportunities to say, one, I'm struggling. Two, I'm having visions. Three, also, I figured out Palpatine is the dark lord, and maybe you guys should know that, which he does. He does end up, I'll be fair. He does tell that to mace Windu. They go after Palpatine, but then he turns on mace Windu because Palpatine is like, don't you want the power that comes from being with a Sith? And Anakin's like, yeah, I do. Then he turns on mace Windu. So, like, he, he had a choice there of being like, no, the Jedi are right. You're bad. Plenty of opportunities. And he picks the bad one every time.

Emily:

So that's an example of, like, somebody just sort of. It makes me think of, like, a snowball, right? He's just, like, going downhill, and every time he picks the wrong path, he just digs his heels in further and just keeps going, right. So that I feel like it's one version of a negative arc, but then there's the version where you bring your character to the brink of change. And that's what I did in behind the Crimson curtain, and it's what we see in, I think a lot of these, like, I was talking about the romance duologies earlier, is, like, we often see this because you want to bring them to the brink of being able to get over their stuff and be together, and then they can't quite do it. They can't quite cinch it. And I feel like there's two versions of what that could look like and, like, two places where they kind of revert on their change. And so we talk about save the cat a lot. So if you're familiar with save the cat, I mean, I think this also applies to most western plotting structures where there's this all is lost moment, kind of black moment.

Rachel:

All is lost.

Emily:

Yeah. Dark night of the soul. Well, I guess that's after, but, yeah, rock bottom. It's that moment in the story where, like, your character loses everything. All their mistakes catch up to them, and they, like, they hit rock bottom. And I think from that moment right up until that point in this kind of negative arc where you're bringing them to the brink of change, right up until that moment, everything is kind of similar to a positive arc in that they hit rock bottom. And it's like, oh, man, I screwed up, right? And in a positive arc, they would come out of that set of scenes being like, okay, I'm a new person. I'm a changed person. I've learned the story point now. I can see the way. Right? That's your classic positive arc. In a negative arc, I feel like there's two options. Either, I feel like option a is they come out of the dark knight or the Allah's laws dark night of the soul. And they're like, I've changed. Right? It feels like a positive arc. Like I've changed. And they go into act three and they're like, I'm gonna be a better person. I've changed. Then they hit what's called the Hightower surprise, or kind of the climax moment at the end of the story where they're tested one more time and they can't quite do it. They can't quite make it. And that, I feel like, is Jaime Lannister. That's where, you know, he told Cersei, I'm done. I'm going to the good side. This is the bad side. I don't want to be here anymore. And he leaves, a, and he joins the heroes to the north, fighting the monsters. Right. And then at the very last second, he leaves.

Rachel:

Yeah. He goes back to Cersei.

Emily:

He goes back to Cersei at, like, the 11th hour. And it's so disappointing.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

And those arcs can be so disappointing, which I think is often why you see that when there's going to be another book, it's like, okay, they're going to fix it. But in the Jamie Lannister situation, he did not fix it. But I feel like that's one option. That's. Option a is they enter act three feeling like they are a changed person, but they can't quite make it through that final test. And then option B is in that all is lost. Dark night of the soul. They simply can't see that they're wrong.

Rachel:

That's Anakin.

Emily:

That's Anakin.

Rachel:

Straight. Anakin is like, nope, everybody's against me. If you're all against me, what's the point? I'll just kill you all. Like, that's his. All is lost. When he thinks that Padme has betrayed him. He leans into the darkness at that point, and, you know, at that moment, there's no coming back from it. But structure wise, there still is, I think, the question of redemption, because there's the moment where they're fighting on the lava flow and, God, I. I know these movies very specifically.

Emily:

This is why I. I need your brain.

Rachel:

There's a moment where they're fighting on the lava flow, and Obi Wan is like, it's over, anakin. I have the high ground. Give up. Anakin's like, no. So he fights him. He jumps. And Obi Wan's right. He has the high ground. So that's when Obi Wan cuts off his arms and his legs and, like, basically, he's. Anakin's dead. So, like, he had a moment there to be like, you're right. It is over. You've won. I'm gonna give up. And he's like, no, I'm not gonna give up. I have the power to defeat you. I'm at a disadvantage, and I still am more powerful than you and Obi Wan. Obi Wan is like, no, you're not. I will kill you. And he basically kills him. So the structure wise, I 100% agree with you. Those beats still exist. It just is like, how is the character gonna address them? Because Anakin does not show any potential for change. He continues to double down. But the question, like, the opportunity is still there. Yeah, it still is. Like, here's one last chance. Here's one last chance. One last chance. And then Anakin's like, no, I won't. But Jamie, we think he will. And, like, this is. We were joking about this before we started recording, and we were like, we just need to start recording. I was so mad. I was so mad at Jamie for going back because I don't feel like that final decision. This is where we can debate. I don't feel like that final decision had the weight anymore. I felt like his change. His change had already, like, I'm doing, like, a little scale for you people that can't see it. Like, he had changed up this much in that last bit. He is with Brienne. He was on the good side. We were like, yeah, jamie, you're the better twin. You've got this. And he had, like, gone so far good that I didn't feel like he had enough bad in him left to switch back. I love it, but I love, like, tragic stuff.

Emily:

I'm like, just everybody fail.

Rachel:

I was so.

Emily:

I love it.

Rachel:

I was like, I didn't.

Emily:

What I loved about it is, like, jamie is a terrible person. Like, at the beginning of the show, he is a terrible person.

Rachel:

He pushed Brian out the window, and.

Emily:

We forget that he pushed a child out a window. And I think it's brilliant how much they buy us into, like, oh, he can. Like, he can be redeemed and, like, he can find. But I don't think he can. He pushed a child out a window. Like, he deserves to die in the rubble of the red keep. Like, that's my opinion. But this is what makes negative arc so fun. This is what makes morally gray characters so fun is, like, we. We don't have to agree on, you know, how we feel about these people. It's all about, like. And that's what I love about it, is you get to see humanity at this, like, raw, gritty level.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Emily:

And, like, really show, like, how far people are willing to go to get what they want and the consequences of that. Um, I just love it.

Rachel:

Let's talk about. Let's talk about Daenerys. Let's talk about. Yay. Now that we want to. I know, once again, our inbox is closed for the discussion. If you have a podcast question, that's fine. I remember after that episode aired, this is just an anecdote. I went into work and we stood in, like, a circle in our common area and just argued, like, for, like, an hour. Like, me and my work.

Emily:

That was the brilliance of that show, though. The whole world was arguing.

Rachel:

Daenerys fall in season eight. That's when we're like, I don't think that negative arc was done well enough.

Emily:

Oh, I think it was rushed. I think it was rushed. We could be on both two sides of this. That's how I felt the first time I watched it. Like, the first time I watched season eight, I was like, this is terrible. Why would you do this? But when I rewatched the whole series, like, in a. Over a couple of months, like, pretty kind of back to back, I noticed that they were planting those forks in the road for her. They planted them at a lot of different places. And I can see. I can see how they were building to that moment. And I think it was a genius idea. I think the execution of, like, how rushed season eight was kind of made it fall flat. But I can see. But if you go and you rewatch them, big project for you, epic fans, people out there. You can see, don't tell us about it. The forks in the road. And we buy into it because we want her to succeed. Right? We want her. We want to see a woman in power. We want her to get revenge. We want to see, right. But she's taking the wrong path over and over and over again. But she's packaging it in. I'm the good guy. And I think that that's her whole thing, is she's building this whole. She believes she's the good guy. And it's so, I think it, I think what they were trying to do was genius and it was, they just fell flat in the execution.

Rachel:

I think I agree with you there. I agree with you that, like, they could, that could have been really compelling. I think in falling flat of the, in the execution, they portrayed a different message. I don't think that Daenerys is what actually happened on the page, on the screen. I don't think what actually happened on the screen portrayed the message that they were trying to portray. I think everything that happened to her, it resulted in this giant debate about misogyny and about, you know, oh, well, she's just a targaryen. She's just crazy. I think, like, the execution is, yeah, that's, that's what ruined the point. Like, that's what ruined the message for Daenerys because she had seven seasons of being the good guy, of being the mother, of being the savior. Now, I'm not saying she was not flawed. Like, yes, she was. But then, because the execution felt flat, I don't think it portrayed a message. I think the message was all over the place. I think it ended up being everybody sucks, which kind of is the message of the book, but the only one that doesn't suck is Jon Snow. And then Bran comes out of nowhere. Like, the whole execution, the whole execution.

Emily:

Was so bad for hours.

Rachel:

Yes. It, like, ruined the message.

Emily:

So I feel like they were going for some kind of white savior message. Yes. It just, it didn't, it didn't work because I also think, I do think that having her succeed would have given the wrong message after all the things that she did as, you know, a flawed white savior. But anyway, okay, see, this is why negative arcs are amazing.

Rachel:

Negative arcs are fun, but you also have to consider how the consequences, like your character's choices and the consequences of those choices, what message that conveys Jamie's. I feel like it's very tight, very clear, you know, like, I agree with you. I mean, I'm mad about it, right. But I feel like for him, I know I really did and I really wanted him to end up with Brienne and I wanted him to find, like, I think that would have been an incredible change from being literally the catalyst of the whole problem to becoming, like, part of its solution.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

I was like, oh, give me that. But nope, they didn't. And that, however, as much as I was frustrated by that, that's way tighter to me than what happened with Daenerys. Yeah, Daenerys. Bad execution. Bad execution. Bad message. I remember, yeah. And I remember being in that little circle I was telling you about and getting, like, heated, like, in my. We literally argued for like an hour because all it devolved to for me was misogyny. That's all it devolved to. I think the breadcrumbs were there and they did a bad job and period.

Emily:

That's all I have to say. Don't add us. Once again, we don't want to hear from you.

Rachel:

Boxes close. We love you. We love you guys so much. Thank you for listening. You're wonderful. This is death.

Emily:

Don't come. If you're in today's writing, feel free to argue and slack. If you want to argue with us.

Rachel:

By today's writing, please, then you can come argue.

Emily:

Come add us in the slack. That's the only place. Oh, love you. Okay. Anything else?

Rachel:

I think that's pretty much it. We have that magic of arcs guide, which does talk about positive arcs primarily, but everything that we've talked about today, you can adapt to the teachings in that guide. We still have a flawed belief. We still have a plot problem. We still have a bad plan. We still have plot failure. Just at that point. We have option one, which is the Jaime Lannister version. Do they kind of learn the story point? Do they show potential for change? Are they on the right path? And then they go and they don't change? Or are they like an again, and they double down and all of the terribleness and they just go into act three.

Emily:

Bad.

Rachel:

And then you have bad, bad. And then you have the question of, are they going to succeed? And if they succeed, what message are you conveying? If they fail, what message are you conveying? What are the consequences of their choices and what message do those consequences portray? I think just the intention and the purpose is what makes negative arcs shine. But when you do it for the shock value, and it's like, your readers can feel, this is just shock value. Oh, plot twist. This person was bad the whole time. Like, when you do it for the shock value, that's when your message gets muddy. That's when things get confusing. And we're wondering, why did that character do that?

Emily:

Yeah, yeah. We want to be able to track the why, even if it's really, really light. Right? Like these lightly sprinkled in. Like, we want to see that you, the author, understand where their beliefs and goals are coming from. I would recommend, if you are a newer writer and you are interested in writing a negative arc, I would recommend kind of two things. One is get to know positive arcs, because I really think that deeply understanding how a positive arc works can really help you understand how to twist it in a negative way and, like, play with those reader expectations. And the second thing that I would recommend is to look at examples. Watch some movies with negative arcs and see if you can identify for the negative arc characters. What are their goals? What are their beliefs? Where are those coming from? How do we get their backstory on the page or on the screen? Just go watch some of that, study some of that, and just see if you can identify those things, because I think that can really help us open our eyes to ways that this can be implemented. Yeah.

Rachel:

Also, last thing we had some other examples that you can look into that we didn't cover today are Rin from the poppy war. The Poppy Ward is a trilogy. It's a series. The Poppy War is the first book, but rin in that book experiences a negative arc across the series. That one is a really good one to look at because it's so complex. It's so complex. There's tons of cultural background, there's tons of personal background. So go read the Poppy War series. Incredible. And then Zuko in the Last Airbender has a negative arc in book one, which is this series. This is an animated series. It's confusing because each season of the series is titled as a book. So book one is season one of this animated series. Zuko in the first season has a negative arc, but he ends up having a redemptive arc. So if you're like, oh, I want to do negative arcs and positive arcs, a different point in my series, that's a good one to study as well. And then as we've talked about, the heartless hunter was a good one. You can go read that. There are plenty of romance duologies where you start with a negative arc and then you end with a positive arc. So if you're writing a series, you can also use a negative arc to feed into the next book.

Emily:

The serpent in the Wings of Night is another good one. In the bridge kingdom.

Rachel:

The serpent in the Wings of Night is a really solid just book in general, so I recommend that book.

Emily:

It's a good one for looking at structure. Cool.

Rachel:

If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.

Emily:

Sign up now to get our free email course. The magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.

Rachel:

Link in the show notes we'll see you in there.

Emily:

Bye.