If your characters are following a Positive Change Arc, they will start out less-than-fulfilled, perhaps even personally stunted. They will harbor certain beliefs that are holding them back from what they need, from the thing that will cause them to change into better, more enlightened, more empowered people. To get them to overcome these mistaken beliefs, you have to not just put their feet onto the journey’s path, but also use that path to take them to the single most important point in any character arc.
And what is this point?
It happens around the three-quarter mark in your story, right as the Third Act begins. This is the Third Plot Point. It is your characters’ low point. Basically, this is where you mercilessly crush your poor, unwitting characters! Yes, it’s rough, but if you want your characters to ever shed their misconceptions and weaknesses and rise, transformed, from their own ashes, you gotta be more than a little mean to them.
Creating Character Arcs (Amazon affiliate link)
This moment forces your characters into a place that’s basically do or die. Life looks pretty bleak. Everything they love, everything they’ve hoped for is falling to pieces around them, in spite of all their best efforts. And the key—the reason everything they’ve tried up to this point has brought them to this point—is because they have yet to face their deepest fears or doubts—whatever it is that’s holding them back from finally transforming.
This is where they must make their stand mentally and emotionally. They must decide that facing down the antagonistic force is worth sacrificing themselves to their own fears. After that has happened, you can charge into the Third Act and the Climax with your characters finally ready to act upon—and thus prove—their new views of life and themselves.
