What experiences in life helped you grow the most?
I would have to say my many mistakes I’ve made in the past. They’ve opened the door for reflection, problem identification, and fixing behaviors that caused the problem that led to the mistake in the first place.
Have you ever observed someone else do something very well and wished you could do that just like them? I’m a writer, so I’ll pick on writing. There are some pretty talented writers out there. J. K. Rowling, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Tess Gerritsen, just to name a few, are some them. We would all like to write like them. Truth be told, no one can write like them because no one else is them. I am me, so I can only write like me. You are you, so you can only write like you. We are all different, thank God. If we all wrote like the each other, stories would be pretty boring. What we can do is improve our writing to be the best us we can be.
In reality we all go through our own personal growth. It’s called life. In a story our main characters go through their own personal growth. It’s called a character arc. With all of the mistakes we make, most of us learn from them and move on to the right path. Along the way we hit another snag, we learn (hopefully), and continue on. Because we learned our lessons from the past, if we’re hit with the same situation again, we’ll know how to handle it the right way. We grow from our experiences.
But here’s the thing. Our lessons in real time are learned over the course of a lifetime, which can be years. In a book the character arc for the main character progresses for the life of the story/book. Think of it of as a cycle of sorts or a path. The character starts out at point A then moves to point B by way of various experiences, conflicts, decisions, and mistakes. From point B they move forward using what they learned to get to point C. They go through more challenges and are faced with more fears. Then they reach point D. By the end of the book they’ve gone through some changes personally and overcame their fatal flaw. Growth. If your main character goes through each of the points in the character arc cycle without showing any kind of growth, there’s something wrong. There must be growth.
A character arc that has a fascinating and compelling character arc will have characters overcoming challenges and facing fears as the story unfolds. The outcome? Personal growth, much like how people in real life obtain personal growth.
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
Hindsight permeates growth.
Her life is like a doll house,
With everything in place,
A perfect house,
A perfect man,
And children filled with grace.
She talks not like a woman,
But rather as a child,
Playing games,
Skipping rope,
An innocence so mild.
But somewhere deep inside her,
She knows this isn’t like,
No hopes to hope,
No dreams to dream,
Just agony and strife.
One night she just walked out and left,
And made her life her own,
Reaching forth,
Grabbing hold,
You see how she has grown?
By L. M. Montes
WRITE TIME AND AGAIN 