Finding the Arc

So, I haven't seriously started the rewrites on Ichor yet—still got that GED workbook project looming over me that's due tomorrow and that, uh, I really ought to be working on right now instead of writing this blog post—but I've been thinking about it. And one of the things I've been thinking about is that I ought to make sure the protagonist had some sort of arc to his character. That he changed and grew over the course of the story. Some of the other characters had definite arcs, but I wasn't sure the protagonist had one, and I figured he definitely should.

I briefly considered, and quickly discarded, a few ideas. Maybe the protagonist starts out lazy and shirking his duties on the ship, but later comes to see the importance of hard work? But that would mean that at the beginning he'd be a fairly inactive character, and I didn't want that—he's already stuck in a cage for an entire chapter near the beginning of the book; I didn't want him to be doing even less than he already was. Maybe he starts out self-centered and then gradually comes to be more helpful and concerned with the rest of the crew? But that didn't really work well with the story; there was no particular reason for him to move in that direction if he wasn't already somewhat altruistic.

But then, as I thought about the last chapter, it occurred to me that he did already have an arc after all, even if it hadn't been one I'd consciously planned. He's definitely a very different person at the end of the story from what he was at the beginning. So I don't have to come up with an arc for him—what I have to do is take the arc that's already there and make it go a little more smoothly. As it is, most of his change takes place rather suddenly right at the end; I need to spread it out more and clarify the reasons for it. But yes, to my relief I don't have a static protagonist.

Anyway, looking forward to being done with this GED workbook so I can really buckle down and get started on the rewrites.