To Change Or Not To Change: A Protagonist’s Arc

Characters transform internally via external circumstances. We are the gods who make it happen.

Dearest fellow writers, I am about to bequeath to you a beam of arcane knowledge that I feel you should know. As the person behind the pen of your story, to your characters, you are a god. In every terrifying, reverent sense of the word, you are the designer of their destinies, and nothing can save them from your sovereign will.

One of the duties that burdens us writerly gods is the obligation to assign our protagonist a Dramatic Need. This is the unconscious urge to transform that propels them through their story. It is an inescapable thing that chases them to the edge of what is possible, a fate they simply cannot reject. Cruelly, the most interesting protagonists possess a Dramatic Want that sits in binary opposition to their Dramatic Need. Consciously, they will do everything to pursue their want. Unconsciously, every action only inches them closer to their assigned need.

An incredible professor of mine recently explained something absolutely life-changing to me. He said, “Stories do not begin at the beginning. They begin in binary opposition to the ending, with your protagonist in binary opposition to their transformed self.” In order to truly understand your story’s start, you must know how it will end. In order to truly understand how your protagonist manifests initially, you must know who they are to become. The more drastic the contrast, the more gripping the story.

By definition, a protagonist is a sufferer. They want the suffering. They crave the suffering. They need the suffering, unconsciously, so that they can arrive on the other side of their own story.

Story, Plot, and Theme

To put it simply, the story is what happens, the plot is how it happens, and the protagonist is who makes it happen. Please note, the protagonist is not who it happens to. If that is the case, they are fundamentally inactive, a wriggling creature swept into a sea of serendipitous coincidences and a perpetual victim of circumstance. In order for them to be active, they must make things happen.

The story is the tale of a protagonist’s metamorphosis, and thus, the plot is the chrysalis, the change formula. It is the succession of external circumstances strategically designed to ignite transformation. However, protagonists — like people — usually don’t like change. So, regardless of the structure you’re following, your plot is meant to instill, generate, and maximize the most drastic change possible. It carries your darling little sufferer from Life A to Life B.

Depending on the genre and the writer’s sadism-levels, this might involve immense pain. Pain is a powerful and rapid teacher, but discomfort also does the trick. The more the discomfort, the quicker the change. The quicker and more intensely the change occurs, the better the conflict.

Now, the theme is what a story is really about. It expresses the writer’s true point of view, and because the writer is a godlike being, it comes with meaning transcendent of the events that transpired. For example, you might pen a terrible fate for your protagonist in which they transform from a humble intern into a CEO corrupted by greed. Their assigned Dramatic Want is to become their worst self, in order to express a higher theme warning against the temptation of material riches. They are a servant of their writer’s cautionary tale.

The Internal Story vs The External Plot

The internal story of your protagonist is like a map of their struggle to change. The external plot is a deliberately curated succession of events that occur to force them into said change. It can only conclude when the change is achieved, because the ending begins only once the protagonist has earned it.

As a god, you should be intimately aware of your protagonist’s internal arc before working on the plot they are to experience. You should know how they are destined to change first and foremost, because everything that exists within your narrative exists to serve the transformation, the plot included. The plot is just a container. It is the freight train destined to arrive at an intended station, while the internal arc is what/who it is transporting.

When this finally clicked in my mind, floodgates of creativity opened. Plotting was once the bane of my existence, because it involved selecting from a nearly infinite well of experiences and placing them in the best order possible. I’d agonize over where my protagonist should go, what they should do, and when. I’d worry for hours and hours over who they should encounter on their path. Plotting was a doom spiral of dissociation into complete and utter chaos.

Then, I realized the internal arc, the arc of their transformation, should be determined first. Everything else will fall into place to serve it. If my protagonist is a princess who I decree will transform into the worst villain in her kingdom, that is her transformational arc. That is where she must arrive by the end of the narrative. Now, the plot must manifest in a way that serves my mission. Plot points are chosen in order to urge her toward maximum change as quickly as possible.

Where should she go? An environment with the ability to ignite maximum change. What should she do there? Anything that lands her in experiences that ignite maximum change. Who should she meet? Change-igniters.

It’s like the aforementioned freight train manifests around its passenger, and everything about it is designed to serve her journey. If she’s heading from the sunniest city in the world to the most frigid place imaginable, the train is built to take her there. The plot isn’t built around your protagonist, it is built for your protagonist.

The 5-Act Structure

I’m currently working toward my a Masters degree in Creative Writing, and one of my most beloved professors swears by the 5-Act Structure. I used to be quite resistant to writing in structures, but in just a few lectures, he’s changed my perspective almost entirely. Now, I no longer see plot structures and diagrams as a means of shackling the writer. I see them as tools at the ready, eager to serve our darkest and dreamiest visions in storytelling.

In relation to how the protagonist’s internal story relates to the external, my professor broke the 5-Act Structure down like this:

• Act 1: The protagonist is entirely unconscious of their Dramatic Need. Essentially, they have no idea what the writer has in story for them, and no idea who they must become to satisfy the writer’s plan. They are completely and utterly focused on their Dramatic Want, which sits in cruel opposition to their Dramatic Need. They sit in cruel, binary, direct opposition to the person they are destined to become. The Inciting Incident occurs, and they are thrust into the sequence of events that will bring that person — that new, transformed self — into reality.

• Act 2: This is the act in which the protagonist gets glimpses of their transformed self. They won’t necessarily find these glimpses agreeable, but they’re there nonetheless. Here’s where we’ll find the Turning Point, a major, stakes-raising event that makes returning to the previous self more difficult than ever before. It’s like a mini threshold, a point of no return.

• Act 3: Act 3 is where the protagonist finally becomes conscious of their Dramatic Need, of who the story is forcing them to become. They might even act directly from their Dramatic Need, embodying their future self for the first time. Either way, it is at the Midpoint where everything is beginning to click into the place, and given how most people react to change, your protagonist probably won’t like it. The immune system of their former self is fighting for life, fighting for relevance, but the events transpiring require their future self to take over.

• Act 4: Act 4 is basically a hellish vortex of problems that all culminate in one, huge Crisis. At the Crisis, the protagonist is required to choose: Will they finally change, or will they definitely resist and revert? We don’t find out just yet, but no matter what, the Crisis must be of life-or-death significance within the confines of your world. There is no other option, and no way to escape anymore.

• Act 5: At last, we get your protagonist’s Decision. If they choose to own their future self, they absorb them, undergo the final stage of metamorphosis, and emerge a fully-formed butterfly. They act as their Transformed Self, because they are their Transformed Self. The Climax occurs, not because it was planned out, but because it is a direct result and a mandatory consequence of how the protagonist has changed. It was simply… inevitable. Following the Climax, we have the Resolution, where your beloved butterfly’s new reality is presented. There is a new status quo, and there is no going back to the way things were. New beginnings are in order, but we can save those for the sequel.

The same principles can be applied to the 3-Act Structure, the 7-Act Structure, and so on and so forth. Regardless, this formula is a means of funneling chaotic creativity into accessible form. It doesn’t corral the writer, it works alongside them. In many ways, I find it’s just a technical verbalization of something quite intuitive.

I experienced one of the biggest epiphanies of my life while we were discussing this breakdown in class, because I realized life works very much like the 5-Act Structure. Self-development and self-improvement journeys mirror it to an almost eerie degree. I felt like I’d become lucid in a dream, because I had undergone a similarly structure succession of real-life events to become the person I am today. I wouldn’t have been sitting in my dream Masters program without the 5-Act Structure, the change formula, that forced me out of my old reality and into the new.

Life mimics art, and art mimics life. We’re all just protagonists in our own right, gods of reality in both the fictional and literal sense. When I decided I wanted to acquire my Masters, I selected my Transformed Self, whom I did sit in binary opposition to at the time. I craved change, and whether I was conscious of it or not, I was willing to suffer for it. I did suffer for it, but I made it out on the other side, and now… well, here I am.

Concluding Thoughts

Fellow writers, little gods and goddesses, I truly hope this helps you as much as it’s helped me. On paper, it seems tremendously simple, because unconsciously, it’s always made sense. It’s what happens in basically every film and novel on the market. It’s what happens in real life. Now that I recognize it consciously, I feel better equipped to use it to my advantage in my written work and in the art piece of my existence.

Dare to write destiny. Our protagonists live to evolve at our command, and we mustn’t shy away from that. Through their pain, we are able to share our unique perspective of the world with the world. The princess who becomes a villainess changes for the worst so that I – as her writer – can warn audiences of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. The baker who follows their dreams, discovers a magical lineage, and becomes the greatest wizard in the land changes for the better so that I – as her writer – can encourage audiences to believe in their hidden potential. The intern who becomes a CEO, the knight who becomes a king, the mermaid who becomes a human, the human who becomes a beast… they all exist, and they all change, in service to the writer who is in service to their true, authentic heart.

Dare to write your own destiny, as well. Change may not always be comfortable, but as a writer, you know better than anyone that it is always worth it. ♡