The Difference Between Suffering and Struggle in Character Arcs

I’ve not read a new-to-me craft book in a long time. I put myself in time out from studying the craft because I was getting too bothered by finding the right way of doing things that I wasn’t getting any writing done. But I couldn’t resist checking out Lisa Cron’s Story Genius when I discovered my local library has a copy. Several writers I know read it a couple years ago and gushed over how amazing it was, so it’s been on my list for a while.

There in the introduction—before I’d even gotten to the appetizer of information in chapter one—came my first slice of humble pie.

I needed to process that for a minute. Connect it to where else I’d heard things like that:

• Marketing psychology for coaching programs: label the limiting beliefs that keep your prospective clients from achieving their goals.
• Personal development books: you won’t be able to achieve your goals if you don’t change your mindset toward growth and change.
• Therapy and coaching sessions: are you getting in your own way of achieving your goals?
• Personal experience: saying more than once, “They’re mad that they aren’t where they want to be, but they refuse to accept it’s their own fault. They would rather believe everything is unfair and stacked against them than accept they need to make some serious changes in their thinking and attitude before anything will have a chance if working out for them.”

There! That’s what I’ve been trying to understand! That’s what makes a reader care about your main character!

It’s not enough to give a character a fear or limiting belief that holds them back. It has to be something they cling to. Something that feels safe because it’s familiar and the past says it’s true, but leads to a future that looks exactly the same. Change has to be necessary for a different future—and scary because it means new ways to fail that are harder to anticipate.

We cheer for those who do the hard thing even though it’s scary. We want to see them succeed because they’re going for what they want! And maybe they can teach us something about how to go after what we want, too.

We sigh at those who whine without doing anything and expect the rest of the world to wake up one day and decide to hand them their dreams. We don’t look forward to seeing the consequences of their inaction, but we expect it all the same.

This sudden understanding brought to mind a Lynsey Sands novel I reread recently. One of the characters spends most of her time crying and complaining about her circumstances before ultimately being murdered. While tragic, it’s also something of a relief to everyone.

By all accounts, we should feel bad for her. She has a traumatic backstory. All she wants is a secure home and a husband that won’t bother her or drop dead before they’ve been married a year. We should want that for her. We should want her to show some resilience, get out of her room, and find a place where she feels safe and can have her happily ever after. But all she wants to do is stay in her room and cry. Frankly, we’re happiest when she’s doing that, too. Her one feeble attempt at determining her future boils down to crying on the nearest man, then reasoning he’s a convenient option for husband number five (while completely unaware he is not available to her).

If she were the main character, we wouldn’t read more than a few chapters. She’s too passive. There’s no mystery around what will happen to her. She’s going to continue to be unhappy in the same way for the same reasons. She hasn’t intuitively understood what any decent personal development book explains in the first few chapters: you have to be willing to let go of your drama. Stop choosing the options that protect you from failure and guarantee you’ll never succeed.

As writers, we all face these fears when it comes to getting our manuscript critiqued. We ask friends and family for their opinions on our work because they love us and don’t want to hurt our feelings. Are they the most qualified to offer constructive feedback that would give our manuscript its best chance at success? Probably not, unless they’re also in the industry. But accessing them is easy. And as long as that small group likes our work, it’s easy to say anyone outside the group who thinks the story needs work just doesn’t get it and that’s their problem, not ours. We get to see ourselves as the diamond in the rough, whose unique storytelling isn’t mainstream and therefore isn’t given a fair chance by others.

Or we could choose to put our big writer pants on, find a critique group, develop a thick skin, and learn how to make the manuscript better. It’s hard but necessary—and that makes the struggle worthwhile.

Our characters should have the same kind of struggle. Risk looking foolish and inexperienced. Resist the changes that will make them better because what if that makes them someone else? Choose the hard thing that might lead to a step backward because moving in any direction is better than not moving at all.

That’s what it takes to write a character worthy of following to the end of their story.