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Great topic. Sometimes you put your character through a bunch of stuff and it changes him/her in a way that's somewhat different than expected. It might be in many ways the same story, but you realize the emotional arc has changed. I think it can be better to go with what how the character and story evolve rather than forcing something that no longer feels right. For example, I can imagine that Clarice's "arc" in Silence of the Lambs might have involved some differing possibilities at first. Maybe the writer began with the idea that what she needed most was to learn confidence, but then it made more sense to make her an over-achieving, super determined character from the moment we meet her. So the journey becomes one of daring to look deeper into herself so she can understand how to catch the killer. I think there's a balance between being able to carefully think through the story beforehand and still allowing room for exploration. Especially in a spec script.

Agree, Kevin. There has to be a synergy between the Protagonist's metamorphosis and the events of the Plotline. It's inevitable. Carl Jung suggested that our task as individuals is to get in touch with all aspects of our psyche, and if we don't, the universe CREATES CIRCUMSTANCES which FORCE US to do so. Extrapolate that to a story, that means the events of the narrative are by definition connected to the Protagonist's psychological journey. To me, that suggests the best place to start the story-crafting process is with character, and specifically the Protagonist. This is also why the idea trumpeted by some -- to look for the Protagonist's 'flaw' -- is itself flawed. That is too narrow a perspective about a Protagonist, we need to open it up to look at the entire psyche of the character, identify the key foundational dynamics at play, and see how ALL of them impact and play into the Plotline.

I totally agree with the 'arc' rant. I think it was Julie Delphi at the recent FIND forum who said her characters have no arc. There's no need to arc. Your character can go through all kinds of stuff and remain the same. Does Bruce Willis arc in Die Hard, one of the greatest scripts? I don't think so. He remains a good old John McClain, just dong my job, yippee-ki-yea MoFo. BTW Julie Delphi also says she has no mentor (perhaps next week's useless word). There is no one who ever achieved where she wants to go. In the age of the internet you can get a plethora of info from many great filmmakers or writers you may look up to without having to be "mentored" by them.

I tend to hang in the "just go with your gut" camp. I love learning about my characters as I write. And no matter how much prep I do on the front end, my characters always seem to unturn a few stones halfway (or more) through a script. Then I have to bring myself back to reality. And I inevitably do more "prep" in the middle of my process. A rather oxymoronic (or maybe just moronic) concept when I think about it. But it works, for me. I just feel like I need to let the characters and plot mature a bit throughout the process of writing. Then I reel it back in to stay on track. But that's not to say I won't discover more nuggets along the way that steer the whole thing off course again - and on to a better one.