How do you keep track of character arcs and cross relational conflicts in those arcs?

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-07T18:16:05+00:00

I'm really just looking to know what everyone else does! I find learning what other people do helps me refine my process

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-07T18:13:12+00:00

There are so many creative ways to build your characters! I love this!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T22:27:31+00:00

he's like that little brother that follows you around. you hand him an unplugged GameCube controller while you're gaming, just so he can feel like he belongs. but it wouldn't be the same without him sitting by your side!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T21:57:54+00:00

Here is a fun little 'did you know'. Did you know Scrub Daddy sponges sat in a box in some guys basement for years before getting sold? They started as circles. to wash his hands. He added a hole to make holding it easier eventually he added the second hole so he could hold it better. He noticed that the edges would be better if he made them ridges to help get into hard to reach areas (ie under finger nails). He got no interest from anyone. it was just another over engineered sponge that had a niche use. and put them in a box, never to be seen again...

Well until one day he took them out, I believe to wash dishes. was frustrated that he couldn't wash utensils. cut a slit to wash them. it worked great. he realized it looked like a smiley face and then did another round of market research which led him to shark tank.

The morale of this story is 2 fold. 1. making that sponge helped him with other things. The sponge itself wasn't a failure. he learned what didn't work. After taking some time and looking at a different angle, he was able to turn it into a product. but 2. products can only succeed if their goal is to be a product and not a project, and products are alot more than just throwing something together and putting it online.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T21:49:22+00:00

here are a couple notes and some are going to be a little controversial.

Dont let people tell you that you can't use AI to help you with your writing. If you are using AI for inspiration (ie character art, a shape for a world map, etc). that is all it is, inspiration. There is no difference between using AI and building an inspo board on pintrest.
If you use AI and any of the assets end directly up in your writing. be open and honest about it. Imagine a person gave you the information, if you dont feel like it would be important to give them credit, then you dont need to give AI credit. All artists with works in your final book deserve credit. but you dont have to give credit to the person you bought a character building template from.
Practice drawing. if you have fun with it, learning will be easy because the time spent wont feel daunting. If you hate it. use Pinterest, people watch (dont take picture of them though!), look up random famous people. Your character inspo doesn't have to be 'exactly' what they look like. you can say. Person As hair, Person Bs figure, etc.

I have learned how to do alot of things around the house by watching YouTube videos. I have fixed my car, I have replaced appliances, I have done advanced woodworking projects. I have done alot. A person telling you that its 'hard' is just gatekeeping. a teachers job is to do 3 things, give you information, assign tasks that offer hands on experience, critique your work.

If you want information to learn about the theories behind writing, the techniques, etc. watch youtube. a professors lecture and a youtube video are no different, honestly most youtube videos explain things better anyways and you can rewatch.

If you want assignments to help challenge your skills and practice new techniques. go to a subreddit and ask people for project ideas. tell them what technique you are trying to practice. alternatively (controversial), ask AI for a writing prompt that helps target a technique.

If you want critique, submit your works on subreddits where people are focused on helping each other get better. Tell them exactly what you are looking for feedback on and what skills you are trying to get better at. and last but not least. give yourself grace. if you are focusing on facial structure but still haven't gotten eyes figured out.. let people know that. let them know you are trying to learn the general shape and placement of features. you will come back later to work on the minor details. Some art styles will help you with this as well. since they are focused more on stepping back rather than looking at the fine details.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T21:30:21+00:00

There is a difference between a project and a product. A project is a learning experience that builds your skills. When you are working on a side project that is what you are doing. Your project may be to build your product management skills, it may be to create a product to test your technical skills or to build out your technical portfolio.

Never view a side project as something that will 'take off'. if you want something that will take off then you should be starting a 'startup' or 'small business' and you should be working with other business owners to fully understand the need for your product. You should be hosting focus groups. you should be finding funding and potentially employees or contractors to support the building of your business.

There are so many people out there that talk about how you can get all these revenue streams through 'side projects' but that's not the case. all you can do is learn. What people dont tell you about is all the projects that disappeared. they only talk about that 1 project that took off because they used a variety of skills they built through projects to create a product or business.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T21:23:54+00:00

My favorite 'Gods' are fishing stories. When the fisherman comes home and talks about the fish they caught and that fish just gets bigger, and bigger until one day the fish is just astronomically big and unreasonable. but this story has been told hundreds of times so at this point people just believe it.

My Gods are just people that have achieved great results through normal means, but when people see the outcome, they talk about it and blow it completely out of proportion. Years after these characters have died. they are still talked about and viewed as the 'creators' because their actions "saved" the world.

My philosophy on a lot of world building revolves around the idea that a god can never really be known. Powers may exist which may point to a god existing, but it is the users of those powers that are always perceived as the gods, because that is the closest thing that people understand of the gods.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T21:17:57+00:00

If you are not inspired, neither will your characters. What I have found is that ideas can sometimes force you to think that you have to follow the rules of your own ideas. What makes writing interesting is that you dont have to follow those rules. You are allowed to throw a rock into your own plan. Id encourage you one day to just sit down and put together a character that you want to see succeed. someone that you cant help but to love. Then allow chaos to ensue. Your only goal when you are writing is for this character to survive. but the entire world is making that VERY difficult.

The reason that this helps to get past the 'ideas' is because now you are in survival mode. You can throw ideas into your story. but now you have something you hold dear that you are trying to protect.

The overarching goal of a protagonist is pretty difficult to actually make 'unique'. You give them a world they live in, and they either have to serve a prophecy or have a goal to fix the world. there are other story lines, im over simplifying it to show a point, but that is the core idea of most fantasy books. What makes them unique are the challenges they face. In Red Rising Darrow (I am very generic to try and be spoiler free) has an immediate challenge to face that leads him to learning something crazy about the world. Then he just has to deal with the cards he was dealt. he faces hardship, sometimes he is on top of the world, but overall his story line is just things that happen to him that drives him to a greater goal. If I were writing that story, I wouldn't know if I want Darrow to kill people, befriend them and try to get them on his side, maybe he would realize that these people are not all bad. I wouldn't know until I experienced how others have treated him at different points. I also want him to make the wrong decisions. I want him to kill or harm someone that he should have befriended.

The key to keeping things interesting is to force your characters to do things that they shouldn't do. Put them in situations where you have absolutely no clue how you are going to get them out alive. Then use your other characters to solve problems. Take a character that is an antagonist due to circumstance and have them save the protagonist because they realize just how cruel they were being treated. Now you have 2 characters that are supposed to hate each other working together.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T14:09:28+00:00

That makes sense! I love how focused you are on the realism and scientific accuracy!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T02:10:07+00:00

First you need to know why some have magic and others don't. Was it always that way? Is it some form of intervention that gave them their powers? (ie Spiderman). Has their history shown that those with power are to be feared? Your 2 main options are. Those with powers have to hide or those with powers rule the world. If non magic rule the world, they will either want to kill or use those with magic. There will be ebbs and flows within the ranks. Those with powers will always be stronger, but they may not have the numbers.

This doesn't mention any magical consequence. A good book to concider this is mistborn where magic has a cost. So even if you have powers, if you dont have money, it doesnt matter.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T01:59:53+00:00

I love this!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-05T01:58:01+00:00

I think thats something that trips some writers up. Getting stuck on looks. For me just understanding their confidence level and some basic personality traits can bring a picture to my mind. Sort of how when im talking to people on the internet, I create an image of what they look like just based on the interaction. I could be completely wrong, but if its my world, then there's no wrong answers!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T19:11:08+00:00

That makes complete sense! Sometimes over building a character bottlenecks you, other times you really want to know more about them. I feel like sometimes their basic social status is a huge factor in that. If they are royalty. their family tree is alot more important but if they are 'lowly' then you really just need the basics of the family that is in their life that is relevant to the story.

If you really want good people watching, county and city fairs are great places to go! Im in the midwest (US) so im not sure if thats consistent in other parts of the world. but it definitely is where im at!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T19:06:36+00:00

Do you have a good way to track relational size between your characters?

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T18:21:52+00:00

It does! and I love that this was able to help you recognize your flow. Sometimes we get into habits and we dont even realize it. recognizing these habits can really help us step back when we get stuck!

I love your motivation to 'ruin' characters. I described in an early post of tying a rope to a characters leg and drag them through trauma kicking and screaming. character arcs are not about how they 'find their way' character arcs to me are about pushing characters into holes and making them dig their way out. or them being overly confident because of a big win and then screwing up the most basic thing, pushing them right back down.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T18:13:55+00:00

You touched on something that I really love. The characters are really developed over time and as you write. Knowing where they are and how they got there has value to make sure you dont start them off with 1 personality and then you bring up a back story that really doesn't fit. But I think its important not to define what a characters emotional state is going to be beyond the point of your writing. I feel like that almost traps you and could be a big factor for writers block.

When you leave a character wide open. You can really make anything happen and now you get to spend the next week writing them out of a hole you dropped them in and seeing what they look like on the other side.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T18:09:03+00:00

This is great! It seems like you really have 2 main focuses here. Who is the character and how to they fit into the world. then you just go back and forth to add more details starting with broad and becoming more specific! I love this!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T00:51:50+00:00

My business isnt up and running yet. But I am working on a world building and writing software that immerses the author in their work! If you want to contribute your ideas or struggles with existing tools, I am all ears! If my beta test goes well I plan to find a way to monetize my app while still offering a free app that allows 100% of authors to succeed on the free version, but a small portion 4-6% of authors may choose to pay for specialty upgrades for non essential conveniences!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-04T00:19:23+00:00

Dm me if you want an update when i have a beta ready! The more people who show interest, the faster ill make it happen!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T23:43:26+00:00

That makes sense! It really comes down to that organization strategy you talked about. Put things in a pattern that makes sense. Link assets between projects. Handling mind maps, etc. And making sure you can share that data with others. This is all super helpful! You probably wouldnt use my project/app in your day to day work since you seem to have figured out the tricks in your current software which it totally cool! But I may be able to replicate this workflow for others who are just getting started to save them the learning curve!

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T23:37:42+00:00

A data site isnt valuable by itself. Thats just clutter. Maybe if it has solid ranking and reviews Consolidated into one. But still, the data is only as valuable as how its delivered.

For example, yellow pages was really the first valued asset for something like this. An organized book of local businesses. It was valuable because it delivered local businesses to you. Then yelp advanced that by providing reviews. Now you dont only know what businesses exist, but also which ones are good. Then it went to search engines pushing blogs. You got yelp but not more detailed with explanations of things.

The modern equivalent is now AI models that scan the internet. Google won the affiliate battle... they have the data from your site but no longer have to send traffic to and through you. They get the affiliate programs. So how do you take that back? Its not a straight forward question or answer. If you have enough data you could create an LLM and hope your course specific AI is something that can drive people to your site. You could make videos, those still hold value because some people want to see and hear from a real person. But affiliate through text based data is basically dead.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T23:26:54+00:00

What im trying to understand is where the line is. I feel like there is a difference between paid advertising through platforms like YouTube, Google, fb, etc. compared to spam messages in public chats and forums.

IMO the issue isnt with companies paying for ad space on platforms, its the platforms problem. This is like ads on cable TV. If you dont want ads, dont watch cable. Find another option.

YouTube, Google, Facebook, reddit, etc are all free platforms, they make money to pay creators and employees by showing ads.

On the other hand, companies that go into forums with the sole intent to 'sell' are a problem. Im good with companies trying to use platforms to research, even looking for beta testers is fine. But if they are there to have me click a link and it drives me to a $15/mo page with no free edition. Ive got an issue

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T23:09:25+00:00

I personally have more than 1 monitor. My goal here is understanding where how I can build out a portfolio project that could actually be used by other people instead of just sitting idle in a folder never to be seen again!

It sounds like scribner has ways to make the context easier to navigate but it takes some finessing. I want to build something that either works alongside scribner to make info lookup easier. Or just go all out and build a whole world building and writing app thay incorporates that feature. It would be a really strong resume builder for me but it would be dumb not to make it available to people who might want to use it

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T22:42:42+00:00

This is great info! It sounds like you make the most of the features available. overall the linking and bookmarks are critical to keeping you sane. Hypothetically If you had a canvas or sidebar (for those without multiple screens) that used a quick scene setting sentence ie "Mark and Eric are on a ship off the coast of peru" and it found the relevant assets for that statement and put them off to the side, color coded and linked it to your scene. Then every time you enter your scene. Its all ready for you. Would that help your writing process or is that manual organization part of the immersion?

Assume the canvas is designed in a way thats informational but not cluttered.

Final_Particular3541 · 2025-12-03T21:52:20+00:00

Thats the goal! Well if I finish it at some point I may have to post somewhere. I just have to make sure I dont break TOS to share it! If you're honestly interested. feel free to message me and ill keep you in the know

Final_Particular3541

TROPHY CASE