If you are also intrigued by this question, how do you write a character’s arc?
Welcome to the club.
While writing, reading, or watching a character, whether it is another person or a living being such as some Pixar characters, I notice a pattern that solidifies character arcs.
We can call this the pattern of triads (or “pattern of three“).
So in this blog, we are going to discuss three things (hahaha!):
- What is a character arc?
- What is the pattern of triads, or “three”?
- What is the process of creating a character’s arc?
What is a character arc?
A character arc is the internal journey a character goes through over the course of a story. The character’s beliefs, fears, values, or self-image undergo changes as a result of their experiences.
They begin with a belief about the world, though that belief might be incomplete or flawed, but by the end, that belief has been tested, broken, and reshaped.
That’s the arc.
It’s not about defeating the villain or winning the prize or winning the heart of the princess.
It’s about internal movement: fear turning into courage, selfishness into empathy, and naivety into discernment.
But…
…when you zoom in closer, many satisfying arcs seem to move through three states before that final change sticks.
So, that experience happens in threes, or triads. Why?
This behaviour is due to the constant presence of conflict, which requires a character to find a resolution. Right!
To resolve this conflict, he made an initial attempt that was quite naive. However, it wasn’t the most effective attempt. After the first failure or partial success, he tries a second attempt, which might be quite different or extreme on the opposite side of the same spectrum. But now he finds failure or partial success. So….
Now, after attempting both extremes, he tries to find a balance between them, where the absolute resolution awaits him (I am using ‘he’ for simplicity; the character can also be ‘she’).
In his final attempt, he combines the best aspects of both approaches and accepts the partial failure, which he now considers manageable.
That’s why the hero gets success on his third attempt at love (Bachna Ae Haseeno), a quite common one.
What is the pattern of triads?
Through this lens, as I began to pay close attention to stories, not just to the events that occur but also to the internal experiences of the characters on screen or on the page, I noticed a recurring pattern.
Again and again, I see characters cycle through:
- an unaware or innocent version (their starting version to resolve the conflict)
- a reactive or overcorrecting version (their second attempt for the resolution through this version)
- a balanced version (the third attempt with a more integrated and balanced approach)
They don’t jump from flawed to wise.
They swing.
They try something and get hurt, like, really bad. And then they swear “never again”, the second attempt, blocking or avoiding what once they needed the most. But later on, find a quieter, sturdier truth that lies in the middle of both, in between wanting and letting go, in between obsession and being nonchalant, and in the middle of building and breaking.
This doesn’t just happen in fiction.
It happens in people.
Which is probably why it works so well.
Stage One: The Unaware Self
At the beginning of many stories, the character is operating with limited information.
They may be idealistic, reckless, overly trusting, emotionally closed, people pleasers, or convinced they already understand how life works.
Let’s take an example with the amazing recent movie of Tom Hanks, A Man Named Otto.
They aren’t stupid.
They’re simply untested.
This is the version of a person who hasn’t yet paid the cost of their worldview.
In relationships, this might look like giving too much, bending too easily, and believing love alone fixes everything.
In adventure stories, it might be the hero who thinks courage means charging forward without fear.
There is usually something admirable here.
And something dangerously incomplete.
Stage Two: The Reactive Self
Then something breaks.
A betrayal.
A failure.
A loss.
A humiliation.
This is where many characters swing hard in the opposite direction.
The trusting person becomes suspicious.
The gentle one becomes sharp.
The reckless one becomes rigid.
The selfish one becomes desperate to prove themselves.
This is not wisdom yet.
It’s armour.
The character isn’t solving the original flaw; they are just replacing it with a new extreme.
In the first phase, the character is at one end of the spectrum, while in this stage, they find themselves at the opposite end of the same spectrum.
This is often the ugliest version of the protagonist or the character.
And that’s important.
Stories feel fake when characters skip this stage, because in real life most of us don’t become balanced immediately after getting hurt.
We become defensive first.
Stage Three: The Integrated Self
Only later. Usually after more mistakes, and many, many times later, does the third version appear.
This character doesn’t return to who they were in the beginning.
They now shift towards the extremes of the spectrum and find balance in the middle. They are acknowledging and attempting to control the shortcomings of both sides’ strategies.
They are informed now.
In relationships, or romance novels, this might look like loving again but with boundaries.
In adventure stories, courage becomes paired with caution.
In moral stories, conviction becomes tempered by humility.
That is what makes the ending feel deserved.
How to write character arcs? For Writers
Though readers and cinephiles can also use it to understand their characters better, this might be a good lens.
But if you are a writer, then writers can use this to figure out how to write character arcs that feel authentic. Try asking:
- What is my character naive about in the beginning?
- What extreme do they swing towards after some event or force makes them abandon that belief?
- What do they finally let go of and accept to find the balance?
Don’t rush them from one to three.
Obviously, in most of the stories, our characters are running through a single stage or different parts of a single stage. They didn’t get a resolution but left the story at a positive turning point. An example is the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Closing thought
I don’t think growth is linear.
I think it zigzags.
This zigzag pattern, known as the pattern of triads or threes, is used to create character arcs.
P.S: Well, I’m working on my project, as you know, Project SWAS, so this blog is kind of linked to that story.
