On Writing: Redemption Arcs!

last week a patron challenged me to make a video on reducing arcs without ever mentioning Zuko and you know what challenge rejected who do you think I am of course I'm gonna talk about Zuko and perhaps a little bit too much detail hence why I'm wearing my Fire Nation pendant and my avatar shirt and my Zuko background in protests so let's talk about ways to make Redemption hogs work and your story with your characters also at home super excited sabers my book on writing and world building is out now over on Amazon links down below and thank you so much to those of you ever viewed it already so kindly and it is important so please do leave a review once you get a copy it really helps me really helps the book what I mean to say is that if my own writing series or onward building series has been helpful to your book or to building your D&D world then it would mean so much for you to go get either the ebook would just super cheap or a pimp back down at the link below and I'ma stand whether it's launched with four thousand five hundred copies sold already and also congratulations to Jesse Kirkman over on patreon for winning this month signed copy if you want to win a signed copy yourself then just sign up with me over on patreon all the links down below when we think of redemption arcs we like to think of characters going from villain to hero but it's not as simple as that and the reason for that is people look a character doesn't need to be a die-hard villain to need Redemption from past actions in Shakespeare's King Lear Lear is just a complex character who undergoes a Redemption from a life of arrogance anger and selfishness that cause a strife and leads to the horrific death of his daughter Cordelia he gains humility patience and empathy by the end of it Aang is an even more extreme example as literally a titular protagonist who is a pacifist but he undergoes a Redemption arc as well from running away from his duties to facing up to his responsibilities as the avatar people are complicated and anyone even heroes can do terrible and misguided things that they or others feel that they need to be redeemed from so under stemming this how much we write a Redemption ugh well these arcs tend to start one of three ways one the character begins without feeling any remorse or guilt and doesn't comprehend their wrongs at all Scrooge and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol who doesn't give a thought at all to how his selfishness affects others to the character made partly comprehend their wrongs but they continue to do so out of misplaced priorities Zucco from Avatar The Last Airbender is literally the best example in the history of the universe of this or three the characters wrongdoing comes from problems that they acknowledge they have but struggle to redeem themselves from to overcome like Indo nods captain spirit where Charles Erickson's struggles with alcoholism intense anger issues and addiction any of these three sit ups are used for both protagonists and antagonists but the third one tends to make them more relatable and likeable because they at least acknowledge their wrongs whichever setup you have there's a helpful tool to use which we're going to call the trifecta of the redemption arc which are three things what your character feels is at stake for them how they view themselves and how they view the world throughout their story the way the character was acting beforehand will become incompatible with how these three things change in Beauty and the Beast the Beast is full of selfishness self-pity and you might say he has mild anger issues the stakes are that he wants to be left alone to wallow in self-pity he views the world as cruel and to have abandoned him and he views himself as irredeemable but as the story progresses the stakes change he wants Belle to love him his view of himself changes he is not arid eMobile but capable of good things and with this acting with anger selfishness and self-pity is no longer compatible he has to change the way he acts towards others and throughout the story these differing perceptions compete til they culminate in his eventual Redemption though as a note the beasts view of the world didn't actually change right through to the end of the story he still views the world as against him which to be fair isn't exactly an unreasonable take away from no not every part of your characters trifecta needs to change for it to be an effective Redemption arc but how do these things actually change well the answer is gradually you don't want it to come out of nowhere otherwise it feels like oh is it did it so let's go through three common story threads use to change how characters view themselves view the world and what's at stake the first is confronting the character with the reality and gravity of their actions this is precisely what happens to Tony Stark and Iron Man when he is captured by terrorists and he realizes that hey his weapons are facilitating a cycle of violence across the world against both good and bad people alike haha the second is a radical shift in circumstances that changes their perspective this is exactly what happens to Jaime Lannister in Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series he goes from the greatest swordsman and the finest Dharma feasting and castles to a handless prisoner spending time amongst the small folk Jaime is humbled he learns respect and he finds new ways to deal with conflict beyond violence the third is perhaps the oldest kind of Redemption arc someone entering their lives that pushes them to change most clearly demonstrated and characters like Belle lore Laura and James Mangold's Logan who pushes Wolverine towards Redemption as a side note the redemptive love of a woman is a pretty old and used trope so if you're wanting to be unique consider finding a new dynamic to work with maybe it's someone they want to impress like Artemis has his mother pressuring him to stop criminal work well they have a younger sibling or child who they want to love them like Henry and Regina in once upon a time fundamentally it is these competing old and new perceptions of the stakes views of oneself and views of the world that create the inner conflict driving the redemption arc this is usually accomplished effectively in stories where the character has to make a lot of decisions big and small that bring these older new perceptions into conflict with one another as the character evolves for example Roy Mustang in full meal Alchemist Brotherhood participated in pretty much a genocide but he still views himself as fundamentally good because he views the state he serves as a force for justice and order in the world but his view of the world changes when he realizes that a state run by a guy called the Fuhrer yet no kidding is in fact evil this brings his view of himself as good into conflict with his view of the world and he has to make a decision does he stay with the state this forces him to change now you might have noticed that I haven't mentioned the embodiment of your teenage angst phase yet and that's because we're going to tie all of this together and talk about how all of these things fit in to Zuko's Redemption arc in wonderful painfully close detail and the reason for that is that a lot of the stuff is quite technical so following a single example tends to make it easier at the beginning the stakes are that Zuko wants his father's love and his honor he views himself as dishonored because he wasn't obedient and isn't as strong at firebending as his sister and he used the war as the fire nation's way of spreading their prosperity to the rest of the world and he is simply playing his part in it because of this he often hurts others burns whole villages and rejects friendships but this trifecta gradually changes the first thing to begin changing is how he views himself in terms of what makes him honourable largely catalyzed by someone being in his life as a positive influence his uncle Iroh succeeding wisdom chick since 2005 despite believing that power obedience and conviction are the most important ways of being honorable and that emotion makes you weak as early as episode 12 Zuko recognizes that he should have put the safety of his crew before his need to appease his father and he actually apologizes for doing so this is further challenged by relationships that he builds where he finds honor and respect and treating others with kindness across a story the writers repeatedly placed Zuko in positions where he has to choose between these old and new views of himself and as he does the spark of compassion grows brighter into compassion for villages he has never met - even ARPA the avatars sky-bison we can see the influence Iroh has on him from early on slowly breaking downs egos perceptions of honor and power and reinforcing the idea that kindness and compassion make one honorable the second thing to begin changing is how he views the world largely facilitated by a major shift in circumstances and being confronted by the reality of his actions like we talked about before during his exile in Zuko alone he begins to see how the war is not a righteous way of spreading peace and prosperity as he had thought but it is tearing families apart and spreading fear these two parts of his Redemption are actually feed into one another quite nicely seeing kindness and compassion as important to being honorable means also recognizing the harm in how the Fire Nation is neither kind nor compassionate in its war with all of this and zuko story the stakes are the last thing to change he still wants his father's approval his love to be honourable in his eyes and his position as crown prince as he grows the stakes become incompatible with these evolving views though his father says that capturing the avatar will bring him back his honor but doing this would be neither kind nor compassionate taking Quebec his position at his father's side would mean enabling a war that he now knows to be unjust and here's where we get to mistakes because it's important to keep in mind they're like any puzzle on the telus principle currently yet if I be sent off on Steam one of my favorite games of all time get it why time off topic people ugh and part of that is remembering that breaking deeply harmful habits needs and desires is hard as the story progresses these new perceptions will mean that your character makes small decisions differently and then later big decisions differently but it's a lot more convincing when the character also has a number of moral failures along the redemption path Zuko has lots of small examples but as big one is in crossroads of destiny where despite having defended innocence seen the reality of the war and reformed much of who he is the desire to have his father's affection is too strong and he chooses to side with the Fire Nation once more the writers continually placed him in a position where he had to make hard decisions with these two competing ideas of what makes an honorable fighting inside him and sometimes he made the wrong decision failures can also be really effective motivators if it allows the reader to see how your character responds when they finally get what they thought was at stake like in Jack's films the movie where he finally defeats his arch-nemesis and then sees that well it doesn't really care about being evil in the end for Zuko only after regaining his position his honor his respect in his father's eyes could he recognize that his father's love isn't real love and that respect merely through his position as Crown Prince isn't real respect all of this culminates in his confrontation with his father where he explicitly addresses how the stakes the views of himself in his views of the world [Music] [Music] it's multi-dimensional it doesn't just rely on one kind of experience to put him on the path to redemption and requires multiple facets of him to change so how might we structure all of this in a Redemption arc a gripping and convincing Redemption arc will not look like this but more like this consider these three acts structure when deciding these specific decisions that your character will fail or succeed in it may be effective to place big decisions with consequences at the end of each act with smaller decisions spaced in between hypothetically they might fail in the first act then they might make good smaller decisions in the second act before they fail at its end and then they might finally succeed in the big decision of the third act this will help it flow with the tension of the rest of the story if you're going to take away any one thing from all of this it should be that the eventual triumph of the redemption arc is made all the more empowering not by the successes along the way but the failures its the failures that build tension towards future successes and thus make it more emotionally investing but there is one interesting subversion of all of this in the failed Redemption arc when the character is on the path to redemption but they never quite make it and they end up slipping back into old harmful ways which isn't common but it is interesting this happens when they reach that point where something in their trifecta has to give way and either the wrong part gives way or they can't decide at all in Victor Hugo's layman's a Tarbes Avia's view of himself comes into conflict with his view of the world he sees himself as a just man because he follows the law to the letter but he now realizes that you can be good outside the law whereas a usual arc would result in a final good decision in the third act unable to choose between these two views he kills himself but keep in mind that there is a reason these arcs are less common failed Redemption arcs risk undermining the tension you built throughout the rest of the story so when this does work the failure usually serves some wider thematic purpose otherwise it can feel hollow undoing character development simply for the sake of subverting your rails expectations is not satisfying writing one example is golems near Redemption and in failure it plays into the wider philosophy of Tolkien's work about mercy and human evil which by the way I made a whole video onion you should go check it out I'm really proud of that one actually but developing a convincing character changes only one half of it what does actually mean for a character to be redeemed is that enough for them to simply stop doing bad things some writers choose to focus on what happens after they've already had a change in heart and while there are lots of ways to write really great Redemption stories I tend to find the most convincing ones employ a degree of symmetry this is where the character is seeking forgiveness and to make amends and they take redemptive action throughout the story that reflects their wrongs or failings in the past often resulting in a sense of poetic justice one way of doing this is by letting them make a decision that they never could have before often by eking a choice in the first date with a choice in the third act of the story in khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner the character Amir feels intense guilt after failings intervened to protect his friend son in contrast Hassan loses his life protecting something of Amir's the third out of the novel deals with Amir's redemption as he intervenes to save Hassan's son from an abuse of orphanage here the redemption is gained through action that directly reflects where they failed before in this story they couldn't intervene because they were selfish and cowardly and now they intervened to save a son son in a brave and selfless act redeemed to vex their fleet character flaws or wrongdoings before are also more emotionally resonant because it shows the character has come to deeply understand the harm they caused before merely recognizing the harm isn't really enough mending relationships and preventing future harm is also part of redemption and this point also allows you to generate character complex mending relationships is complicated perhaps people don't trust the reformed character the more you say that you'll do something the less people will believe you and just because the readers seen the psychological change doesn't mean that the characters have so if you're wanting this kind of conflict happen then have the readers see the change but don't show the other characters or maybe the other person simply cannot forgive them after what they did sometimes trauma stays with us to the point that forgiveness is impossible or at least they can't rebuild a relationship to any meaningful extent you can't always undo the harm that you've done which is precisely the position that Ward actually finds myself in in agents of shield however this doesn't mean that they can't be redeemed there are different types of redemption hamlets redemption is wholly personal while with Jean Valjean is mostly about him gaining redemption in the eyes of society and God now the reason that this works for Shakespeare's Hamlet is that though his decisions do affect others most of the focus most of the dramatic tension comes down to how his decisions affect him his suicidality his madness his intense guilt and where the redemption comes from can help structure your story following our discussion on mistakes you might consider who suffers the consequences of their big decisions at the end of each act a Redemption that comes from who those affected most will be most emotionally resonant this is why it's satisfying when Hamlet sees himself as redeemed from his indecisiveness before even though the characters around him see him as mad and jealous and so we come to a trope that is often not done particularly well Redemption equals death this is where character dies often anurag sacrifice and supposedly this is their Redemption there are a few reasons that this is often not that compelling most importantly simply having the character die usually lacks that element of symmetry for a classic example that I'm not commenced by literally talked about Darth Vader yeah I know hear me out so his sudden turn in returned the Jedi to sacrifice his life to save Luke doesn't mean that he a grasped the horror and trauma that he has inflicted on literally millions and be it doesn't mean that he truly regrets what he did as far as the audience is concerned and it can arguably only kiss when his actions hurt someone that he cares about and it's not clear that he sees what he did as entirely unjustified that's not really much of a redemption or at least it's a particularly shallow one the second reason is that it assumes giving up one's life is the most meaningful thing that one can do to face up to the past but this simply isn't true they escape the consequent of directions by not having to face the victims mend relationships or deal with ongoing guilt all of which are arguably more meaningful and definitely more relatable for an audience who has never experienced death well probably you might have I don't know now all of this doesn't mean that it can't be compelling for a character to die in their moment of redemption or have a redemptive arc where death is just the final punctuation mark one example of this is actually Theon Greyjoy floors abound in the final season of Game of Thrones but Theon was actually given a thematically fitting into a long and painful Redemption arc after turning on bran Stark and taking Winterfell Theon goes through the grueling struggle where he has to mend relationships with Jon and Sansa who hate him for what he did and he deals with deep-seated guilt constantly and he eventually means his relationship with the boy he ultimately betrayed bran we see that he grasped the gravity of what he did but it's his death that really has that symmetry we talked about where once he threatened to kill bran in his home and Winterfell he now dies defending him there but let's put all this together in a summary one redemption arcs are not only for villains but everyone including hero characters to consider how the three points stakes views of self and views of world for your character change from beginning to end which one begins change first second and last it is these competing factors older new perceptions that create the inner conflict driving the redemption arc 3 as the story progresses they will make small decisions differently and later big decisions differently consider which specific decisions they will fail in morally which they will be most conflicted in in which they will succeed in throughout the story structuring these decisions around the 3x structure is usually effective for one of successes allowing the character to make mistakes is what makes the eventual triumph more empowering as well as convincing and emotionally investing because it gives the feeling of real tension it can be effective to have this culminate and presenting them with a similar choice in the first and third X each time choosing differently five common Redemption story threads are a confronting the character with a reality of directions be a radical shift on circumstances and see someone entering their lives as a positive influence in sex effective redemptions often entails some kind of poetic justice and symmetry this is more emotionally resonant because it shows the characters deep self-reflection and understanding of the harm they caused death equals redemption often likes and the symmetry which is why it's often less compelling whether this doesn't mean that it can't be done well

Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 309,041

Rating: 4.9705019 out of 5

Keywords: explained, analysis, how to, on writing, on worldbuilding, writing, authortube, king lear, shakespeare, zuko, aang, katara, sokka, relationship, avatar, the last airbender, legend of korra, fullmetal

Id: TB_3LF7uoNc

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 15 2019