DZ-131: Negative Character Arcs vs Negative Feelings

Listen to learn how to control your audience’s perception of your character arcs.

In our fourth entry into our series on character arcs, we explore both what makes an audience perceive a character arc to be “negative” AND separately what makes the audience feel negative about a character arc. The individual arc, as Chas puts it, is only one lever.

We dive into BACKROOMS, IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU and ANATOMY OF A FALL, further developing craft tools we’ve looked at earlier in the series - repeated character beats, emotional events, operant conditioning - as well exploring newer ones in more depth, such as relationship questions and symbolism.

And the tool we crystallise the most this episode is the relationship question — a sibling to plot, character, and thematic questions. Ask it and you often find the arc the film wants you to notice isn't the main character's at all. In ANATOMY OF A FALL the ostensible lead is Sandra, on trial for her husband's death — but the arc that is the most developed (and the most negative) most belongs to Daniel, the son, forced onto the trial stand to choose a truth.

We also talk BLUE MOON, GOODFELLAS, SCARFACE, EMILY THE CRIMINAL, WOLF OF WALL STREET, REVENGE OF THE SITH, SAINT OMER, BLADE RUNNER 2049, APOLLO 13, and whether blood-splatter analysis still counts as evidence anywhere.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

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→ Read the transcript for this episode.