Kim Fielding here, and today I’m thinking about character arcs. What’s that, you ask? It’s the personal transformation that a character goes through as a story progresses. It’s not the same as the story arc, which is the series of events that unfold—i.e., the plot—although the character and story arcs are connected and influence each other.

Some character arcs are flat. Consider, for example, the Disney version of Cinderella. Cindy begins as a sweet but abused girl who’s kind to mice and birds even while her evil stepfamily takes advantage of her. Cue the fairy godmother and the World’s Most Clueless Prince. At the end of the story, Cindy gets to live in luxury in the palace, so her circumstances are very different. But as far as we can tell, her personality hasn’t changed a whit.

I find flat character arcs unsatisfying and boring. I’d much prefer to read about one of Cindy’s stepsisters, who begins as selfish and cruel, but who—through some series of unfolding events—realizes the error of her ways and redeems herself. Wouldn’t that be more interesting?

Flat character arcs are boring for villains too, incidentally. Snow White’s stepmother, the Queen, begins the story as vain and evil, and she stays that way until she falls off that cliff. Yawn. Wouldn’t her story be much more fascinating if she’d started off as pretty ordinary, maybe even fairly decent, until something turned her toward darkness?

Outside of fairy tales, there are many wonderful characters who come across poorly at the beginning of the story. In Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep, for instance, Dan Torrance begins as an alcoholic who commits some fairly atrocious acts. If we know what he went through in The Shining, we can understand how he became much a miserable adult, but still. He’s pretty unlikable. He doesn’t even like himself. In Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, Shadow begins as a passive and morally ambiguous ex-con. Oh, and what about Roy in Bladerunner—a violent bad guy who, we finally learn (as does Deckard), might not be as evil as we thought. One of my personal favorite character arcs involves Spike the vampire, who begins as a murderous demon (who does, at least, love his girl) and ends up saving the world.

I adore the redemptive arc. But while we can find it throughout literature, it’s trickier to pull off in romance. Romance readers need to be rooting for the relationship to work out, for the characters to get their HEA, and that means they have to like the characters. If a guy comes off as a jerk right as the story opens, it’s hard for readers to buy into the tale at all.

Nevertheless, some of us write that arc in romance anyway, maybe because we love our flawed characters. Maybe because it’s so satisfying to see even troubled people find a path to love and happiness. So I hope readers are willing to stick with me when a character begins as a cocky foul-mouthed kid (Nevin), or an middle-aged drifter with a penchant for exaggerating the truth (Jimmy), or a closeted control freak (William), or a disgruntled burned-out editor (Carter), or a spoiled aimless son of a tyrant (Ennek).

Do you have favorite characters who’ve gone through the redemptive arc? Or is there another character arc that you love to read? Please comment!

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Kim Fielding is the bestselling author of numerous m/m romance novels, novellas, and short stories. Like Kim herself, her work is eclectic, spanning genres such as contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical. Her stories are set in alternate worlds, in 15th century Bosnia, in modern-day Oregon. Her heroes are hipster architect werewolves, housekeepers, maimed giants, and conflicted graduate students. They’re usually flawed, they often encounter terrible obstacles, but they always find love.

After having migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States, Kim calls the boring part of California home. She lives there with her husband, her two daughters, and her day job as a university professor, but escapes as often as possible via car, train, plane, or boat. This may explain why her characters often seem to be in transit as well. She dreams of traveling and writing full-time.

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