This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 548 episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast.

I hope you enjoy this week's episode, Arcotypeal Character Arts Part 15, Introduction to the six flat archetypes.

In studying character arcs, writers easily recognize positive change arcs and negative change arcs.

But somewhat more baffling can be the stories that appear to feature neither.

These are stories in which the protagonist does not change or seems to have no character

arc at all.

How do these stories fit into the discussion of archetypal character arcs.

If you've studied foundational character arc theory

in practice with me before,

you know there are two possible answers

to the seeming conundrum of the character with no arc.

One is simply that he or she doesn't arc.

Both the protagonist, the supporting cast, and the story world itself remain relatively

unchanged from beginning to end, despite everyone's adventures.

Indeed, the very point of their adventures might be to maintain a desirable status quo, such as in Raiders of the Lost Arc.

The other possibility is that the unchanging protagonist is in fact

spearheading what I call a flat arc. As the name suggests, this is an arc

in which the protagonist, the story's central actor, remains

thematically unchanged, but uses his or her understanding of the story's central thematic truth to catalyze change

arcs in the supporting characters.

Flat arc protagonists are usually positive influences or impact characters, but if their fixation

is on the thematic lie rather than the truth, they can also be instrumental in catalyzing negative change

...