Pacing: Punctuated Equilibrium

I pride myself on my character arcs. The downside of it is that my characters start in a pretty unlikeable place. Rules-obsessed to reasonable, responsibility-avoidant to responsible, passive to active, self-hating to self-forgiving, naive to worldly, other-centered to well-balanced… you get the idea.

The biggest challenge in my writing is getting the pace of my characters’ transformations right. I think as the author, knowing the awesome, authentic, and empowered place my character is going to end up at in the crisis and climax, I am perfectly fine with all the not-so-great moments the POV characters have in the beginning, or like, the first 50-75% of the book. Because it’s going to make their transformation at the end hit SO MUCH HARDER!!!

On one hand, I still do firmly believe that. I think the lowest of the lows makes the final triumph all the sweeter. On the other hand, the problem is that the readers don’t know that. So, how do I find the balance of showing enough change, fast enough that readers want to stick around?

I do suspect once someone has made it all the way through a novel and I have demonstrated my ability to deliver that satisfying character arc, they are much more likely to stick around for and through my next novel. But if it’s the first time a reader is picking up one of my novels, how can I signal that they are in good hands? How can I promise them there will be a payoff? That this POV character’s mind that they are trapped in will see the light?

That’s probably one of the aspects where beta reading has been the most helpful for my writing. I have moderated some of my characters’ most extreme attributes. I have tried to signal earlier than I originally did that positive change is coming in the characters’ development. I have tried to show that the characters are more aware of their flaws earlier, have a desire to change. I have made significant changes that have improved the plot, and made the characters less of a caricature, and for that I am eternally grateful.

And yet… it is difficult to find a balance between satisfying what readers think they want (“OMG, can she just grow up already?”) with a) what I believe readers want (I imagine shaking a reader: “The payoff will make what you are going through with this POV character now all worth it, I promise!”) and b) perhaps more importantly, what I believe is realistic about the nature of human change. And the reality is that human change is SLOW. Painfully so. In real life, a lot of people do not change. In fact, that might be why we turn to stories, because they give us hope that people can change. Vicarious living, and all that you know. And maybe, just maybe, with enough stories not vicarious living, but inspiration to actually make a change in your own life.

I didn’t start with the framework of punctuated equilibrium when I started writing. If anything, I was more following the story structure advice that the 50% mark is where they realize that the old way of doing something is not working, and 70-80% of the way is where they figure out the new way of doing things. They figure it out through the crisis and they demonstrate that they have figured it out by how they handle the climax. Now that is not a rule I follow mechanistically, but it does give you an idea of how I think about pacing my character arcs.

As I have gotten beta reader feedback and I made all the changes I am happy with, I do return to the idea of punctuated equilibrium. According to Britannica, punctuated equilibrium is a theory or model of evolution that “is characterized by long periods of stability in the characteristics of an organism and short periods of rapid change during which new forms appear especially from small subpopulations of the ancestral form in restricted parts of its geographic range.” That’s very technical, but the gist of it is that it can look like things are not changing for a very long time, and then rapidly change.

It’s easier to make this theory work in a novel, of course. I control what struggles my characters experience. I can make my characters experience low-grade struggle for a very long time… And then they are primed for change when the devastating revelation hits them somewhere in the 50-75% range.

But it’s not just a biological theory or a literary framework, I do see it reflected in my own life. I spend years working on an issue, and when the breakthrough finally happens it can happen in days, if not minutes. But that’s a blog post for another time…

So, to all the beta readers that I have had, currently have, and will have in the future, please keep telling when my characters are so unlikeable you would DNF. Please be specific about what bothers you! I may not listen to all of it because my loyalty ultimately is to the story only I can authentically tell, but I desperately need that feedback given that, like I said, I know where my characters end up. I don’t want to lose any potential readers when I could have made a tweak here or there to make a first time reader feel confident that they are in good hands: that they should care about my characters and it is safe to become emotionally invested in them because the transformation they go through is inspirational - possibly even magical.

My character arcs are drawn from my life, but now that I have given them their own personality, and backstory, and traumas, I do find myself in some situations, encouraging myself with “Serena struggled with this too, but look at how she overcame it!” and so forth. I hope that they may do the same for you.