As you work on your story, does it have events that change your main character(s), for better or for worse? Most stories should. This change is called a character arc. There are three main kinds: positive, negative, and flat arcs.  

Why Use Character Arcs?

• They make characters interesting and relatable.
• They make characters three-dimensional. A perfect character with no need to change becomes boring.

Must All Characters Change?

No, but the main characters should. There is, however, an exception to this which we’ll look at later.

Three Types of Character Arcs

Positive Arc

Three main ingredients of a positive arc: (1) the character believes a lie, (2) circumstances, conflicts, and events bring the character to a realization of the truth, and (2) the character changes for the better.

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is an excellent example of this. At the beginning of the story, Scrooge is a greedy fellow who doesn’t believe in Christmas. He believes the lie about wealth’s importance and the need to constantly work and make money, even during holidays.

Then the three ghosts arrive and show him his life and its events – past, present, and future – which result in his change of heart. By the story’s end, Ebenezer Scrooge has become a pretty nice fellow!

Negative Arc

In this arc, the character starts out good but by the story’s end, he’s changed for the worse. In other words, he doesn’t grow into a better person. Just as in the positive arc, the events and conflicts that change this character must be believable. Negative arcs do not end “happily ever after.”

Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina, provides us a good example. This novel has lots of themes, but I’ll focus on one of them: adultery. In the beginning, Anna is a popular socialite, the perfect model of a Russian lady in the 1870s. But she has a fatal flaw: her passions. These drive her to commit adultery with a character named Vronsky, and she abandons her children. As the story ends, she kills herself by jumping in front of an oncoming train.

Flat Arc

Although I don’t recommend this arc, it can and has been used successfully. In this arc, the main character doesn’t change. Sherlock Holmes, who is actually too perfect and too smart to be believable in my opinion, is a good example. From one story and novel to the next, Detective Sherlock never changes. These arcs may work in a series that features characters such as Sherlock, but the character must interesting and the stories must have an interesting plot.

Do your characters change, for better or for worse? Or are they flat, like ole Detective Sherlock?

For horse lovers and those who love Thoroughbred racing along with the sport’s history, we can thank a famous artist who played a pivotal role in chronicling many of the nineteenth century’s famous racehorses. His name was Edward Troye (1808-1874). According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, he was “nineteenth-century America’s first important portrait and landscape painter.”[1]

Though born in Switzerland, he eventually moved to the United States and later lived in Mobile, Alabama (1849-1855), where he taught painting and French at Spring Hill College[2]. He painted horses as well as people, but his horse portraits are what earned him fame. His accuracy and attention to detail are stunning, to say the least. His work included not just the horses, but jockeys and trainers as well, providing us with a visual chronicle of the antebellum era’s favorite sport.

In 1869, he retired and moved to a farm in Owens Crossroads, Alabama. Even though he’d now turned to farming, he never quit painting and died of pneumonia in 1874.

To view some of his paintings, visit the National Sporting and Library Museum at

http://www.nationalsporting.org/nslm/exhibition_details/562.

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[1] Genevieve Baird Lacer, “Edward Troye,” the online version of the  Encyclopedia of Alabama,  accessed Jully 16, 2020, http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2560

[2] “Faithfulness to Nature: Paintings by Edward Troye,”  Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame, accessed July 16, 2020,  https://harnessmuseum.com/content/edward-troye

David Crockett, a sportsman whose name is well known to all the world, was more celebrated for his blunt honesty than for his good manners. Whilst in Congress he contracted a sincere dislike for a Mr. W—, who was in no wise a model of manly beauty, and moreover wore a monstrous pair of green goggles. Once visiting an exhibition of animals in Washington, Crockett observed of an enormous baboon, that “he would be as like W— as two peas, except for the goggles.”

          Turning round he saw Mr. W— standing by his side, and in order to retrieve his slip, he continued—

          “Oh! is that you, W—! Well, I s’ppose I owe an apology somewhere, but upon my soul I don’t know whether I ought to make it to you or the monkey.”

The above story is taken from the

American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine, vol. XIII, June 1842.

Authors enjoy debating writing and other literary issues. One issue up for debate is the verbs that end with -ing. Some authors don’t use these constructions, others do. Some editors don’t mind them, other editors do. So, what gives? Let’s look a little closer.

A FEW DEFINITIONS

What is a verb that ends with ing?  Actually, they’re not verbs. In grammar, they’re called verbals. Examples: walk/walking, jump/jumping, sing/singing, etc.

What is a verbal? It’s a verb form used as another part of speech.

1. Verbals used as adjectives are called participles.  Here’s an example: The cackling seagulls soared in the sky.

Cackling is the participle that modifies the noun seagulls.

2. Verbals used as nouns are called gerunds. Here’s an example: Jane enjoys sewing.

Jane is the subject of the sentence, and sewing is the direct object. Sewing, then, is a gerund (i.e. a noun).

Using verbals like those above is fine. Sometimes, we have to use them. However, the debate surrounds whether authors should use participial phrases. Now, let’s look at them.

The Participial Phrase

1. What is a phrase? It’s a group of words that, when strung together, work together to carry a certain meaning. A phrase does not have a subject or a verb. Here’s an example: the duck on the water.
2. What is the purpose of a phrase? It modifies other parts of speech: nouns, adjectives, and verbs. It can also modify a complete sentence.
3. Types of phrases: prepositional, infinitive, gerund, participial

Since we’re discussing participles, we’ll limit our discussion to the participial phrase.

1. What is a participial phrase? It’s a phrase that begins with a participle, contains an object, and is used as an adjective. Here’s an example: Running toward town, the dog chased a squirrel up a tree.

• Participle: Running
• Object: town
• Modifies the sentence’s object: dog
• Possible revisions:

Some Final Thoughts and Comments

Is it possible to have too many participial phrases in our story? In my opinion, yes. That said, I also believe it’s fine to use them sparingly. No more than two per page, as recommended by editors Renni Browne and Dave King in their excellent book, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

Why?

• Too many on a page are amateurish.
• Too many on a page hinder the flow and smoothness of our prose.
• They present problems in clarity and believability. For instance: Getting into her car, Mary accelerated it past the speed limit. It’s impossible for a person to get into a car and accelerate it at the same time, yet this is what that sentence implies.
• Where is the best place in the sentence to use them? In the middle of it, or at the end, are the strongest places.

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you use participial phrases or none at all?

Bibliography

Browne, Renni and Dave King. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print. Second Edition. New York: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2004.

When Amanda Blake was chosen to play Miss Kitty Russell in Gunsmoke, it wasn’t an accident she was a redhead. The historical “Miss Kitty,” Charlotte Tompkins, was a redhead too, and she inspired Amanda Blake’s character.

But Charlotte wasn’t any ordinary saloon girl. In fact, in Kentucky where she was from, she was born into the state’s upper class. She was a well-mannered and attractive Southern belle whose wealthy father taught her how to gamble and win at cards, bet on horses in races and gamble on riverboats … all to support her sister when the need arose. During the Civil War, her family lost its fortune. So, she turned to gambling, first on riverboats.

In 1863, she went to San Antonio where a part-Cherokee gentleman named Frank Thurmond hired her to be a dealer at his University Club. He gave her a percentage of the profits.

In keeping with her upper-class breeding, she always wore nice clothes, maintained the manners with which she was raised and kept the men at her card table honest. “You gents will not swear, smoke or drink liquor at my table,” she told them while she shuffled the cards. Most players were agreeable to this.

Today, she’s known to history as Lottie Deno. No one is certain how she got this name. According to one story, when she was living in Fort Griffin, Texas she’d had a run of luck playing poker at the Bee Hive Saloon. At the end of the evening, a cowboy said to her: “Honey, with winnings like that, you oughter call yourself ‘Lotta Dinero.’” She liked the name and began using it to protect her upstanding family’s reputation.

Eventually, Lottie married Frank and they both quit gambling. She became one of the founders of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Deming, New Mexico. She used $40,000 of poker winnings in a game Doc Holliday had participated in to finance its original construction. Frank eventually became president of a bank. They were well-respected, and wealthy, citizens in their community.

Frank died in 1908. Charlotte (Lottie) died in 1934.

Sources

Lottie Deno and Mary Poindexter – POINDEXTERHISTORY

What do we know about Lottie Deno? – True West Magazine

lottie deno – Search (bing.com)

TSHA | Thurmond, Charlotte Tompkins [Lottie Deno] (tshaonline.org)

Marjorie Holmes was a beloved Christian author. Early in my Christian walk, I became familiar with her when my sister brought home from college one of her books, now a classic, Two From Galilee. It’s a love story about Mary and Joseph and became a bestseller.

One thing about this book most may not realize is that she spent nine years working on it. For three years, she researched it. For six years, she marketed it, trying to find a publisher. Publishers told her Mary and Joseph acted too much like real people, so that’s why she had trouble finding a suitable place for it. Finally, Bantam agreed to publish it, and it’s never been out of print.

If we want to succeed as a writer, follow Marjorie Holmes’s example. Persevere!