Writing a Negative Character Arc

Antagonists need not be the only negative characters in your novel. Sometimes your protagonist takes a downward turn. In fact, your actual antagonist may well be an example of a flat character arc (which is next week’s topic).

That’s because to be in a negative character arc, the character must devolve from one state to a more negative one. A downward instead of upward arc. But there must be change as in the traditional positive character arc, aka, the hero’s journey.

Anti-heroes may be an example of a negative character arc, if the anti-hero was transformed by events from a neutral or positive stance to a negative one over the course of the story. For example, Walter White, from the “Breaking Bad” television series, is thrust by circumstances into finding a way to provide for his family when he finds he is dying. The only way he can see is an illegal one, and it is a path particularly well-suited to his positive-trait talents. He shifts his focus from good to bad gradually, reluctantly (at first), until he becomes an evil hunted by the FBI.

Other instances might be a character—good, normal, Mr./Ms. Bland—who becomes a vigilante searching for revenge for one or more perceived injustices. The character devolves from a law-abiding one into a character who justifies shis behaviors as necessary to right wrongs. When one’s child is harmed, parental outrage can be turned to revenge-seeking. When a guilty character is released without punishment, an average character can be turn into a vigilante seeking justice.

One interesting way to portray the negative character arc is to make the character manipulative to the point where heesh is an unreliable narrator. Your reader doesn’t know whether to trust what heesh is being told. Are the character’s perceptions accurate? Is the character justified in pushing the envelope or even destroying the envelope? Is what heesh is doing as wrong as the wrong being righted? Is your villain convinced of shis own rightness even though the world views shim as wrong? Has heesh lied to shimself.

As a college student, I saw the film, Bonnie and Clyde. My friend and I left the theater and didn’t say a word to one another for a couple of blocks. For me, it was the first time I had recognized moral ambiguity. The good guys were brutal murderers of the bad guys. And were the bad guys really that bad? They were normal folks who turned to crime during the Depression when jobs weren’t available. I was stunned that the answer wasn’t clear as it typically was.

The devolution of Bonnie and Clyde had to be believable. Walter White had to see no other options. A deft touch is required to write a negative character arc, which is likely why most of our villains have a flat arc.

Some have written that the negative and positive character arcs play out the same way over the three-act structure. But instead of confronting shis greatest flaw/fear and overcoming it, in the negative character arc, the character succumbs to it and becomes even more evil/immoral/depressed. 

K.M. Weiland put it very well. “In a word, the negative character arc is about failure, and this becomes nowhere more clear than in the Third Act. If the positive change arc is about redeeming self and the flat arc is about saving others, then the negative character arc is about destroying self and probably others as well.”

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