on Fiction University:

Here’s an easy way to develop character arcs in your novel.

Years ago, I sat in on an amazing workshop at an RWA conference. Michael Hague’s Using Inner Conflict to Create Powerful Love Stories was one of those workshops that discussed a topic I already knew, but he presented it in such a way that I saw a super easy way to apply inner journeys to my stories (something this plot-focused gal can always use).

While the workshop was about romance specifically, the pieces of Hague’s inner conflict template work for any character journey. He calls the overall arc the “journey from living in fear to living courageously.”

To put it in more familiar terms—the character arc: the growth the protagonist undergoes over the course of the story.