Last week I blogged about my rough ideas on the character diamond. I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses to it, and we even talked about it internally at work. Since I posted, I’ve become a little less enamored with the side traits (I don’t seem to be using them much, and they feel like a justification of the diamond shape more than a useful tool). However, two of my coworkers came up with a really cool idea on what to do with those points that makes the diamond shape even more exciting. Let’s look at the diamond again:
The top and bottom traits are just as I discussed in the last entry. The left and right points, however, are now a spectrum going from the past to the future, almost like a line drawn through the center of the diamond.
The left trait is what the character is at at the start of the character arc. This is the core of their desire, the thing that they want or need to change that propels them forward through their arc. In Jane’s case, she’s self-conscious of herself, and this is what makes her flirty and scared.
The right trait is the character’s evolution – where she will end up as she grows and changes. Through the course of the story, Jane will be tested and tried, but as she gets what she needs, she grows from being self-conscious to being loyal.
I’m really digging this, because now the diamond becomes a dimensional map of the character arc. You can imagine that the character starts in the top-left side of the diamond: Jane is flirty and self-conscious. As she goes through the story, she dips closer and closer to being scared (as her bottom trait peeks out more and more due to the stress that the conflicts will bring), before she redefines herself as a loyal woman.
Even cooler, flipping the left and right traits gives you a totally different character arc: Jane is a loyal but flirty character who, through being secretly scared, ends up becoming very self-conscious. In this case, the character arc isn’t a positive change for Jane, but it’s still very much a progression.
From here, you can flesh in details, but a story is already taking shape, and more so than it was in my previous attempt. It’s still something you can sketch on a napkin or a whiteboard, but an entire story skeleton pops out to me now when I look at it, instead of just story potential.
Thoughts?

