THE SOPRANOS: Season One Episode Title:

"The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti"

INT. CHRISTOPHER'S APARTMENT- NIGHT

CHRISTOPHER: You ever feel like nothing good was ever gonna happen to you?

PAULIE: Yeah, and nothing did, so what? I'm alive, I'm surviving.

CHRISTOPHER: That's it. I don't want to just survive. Says in these movie writing books that every character has an arc, you understand? Everybody starts out somewhere, then they do something or something gets done to them that changes their life. That's called their arc. Where's my arc? Okay, take Richard Kimble... No, that's no good. His arc is just run, run, jump off a damn....

Christopher pauses.

CHRISTOPHER: Keanu Reeves, "Devil's Advocate". You see that?

PAULIE: Al.

Paulie sits.

CHRISTOPHER: Right. Keanu's a lawyer. Gets all turned on by money, power and the devil. Then his wife says to him, "you're not the man I married", leaves him. You see the arc? He starts down here, he ends up here.

Christopher pauses.

CHRISTOPHER: Where's my arc, Paulie?

PAULIE: Kid, Richard Kimble, the Devil's whatever, those are all make believe. Hey, I got no arc either. I was born, grew up, spent a few years in the Army, few more in the can, and here I am, a half a wiseguy. So what?

CHRISTOPHER: I got no identity. Even Brendan Filone's got an identity - he's dead.

Cut to:

INT. BADA BING STRIP JOINT - DAY

BIG PUSSY: You know who had an arc? Noah.

Let's explore that. What was Noah's arc?

Born as a devoted G-d fearing man in a time when devoted G-d fearing men were hard to find. His neighbors and friends committed wanton sins without a moment's hesitation, and through that Noah lost his faith in Man. G-d appears before Noah, telling him that he's right - Man is flawed and will be destroyed. G-d instructs Noah to build an ark, save his family and collect two of every animal with which to repopulate G-d's Earth once he wipes Man from its face. Trapped in the ark, Noah hears the cries of Man and learns to care for G-d's creatures. He is tested in the ark, beset by both his flesh and those in his care as he learns all about G-d's creation. And then, when G-d is finished wiping Man from the Earth, Noah's family and the animals leave the ark - and go right back to committing sin. Within days, Noah is humiliated by his son Ham before the entire family. Man and Animal return to sin, despite G-d's desire to begin anew.

So what did Noah learn? How did he change his life for the better? For that matter, what did his family and the animals learn if they went straight back to sinning? Noah started with sinners and ended with sinners. He began as a G-d fearing man and finished the same way.

What was Noah's arc? According to most, the story of Noah is a true story and not a work of fiction. Does this mean that there are no arcs in real life? Is The Sopranos' Paulie correct, that there are no arcs other than in make believe? We're born, we spend a few years in school, a few more at a job, and here we are. So what?

How important are character arcs? Does every character need an arc?

Last year, I was lucky enough to have my first play produced Off-Off Broadway. The play, American Caesar, is the tragedy of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar set in modern day corporate America. I presented the manuscript to the director three months before opening night and she proceeded to go through the script, line by line with me until we molded the story into shape. One of the first things she did with me was create a map for each of the 12 characters, following their progress through the entire play. I understood why the major characters -- Caesar, Brutus, Cassius, Portia -- needed fully developed character arcs, but why did small supporting characters need them too? She was determined to give everyone an arc - from the lawyers to the butler, each with a story and a story to each of them.

Throughout the process I bitched and moaned, explaining that sometimes a character like James Casca, a smarmy, drunken, oversexed conspirator is just the way he is - a drunk is a drunk is a drunk. But the director was determined - Casca needed an arc. He was important, and by god we were going to know everything there was to know from the time he first stumbled onstage to his final moments. And reluctantly, I sat up until three in the morning each night rewriting character arc sheets for her, dutifully mapping everything out.

One week before rehearsal kicked into overdrive, we realized that a major turning point in the entire play, would be better enhanced by making Casca an essential part of the story background - and the character upon whom the entire end of the second Act would depend. Once again, the two of us sat down at midnight in a corner deli and mapped Casca's arc from start to finish, tweaking and pinching the already existing arc into perfect, seamless shape.

Casca's arc was important. So was the butler's. And the lawyer's. Every single character in the story, no matter how small or unimportant, had to have a reason for being there and an arc that mapped out why. Where did they start? Where did they end? What did they learn?

Years ago, I was fortunate enough to sit with author Mark Waid at Knuckles Sports Bar in Chicago as he extolled the virtues of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen to two rather attractive young female writers. Waid's main argument (and I'm paraphrasing) was that Watchmen's genius is in the fact that there are no extra words, no extra moments, and no extra characters. Every single thing that happens in Watchmen's story happens for a reason. Look at the rest of Moore's work. Look at Top Ten. Or From Hell. Every single element connects to another element. Every single character begins at one strand or moment of the story and ends up at another, changed or altered in some manner or fashion. Every character has an arc - be it Doctor Manhattan, Ozymandias, Moloch or the news stand operator.

Start at Point A. Finish at Point B. Learn what A+B equals.

So where's Noah's arc? Where's mine?

If I asked a good friend or family member to map out the arc of my life, and tell me what it was, I doubt they'd be able to. My story is not done, my arc not yet completed. Chris Moltisanti, Tony Soprano's quick-tempered nephew, could not know that by the end of that episode his arc would begin to change and that his name would make it into the paper as a known gangster. He could not know that by the third season of the series that he'd be a made man, about to deal with a drug problem and a fiancée spilling her guts to the FBI.

But Moltisanti's creator might. The writers might. And by the time the third season aired, we might too.

How about Noah? Noah's story was told in the Bible, wasn't it? He died hundreds of thousands of years ago. His arc is finished, right?

But the Bible only documents a certain period of Noah's life. Its begins right before the great Flood, when Noah already had a life and family of his own. It covers a period of forty days and forty nights of the Flood and a bit more, laying the groundwork for Noah's legacy and the future generations of the human race.

But perhaps Noah already completed the arc before we met him? Maybe he wasn't a G-d fearing man at eighteen or twenty and something happened that made him that way? What if Noah was a jerk when he was a kid and picked on the neighborhood swineherds along with the rest of the Biblical jerks of his day? We don't know. The Bible doesn't tell us all of that. Maybe Noah DID have an arc and we've just met him in the second Act.

The Bible only tells us part of the story of his life. Just like this right here is only part of the story of mine, and I might have yet to complete my arc.

Fiction doesn't work that way. The space and breadth of the story is the space and breadth of a character's life. We see it all - even if the character is already at the midway point of his or her life, the essential moment... the turning point in that character's life... is within the pages of the story. And that turning point, the arc from Point A to Point B, needs to be a crucial element within the larger context of the life of the story.

Start down here. End up there.

Otherwise why should we care? What will we, as the reader, learn if Casca remains a smarmy, wise cracking drunk throughout instead of becoming a crucial plot element partway through the second Act?

I'll close out with an example, recently hammered into my head by last week's guest columnist Alex de Campi. I've been working my ass off on a pitch for an ongoing project and Alex was kind enough to take a look at it for me, to help smooth the troubled edges. The main characters are the Grizzled Veteran and the Wise Ass Rookie (not the actual character names, sadly) and the story follows them around, solving particular crimes in a particular set of circumstances. Now, Alex shot me back a long series of notes and amid the comments and advice was this pearl:

"People doing their job = not very interesting. People getting over their head and ending up getting personally involved in a case despite themselves = hugely interesting"

Essentially, she was advising me to kill off my Grizzled Veteran and toss my Wise Ass Rookie in the deep, shit-infested end of the pool, forcing him to solve these particular crimes in these particular set of circumstances, both of which he'd be in way over his particular Wise Ass head.

Start down here at comfortable Point A. Get up there to unknown Point B.

Imagine if I'd kept the story as I originally envisioned it? A crime would happen and Grizzled Vet would guide Wise Ass Rookie through the investigation, holding his hand the entire way. Grizzled Vet would remain Grizzled Vet. Wise Ass Rookie would remain Wise Ass Rookie. No one learns anything; the reader doesn't care and goes to read Watchmen for the fiftieth time because they get to see Nite Owl and the Silk Spectre do it.

Every character has an arc. Every character needs an arc. Despite Christopher's monologue even Richard Kimble had an arc besides "run, run, jump off a damn...."

And so did Chris. And Paulie. And Noah.

So will I. So will you.

So should your characters.

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BIG POND is a collective column that begins with ideas and continues with opinions. Each column focuses in on my musings about writing for the comic book, film and television industry and then gives way to opinions on the week's topic by a diverse group of writers.

This week, we're joined in the pond by Damon Hurd and Tony Lee, writers who have been making leaps and stride in their careers - mostly based on their fascinating characters and dialogue. Here are their thoughts on this week's topic:

Damon:"Character arcs are something I think about a lot. I must confess though I have never intentionally employed one. I'm sure that I've written them, but when I have they've come naturally and only appeared as arcs by the end. That has as much to do with luck then anything else though.

"Reading Neil's column, I've been thinking about it more and more and I think that every character in your story should be fully developed, but that you should only have characters worth developing. That comes back to a different point from the article, which is you should only have necessary characters in your story. A lot of writers, myself included, use characters in much the same way as we use props. A guy on a street corner selling peanuts. He's just a prop, something in the background to give the scene some color. He's not a real character. He has nothing to say.

"I believe that all writing, be it prose, comics, plays, or screenplays should be all about the essentials. I have a good friend who is always reading my stuff and cutting lines, or half of lines. "Say what you have to say and no more", he says. This is typically in regards to dialogue in my case, but shouldn't it go for characters as well? I recently wrote a short story that was autobiographical and my friend Brad was in it. It took place in an airport when the two of us were traveling years ago. My helpful editing friend read it and told me to cut Brad out of the story. "Why is he here? What purpose does he serve?" I didn't really know. "You only wrote him in because he was there, but in this story he's unnecessary and his appearance is just confusing."

"I keep trying to limit my characters, but as any reader of mine can attest, I still use plenty as background fodder. However, I am making a concerted effort to keep all speaking parts to real characters only. It's a start.

"As for character arcs, I've never really employed them. I do believe in well developed characters though. One thing I like to do when writing fiction is spend a few weeks writing these little short stories about the main characters. They're just little scenes from their lives, written as if they were self-contained short stories. Then, when I sit down to write the actual book I feel like I really know these characters and their dialogue and actions come much quicker to me. No one ever reads the little vignettes I wrote, but their effect is felt. I'm in the process of doing this right now in fact for a new graphic novel.

"My only advice on this is to think about your characters as people. Ask yourself questions about them. This is what leads me to write stories about them. For me that is the best way to get to know them, for you it might be something else, but whatever method you employ, get to know them."

Tony: "Many years ago, my English teacher told me -

" 'A story that starts 'once upon a time' is dull. A story that starts 'Mikey realised as the gun was pressed to the back of his skull that his time was up' is far more interesting.'

"And she was right. Bring the action straight into the opening act. Make the reader get excited from the onset. Get the questions going.

"Who was Mikey? Why was this gun against his head? What had he done to deserve this? Was he the good guy? The bad guy?

"But to make Mikey's story work, to make it believable, we had to give Mikey an arc. There has to be a reason the gun is at his head. Maybe he did something bad and this is the consequence. Maybe he was depositing his local orphanage's money into a checking account during a bank raid? Point A has to be created so that when we reach current point, known now as Point F, we know the points that shaped his life. We know that Point A - he was born on the streets. Point B - he ran with a bad crowd.

"Aha. You cry. It's a heist gone wrong. Mikey's gonna bite the bullet.

"Point C - He was rescued from the street by a kindly yet cool priest.

"Ah... He's depositing the orphanage money after all.

"Ah. But Point D is that Mikey finds that the priest is really the Hooded Ninja, avenging angel of St Bartholemews, and Point E is the training that he gets as the loyal sidekick Altar Boy.

"So, is he depositing money? Is he stopping a crime? Has he been captured while on patrol? All of the previous points in the character's arc will shape this scenario and his responses. The Mikey of point A or B will react different to the Mikey of point E. And wear less spandex.

"So. Say he's on patrol. He's got a gun to the head. So, we know from his arc that he's streetwise, he can kick ass and he can beat this punk to the ground.

"But what if he discovers that the gunman is his brother? Will he turn against his mentor? Is blood thicker than water? All of this can be taken from just one line.

"To me an ongoing arc, especially for a character is the most important thing in the story. I used to bang my head against the wall watching sci fi shows where one week Captain Splott of the Starship CoolDude is thrown into a time loop and spends the next three hundred years as a frog - yet by next issue is fine and dandy and remembers everyone and every small thing like it was yesterday - and most importantly has learned nothing by this. That was more than my disbelief could suspend.

"I like the small things. I liked the fact that a small throwaway scene in season one of Babylon 5 turned into a major solution in season four. I like the mythos (and I'm still not sure if it is a true story or not) that a colourists's mistake on Wally West's eyes built the entire 'Dark Flash' character storyline up for over a year.

"But a character arc isn't and cannot be set in stone Even the well established heroes regularly have their arc's tinkered with.

"Douglas Adams had character arcs for his creations in Hitchhikers Guide, yet wrote on the fly. 'I like to read my books as I write'. He once said. He loved nothing more to write himself into a corner. Throwing Arthur Dent into space? Great cliff-hanger. Getting him back in one piece? Oh bugger. Hadn't thought of that. Adams altered the character arcs as he progressed. In fact he started to throw random scenes and random characters in purely so that later on he could bring them in, build their arc so that they were a major player in the series.

"Do my characters have arcs? Not incredibly defined ones. The Work for Hire I've done has involved characters that already have arcs - and believe me when the Internet heard I was doing an X-Man (Sage), I had a lot of emails explaining her arc to me. With Starship Troopers, it was different - I had a trilogy with a start, middle and end. I had to create arcs for all the characters, even the ones who died quickly, as each of them played an important part in Will, the hero's life. I needed to know how Will, when thrown into the crap at the end of book 2 would get out - and it was the arcs that I had worked out in book 1 that built him back - of it in book 3.

"Parody doesn't need much of an arc. Bugs Bunny doesn't really have a well-defined arc - and neither does the Gloom. He fights bad guys. He shoots Nazis. But the supporting characters? They need the arcs because they support the Gloom.

"Midnight Kiss. Do they have an arc? Definitely. I couldn't even start telling the ongoing story of Matthew Sable and Nightmare De'Lacy without working out how they met, what they were doing, who or even what they are.

"But, randomness can also help build an arc. In Midnight Kiss I have a character called Eindhorn. He's a gruff, Harvey Bullock-like cop and to start with was only a bit player for the big act one reveal. But a fellow writer, on reading the script and, knowing my love of playing with words and throwing in hints and clues early on went 'Ah. Eindhorn. Eine Horn. He'll be something important then.'

"Now I hadn't considered this, but this one line not only changed my perception of the cop, but also changed his entire arc in a moment.

"Character arcs are good. They are a tool and can help you in so many ways.

"But like all good laws and commandments - Character arcs are made to be broken.

"Rob Lowe in The West Wing. There were enough hints from the first season that eventually he would go for congress. And when he left over pay, they were able to use this arc point, to cut short the overall arc yet keep to the previous one rather than have him hit by a passing truck...

"Perhaps the writers of the Sopranos didn't know that Chris would be in the state he's in by this point?

"But perhaps they laid enough groundwork into the arc that by the time that they did have the meeting where some writer went 'hey, wouldn't it be a good idea if...?' they could do it seamlessly....

"I just couldn't imagine The Sopranos written by Douglas Adams. Especially in Sweeps Week."

The column doesn't end there, though - head on over to the The Big Pond forum at the Scryptic Forums and add your opinion to the Pond! Join the collective column and talk writing with myself, this week's contributors and the rest of the Scryptic writers.

My thanks to Damon and Tony for taking the time to weigh in. Check out their work at their respective web sites and send them the Tall Comics Dollars!

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Neil Kleid won the Xeric grant for NINETY CANDLES, an experimental graphic novella, and his first graphic novel, BROWNSVILLE, (with artist Jake Allen) debuts from NBM Publishing in 2005. He is currently writing URSA MINORS!, a four issue comedy mini-series for Slave Labor Graphics. A graphic designer by day, Neil harbors notions of writing full time. Weep for him.

Damon Hurd is the author of four graphic novels, including his Eisner nominated debut, MY UNCLE JEFF, A SORT OF HOMECOMING, THE WHITE ELEPHANT, and the ongoing series TEMPORARY. He lives in New Paltz, NY with his wife Kathryn, and their bird Zizek.

Tony Lee was quoted as being 'One of the fastest rising stars among the new generation of British comic writers' by Comics International. He has written X-MEN for Marvel Comics and the graphic novel trilogy STARSHIP TROOPERS:BLAZE OF GLORY for Mongoose Publishing/SONY, of which book 1 is now available. In May, the first issue of his APC six part miniseries THE GLOOM (with Dan Boultwood) is released, and in August APC will be releasing his ongoing fantasy series MIDNIGHT KISS with art by Ryan Stegman. Tony is also a novelist and screenwriter - and has written for both radio and television.