Character Arcs
Chart how a character changes across the story — belief, choice, and cost — with a curve you can actually see.
An arc is the spine of a character's journey. From a character's sheet, open the Arc Map and pick an arc type — Positive change, Corruption, Fall, and more. ChapterMuse lays down a suggested sequence of beats you can keep, rename, or replace, then you fill each beat with what happens, what the character believes, what they choose, and what it costs.
Character Arc Map — beats and timeline curve
✦Quick start
- 1On a character sheet, open the Character Arc tab and launch the Arc Map.
- 2Choose an arc type — the map seeds a suggested run of beats.
- 3Fill each beat: external event, belief, choice, cost, and evidence.
- 4Link a beat to the chapter or scene where it happens.
- 5Switch to the Curve view to see the arc's shape across your chapters.
Working With Beats
- Six arc types — Positive change, Flat / steadfast, Negative change, Corruption, Fall, and Disillusionment — each with guidance on the shape it should trace
- Each type suggests beats (inciting, complication, crisis, climax, resolution…) you can tailor
- Per beat: external event, belief state, choice, cost, relationship effect, evidence, and private notes
- Anchor a beat to a chapter, then narrow it to a specific scene
- Add your own custom beats, reorder them, or reseed the template
Curve, Tracks & Notebook
- Curve view plots the arc across your chapters on an emotional or philosophical axis
- List view gives you the beats as detailed, editable rows
- Run parallel tracks — a main arc plus subplots or a relationship arc — each colour-coded, with no fixed limit on how many
- Keep a free-form arc notebook for thoughts that don't belong to a single beat
✦
Arc beats are two-way linked with Scene Designer. Drop an arc-beat card onto a scene and edit it there, and the change shows up in the Arc Map — one source of truth for the moment.