How to Craft a Compelling Character Arc: The Misbelief, or the Wrong Idea

Your main character has a tragic backstory to make even the toughest among us shed a tear.

During their story, they overcome adversity despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles placed in front of them every step of the way.

And at the end, after making a fair sacrifice, they’ve achieved their goal and are in a state of bliss.

… But after all of that work you and your protagonist have done, you’re still getting feedback—from beta readers or your inner editor, or both—that something’s missing. You can’t put your finger on what.

Allow me to do just that.

In this three-part series, I’ll explore Wounds, Wrong Ideas, and Right Ideas—the core building blocks of a character arc. We started with Wounds, and now we’re diving into Wrong Ideas.

What Is a Wrong Idea?

It’s the misbelief, or the lie the character believes at the start of the story as a result of some terrible part of the character’s backstory. If you know what a misbelief is, you know what the Wrong Idea is.

Then why do you call it the Wrong Idea, Megan?

Great question! I do this because it was the most accessible phrasing I could think of for what this actually does to the character. Something happened to them, and they “got the wrong idea” from that incident. They took away a life lesson that’s doing them more harm than good. It’s a lesson they need to unlearn to find fulfilment and secure a happy ending that satisfies readers.

Why Wrong Ideas are Essential to Crafting a Compelling Character Arc

We’ve already gone over why Wounds are essential—they beget empathy and drive us to care about characters. But if those Wounds never affected the character in a soul-deep way, then why should the reader care

Let’s take a second look at the scenario I described in the beginning of this blog post. Imagine a girl named Ansley who got lost for hours on a camping trip when she was a kid. If it didn’t rattle her enough to produce a Wrong Idea and change her behavior from that point onward—if we don’t see her wrestling with the feeling that nature equals danger and refuse to retrieve her kids’ soccer ball when it gets kicked into a wooded area near the playground—then when we see her take her children camping at the end of the book, readers will not have felt like anything shifted for her. There was no big change, no struggle. If her Wound didn’t actually bother her enough to produce a life-changing Wrong Idea, then what’s the big deal?

A fantastic example of a Wrong Idea influencing a character’s behavior can be found in Rose DeWitt Bukater from Titanic. Her Wrong Idea is that she’s imprisoned by her circumstances and will never be free. You can see for yourself how it was phrased in the screenplay, after Jack saves her from sending herself to a watery grave:

“I don’t… it wasn’t just one thing. It was everything. It was them, it was their whole world. And I was trapped in it, like an insect in amber.”

Titanic (1997) – Rose

The line changed slightly in the movie, but the effect is the same. Rose is so certain that she’s powerless, she almost ends it all just to claw back some control over her own life. She wasn’t considering throwing herself overboard for no reason; she was driven to do it because she believed her Wrong Idea wholeheartedly and that there was no other way out of her situation.

That is why the Wrong Idea is so important. A Wrong Idea alchemizes a painful backstory into choices that hurt to watch and a character we ache to see healed.

Common Mistakes Writers Make with Misbeliefs or Wrong Ideas

Mistake #1: The Wrong Idea does not naturally, logically arise from the specified Wound.

Imagine we’re pantsing or discovery-writing a story where the main conflict is shaping up to revolve about the main character’s habit of lying to get what she wants and avoid telling people unpleasant truths. Written out as a single sentence, her Wrong Idea might sound something like, “It’s always better and easier to just tell people what they want to hear.”

If I told you the story’s main character was Ansley, you’d probably be taken aback. “That doesn’t have anything to do with her Wound of getting lost in the woods as a kid,” you’d say, and you’d be right! If we want to have a satisfying arc for Ansley, we’d need to do one of three things:

1. Axe the Wound and choose a new one that supports the Wrong Idea.
2. Axe the Wrong Idea and choose a new one that supports the Wound.
3. Commit to having two character arcs for the same person within the same story.

None of these choices are inherently bad or good, but a choice would have to be made to give Ansley a consistent character arc—which is always what we’re after.

Mistake #2: The Wrong Idea is not in alignment with the story the writer wants to tell.

When we create characters, we want them to be relatable. We also want them to be people we can at least understand, if not root for. Sometimes that means we’re sprinkling in our own beliefs about the world while we write. Before you know it, you’re at the midpoint of the story, and you’re having to grapple with cognitive dissonance because your main character’s Wrong Idea never actually sounded wrong to your ears.

I’m sorry to say that making this mistake will require a lot of rewriting to fix. (Yes, I’m speaking from experience!)

Mistake #3: The story focuses only on external goals, not internal character growth.

This was my big mistake as a new writer. I loved thinking about plot—all the stuff the characters get to do—and I did not much care why they’d do it. As a result:

• I lost interest in stories so quickly because I had no reason to care about the characters achieving their goals.
• Everything I wrote felt hollow to read, like they were missing the heart. (They were.)
• People who read the initial few paragraphs of whatever I was working on never mentioned the story again because—although the prose was good for a kid and those people loved me and wanted me to succeed—the stories just weren’t memorable.

It was only after I stopped neglecting crafting character arcs that I was able to write and complete meaningful stories. And now I help others do the same!

Tips to Craft a Compelling Character Arc with a Devastating Misbelief or Wrong Idea

Tip #1: Have the Wrong Idea ruin their life (without them realizing it).

As I hinted at earlier in this blog post, it’s not enough to choose a Wrong Idea for the character to have in their head. It must be depicted on the page for readers to be able to see what a dramatic difference abandoning the Wrong Idea made in their lives.

Any one of these examples might be brushed off as a quirk or a personality trait, but when you combine several, you—and the reader—can get the sense that something deeper is going on that’s negatively affecting how this character moves in the world. And that’s exactly what you want!

Tip #3: Don’t dismantle the Wrong Idea too soon or too late.

Here’s a pretty obvious spoiler alert: If you’re writing a happy ending, the Wrong Idea eventually gives way to the Right Idea. (More on that in another blog post!) It’s at the midpoint—the fifty-percent mark of your story, more or less—when your protagonist hears of the Right Idea. It will take a little longer to fully embrace the Right Idea, and you can absolutely hint at the transformation to come in earlier chapters, but that lightbulb moment should be at the midpoint.

If your character starts to accept and utilize the Right Idea before the midpoint, readers will have the feeling that things are coming too easy to the character. Why is Ansley having such an easy time getting through these dense trees alone, like doesn’t even have to try?

If your character continuously rejects the Right Idea and clings to the Wrong Idea for too long before making the mental switch, then readers are going to be frustrated. Why can’t Ansley get her shit together already?

Why are stories like this? The short answer is that stories have been like this in the Western canon for so long, it’s what feels natural to our brains. You can absolutely toy with reader expectations and buck against the usual story structures, but to quote Pablo Picasso, you must first “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

(I mean, I might be quoting Picasso. Versions of that quote have also been attributed to the Dalai Lama and Alexander McQueen and others. Whoever it was, they were right on the money.)

Bonus Tip: Regularly refer back to the Wrong Idea.

The process of writing a story is long, and often longer than even experienced authors think it’s going to be. Trust me when I say that if you’re not reminding yourself of your characters’ arcs, you’re going to get off-message. Jot down your character’s Wound, Wrong Idea, and Right Idea and keep those notes somewhere close!

Now it’s Your Turn to Craft a Compelling Character Arc

If you’re ready to craft a compelling character arc that leaves your readers emotionally satisfied all on your own, go ahead and download my free Character Arc Sparker Worksheet. It’s the same one I use to guide writers through building powerful, transformative arcs during my story coaching sessions.

But if you’re feeling stuck, second-guessing every choice, or just plain exhausted from going in circles…

Let’s talk it out.

Whether you need a full story restructuring or just want a human sounding board who actually cares, I offer two ways to help you move forward: