I, for one, struggle with negative character arcs. Mostly because I operate from a false sense of the "good" in humanity, and I really struggle to see the bad in situations. I hate hopeless things, things that end poorly, and negative arcs are no exception.
That being said, negative arcs are a reality that I should be able to write. And so, when I was commissioned to record Saul's character arc for my Bible study group, I decided to use the study in multiple ways: 1) As a study of Saul in the Biblical sense, comparing him to David and learning about him as a character; and 2) As a case study in negative character arcs.
I got fascinated.
So here we are. I decided to share my research with y'all and see if it's helpful or interesting at all. XP
The Terms
Real quick, before I dive in, I thought I'd be smart and define the terms for anyone who doesn't know what in the world I'm talking about. ;P
Negative Character Arc: a character's journey that leaves them worse off than they started, as opposed to the positive character arc, where they end up better.
Corruption Arc: a common type of negative character arc where the character ends up worse off because they chose to believe a lie instead of the truth. They begin knowing the truth and end up believing a lie.
King Saul: a historical character whose life is recorded in the Bible. The first official king of Israel. You can read his story in 1 Samuel.
The Plot Points of the Corruption Arc
The whole deal with the Corruption Arc is that you take a character from a good place, where they believe the Truth, to a bad place, where they believe a Lie. The journey there isn't exactly forceful - it focuses much more on the tempting, seductive, sneakier side of evil than a blatant, "Oh I'm just going to choose what's wrong 'cause I want to."
That's one of the things that fascinates me about the Corruption Arc: how gradual it is. Saul's whole thing took place over almost 50 years. Every step was slow and gradual and sliding under the radar. Let me show you what I mean.
Saul's Corruption Arc
Supposedly the time between Saul being anointed as king and actually becoming king is about 8 years - and most scholars believe he reigned 42 years. This arc begins at Saul's anointing and continues through his death, where he dies as king on the battlefield. So it covers a span of 50 years.
50 years before the Lie completely takes over and destroys him.
This wasn't a quick, one-year drop off a cliff. Saul's whole life was spent battling this Lie, and for some reason we're not explicitly given, the Lie eventually won.
But I have theories.
King Saul's Archetype
In that post on moral injury that will be published next month, I mention the theory that King Saul suffered from moral injury - that part of the reason why his story is so dark is because he fought trauma and lost. The Bible and Moral Injury by Brad E. Kelle supports this theory, though I haven't gotten to that chapter yet so I don't have much to say about it. But I do agree with the general idea that Saul dealt with a lot of morally injurious situations.
For one, he was born in a time of war, and he grew up to become a king who led his people into battle over and over and over again. War is probably the most common cause of moral injury. Killing people isn't easy, even if it's necessary.
But I think Saul's "injuries" went deeper and were much more self-inflicted.
Another aspect of moral injury comes from the inability of a soldier (or person) to live up to an archetype. To fulfill expectations. It comes from failure. And if you study the life of Saul, you see glimmers of that all over the place.
First, his archetype was built by the people. Saul becomes king because Israel wanted a king like the other nations. And what were the other nations' rulers like? Warrior Kings. Powerful, mighty, feared and served by all. They fought wars and conquered peoples and kept their land safe through military might. Obviously kings did other things (trade, dealing with internal issues, etc), but their worth was often defined by how many battles they won or lost. Their entire reputation depended on their military might.
So Saul steps into the role of Israel's king with that archetype in mind, coupled with prophesies that he would save his people from the Philistines. And while those expectations may not be an issue for some people, his character even before he became king already indicates something that is going to make it so much harder for him to ignore the archetype.
In 1 Samuel 9, we're introduced to Saul as the son of a wealthy man, and the handsomest and tallest in all of Israel. His father sends him out to go find some donkeys they lost, and Saul (to his credit) immediately and faithfully does as he is told. But after a few days, when the donkeys are nowhere to be found, Saul decides to return home in case his father becomes more worried over his son than he was over the donkeys.
At first glance, that seems sweet. And I do think it is an admirable thing for him to care for his father like that, for him to know his dad well enough to say, "Ok, I know where his brain is headed, we better go fix that." But it also shows that he's well aware of the opinions and emotions of others and alters his own behavior because of it.
Fast forward 8-ish years. Saul is crowned king after defeating some of Israel's enemies in battle. The people expect him to be a Warrior King, practically perfect in every way. They expect to admire him, to respect him, to cheer as he wipes out their enemies. And at first, he does a pretty good job. So he gets prideful. He sees what he thinks he's done and begins to believe that he can be that perfect Warrior King. And he begins to value the praise and admiration of the people above all else - including above God and his commandments, as we see when he fails to kill Agag and all the animals in 1 Samuel 15 out of fear of the people. And even then, when confronted by Samuel, Saul asks for forgiveness from Samuel's God and for Samuel to come with him and glorify him in front of the people. When Samuel says no, Saul asks again - not for forgiveness, but for his own glorification. He's made it clear what his priorities are. People's opinions first, God's second.
So when teenaged David comes along and kills a giant that Saul himself was afraid to face, and the people start singing David's praise along with Saul's, suddenly his whole way of life and thinking is threatened. Admiration is shifting to the one who exhibited more Warrior King-like qualities than Saul. He couldn't live up to an archetype, but someone else did.
This is where Saul's fate is sealed and he steps completely into the world of his Lie and rejects Truth. He could go back to believing that he isn't worth much, that God is the best and His opinion is what matters the most and sacrifice his own reputation for it... but he doesn't. He chooses the Lie. And so begins all the long years where David was fleeing from Saul because Saul couldn't stand having a rival and was trying to kill him. David and Saul are even reconciled - twice - and yet Saul always comes back to try and kill him again.
Eventually Saul is drawn away from the chase to battle the Philistines (again - those guys are pesky, I'm telling you XD). The battle goes poorly, once again reflecting on his crumbling reputation as a Warrior King. So he does the only thing he can think to do and sneaks away to go visit a medium. She raises Samuel's spirit and Saul begs him for help. Samuel refuses, telling him he can't recover his reputation from this. The kingdom is no longer his. The reputation, the glory, the fame, and the throne itself now belong to someone else. He failed.
Hopeless, Saul returns to the battle. Israel loses, and Saul, out of fear of capture, kills himself instead of letting himself become the humiliated (and likely tortured) prize of his enemies. And David becomes king.
So what is the Lie that Saul eventually chose to believe that led him down this path? What Truth did he reject?
Truth vs. Lie
A lot of different factors contributed to Saul's downfall, but I think the battle between this Truth and Lie are the biggest causes.
Truth: The most important thing is to fear God and keep His commandments; His opinion is what matters the most, and only He can define worth.
Lie: The most important thing is what everyone else thinks. Others' opinions hold the highest value, and your worth is based on what other people think.
To put it very basically, Saul's battle between Truth vs. Lie was actually a battle between fear of God vs. fear of man. His priorities were out of order, and it literally killed him.
So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the LORD in that he did not keep the command of the LORD, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the LORD. Therefore the LORD put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse. -1 Chronicles 10:13-14
How To Apply This
Okay, so Saul has a sad story. But how does that help us now, especially as writers?
I think one of the most obvious ways is to keep your priorities straight. If you're trying to live up to the archetype of the Rich & Famous Author and setting your identity in that, you'll probably end up like Saul. Hopeless. Empty. Keep God at the center and see what happens from there.
But on a more practical, writerly level, how does this help us write negative arcs?
It begins with finding a Truth & a Lie. Not something dinky like "Truth is that Jimmy stole the lollypop" and "Lie is that Timmy did". Go deep. Find something that everyone can relate to, something we all struggle with (fear of man, loneliness, pride, etc) and go off of that.
And remember that an arc is just a series of cause-and-effect. Yeah, the graphs can look intimidating. Yeah, all the jargon might be overwhelming. But ultimately, an arc is just a series of decisions with natural consequences. Negative arcs are a series of bad decisions, positive arcs a series of good. So write your character's story not by filling out a sheet of paper, but by using that brain of yours and letting the decisions your characters make naturally lead to another, and another, and another. Give them choices. Don't try and smoosh them into a box, either. If your character was supposed to have a negative arc, but all of a sudden they start making good decisions and turning it around, don't rewrite it just because you want them to have a negative arc. Accept that it is more natural for them to have a redemption or even positive arc and model your story around that.
Also. Personal pet peeve here, but keep the consequences realistic. If your character makes a choice that should result in them getting shot, shoot them. The occasional unrealistic getaway is okay (suspending disbelief and whatnot), but if it happens over and over and over again your story will become shallow. Let them face the consequences of their choices, good and bad, and see where those consequences lead.
Back to Saul...
Real quick, I wanted to address the question that naturally arose as I studied Saul's life: could it have turned out differently? Could he have ended up with a better story? Could he have become a king like David, a king that followed after God's own heart and led Israel to their ultimate King?
I don't know.
On the one hand, Saul made some pretty blatant mistakes that seemed to be his own choice: the choice to try and kill David instead of sharing the glory, the choices to sacrifice without Samuel and keep Agag, the choice to consult a medium instead of the LORD.
There are a few other things that he hypothetically could have done as well. He could have repented like Nineveh, and God would have accepted and honored that repentance, true to His character. Saul also could have sought after God's heart. The only time we see Saul refer to God in any remotely personal terms is at the very beginning of his story. Afterward, any time he refers to God is distant (i.e. during the whole Agag ordeal in 1 Samuel 15, he talks to Samuel about God as "the LORD your God" over and over. Also the first altar Saul ever built to God was erected years into his reign). He didn't have a personal relationship with God, and I think that really messed up his life.
But on the other hand, God is sovereign. He made Saul's story happen the way it did for a reason. Even if Saul had tried to turn it around, would God have kept him from doing so for the sake of the story?
I honestly don't know. Intuitively, I would say no - if Saul had tried to repent, God would not have hardened his heart or anything. But we have multiple instances of God controlling people's lives and ordering events - and hearts - to fulfill his greatest purpose.
And yet, in all of those instances I can't think of one that was purely God's doing - a story where the person never had any hand in their own hardening of heart and who never really did anything wrong and yet still went down the wrong path. Every instance of God hardening a heart has the person either hardening their own heart or making terrible choices beforehand. In a sense, they deserved and often wanted that hard heart.
Ultimately, you can go around and around in circles on issues like these. It's fun to think about, but... there's a reason Saul never repented, never had a personal relationship with God, and ended on a terrible note with a terrible reputation. Could he have changed? Likely, especially with God's help. But I doubt he ever would have. And that's the bottom line. Maybe it could have ended up differently, maybe it couldn't have. But it didn't. And that's it.
Have you ever written a negative character arc? What is one of your favorite examples of one? Who is one of your favorite Bible characters? Why? Do you agree with my analysis of Saul, or not? What are some deep human struggles you can think of?
Until next time,
Take courage, pursue a personal relationship with God, and smile while you still have teeth!! ^_^
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