The Arc Models Quests Character Membership
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Glossary

One word, one meaning, everywhere.

Character Arc has its own words, and each one means exactly one thing. They're defined here so any sentence in the product can be read without guessing, and quoted without losing its meaning.

The line

Arc

Your arc is your life drawn as one line, from the day you were born to today. Every moment you add sits at its own date, and the shape between them is the story: climbs, flat stretches and dips, with a dashed road ahead for what's still coming.

Moment

A moment is one real thing that happened, logged with its date, how it felt and how much it mattered. Moments are what the arc is drawn from. Prose lives in reflections; a moment itself stays small and honest.

Milestone

A milestone is a moment that climbs: the job, the finished draft, the day someone said yes. How strongly it landed decides how far the line rises, and nothing about it decays because time passed.

Setback

A setback is a moment that dips. The line drops, then keeps going, which is the whole argument of Character Arc: a setback is part of the story, never the end of it, and it's drawn with the same care as a win.

Intention

An intention is something you're aiming at, drawn on the road ahead of today. It sits on your arc at the date you hope to reach it, so the future is a place on the same line as your past.

Doing

Quest

A quest is one brave thing, repeated. You name the belief you'd like to be wrong about, commit, and record how each rep felt. Rep by rep, the feeling changes, and the change is drawn on your arc as evidence.

Rep

A rep is one completed instance of a quest: you did the brave thing once and wrote down how it felt. Reps sit on your arc beside the quest's flag, so a run from afraid eight to calm three is visible in your own words.

Deciding

Crossroads

A crossroads is a decision laid out as paths on your arc, with a due date. You write what each path would mean, rank them, and choose when you're ready. The record stays on your line, so you can later read what you actually thought.

Path

A path is one way forward at a crossroads. Each path gets written down, weighed and ranked before you choose, and the paths you didn't take stay in the record, because knowing what you turned down is part of the decision.

The count

Character

Character is the quantitative picture of you: your level is your age, and everything you live earns Experience in how you think, feel and do, across the areas of life you chose. The arc is the visual picture; Character is the counted one.

Experience

Experience is the single currency every act earns in Character Arc. Moments, reps and reflections all add to it, it only ever grows, and it can't be bought: a membership never hands you a stat, a badge or a level.

Writing

Reflection

A reflection is where prose lives in Character Arc. Moments stay small; when there's more to say, you write a reflection and connect it. Reflections never leave your vault, at any consent tier.

Sealed letter

A sealed letter is written now and opened later, at a date you choose. It's encrypted on your device before it reaches the server, so nobody can open it early, including us.

Learning

Model

A model is a thinking framework, like Inversion or Courage, written for the moment you're actually deciding something. Each one carries the origin of the word, the mechanism underneath it, and somewhere to record what happened when you used it.

Seeing it back

Mirror

The Mirror reads everything you've put in and reflects the patterns back in your own words. It describes and never diagnoses. A new one is ready every two weeks and waits until you want it, and it comes with Visionary.

Map

The Map is the globe of every Character: spin it, tap a country, and step into the lives gathering there. Where the Mirror is only ever about you, the Map is never about you.

Membership

Seeker

Seeker is the free tier of Character Arc, where every member starts and can stay. It holds your whole arc and the map, and staying a Seeker takes nothing away: what you've made stays yours.

Visionary

Visionary is the paid tier, at 150 US dollars a year or 22 a month. It adds the Mirror, advanced decision tools, reflection insights and custom scenes. When a membership ends, nothing you made is taken away.

Member

A member is a person with a Character Arc account, and member is the only word here for one. The two tiers a member can hold are Seeker and Visionary, and the app is open to people aged 16 and over.

Where life happens

Area

An area is where in your life something happened: health, family, work, writing. You choose the areas that count for you, and moments, quests and Character all read through them.