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Character, Plot, or Hot Air

“So is your novel plot-driven or character-driven?” I was asked that question recently and, after fumbling around a bit, said, “Well, it’s about a character who finds herself in a plot. So what would you call that?”

Okay, so I have never quite gotten my mind around the plot versus character debate, nor have I found the energy to do so. To me, the distinction has always seemed rather forced. Yes, some stories are propelled by events (plot-driven), while others are propelled more by people (character-driven). Nevertheless, good stories must contain both.

Asking authors to distinguish plot from character is the equivalent of asking a coach to separate the game from the players. Fact is, the two are inseparably bound. True, the players influence the outcome of the game (who’s on first matters). Conversely, the game is independent of who’s in the lineup (containing rules, innings, outs, and outcomes). Nevertheless, you cannot have one without the other. In this way, the plot v. character debate seems like so much literary navel-gazing. Can’t we just say we need both and get on with it?

So I was pleasantly surprised, while reading James Scott Bell’s Plot & Structure, to discover this assessment:

Sometimes literary fiction is called character driven, and commercial fiction, plot driven. Plot driven usually means heavy on the action and light on character work. Character driven, on the other hand, often implies a slower story with less action and more interior work.

I find this to be an arbitrary and unhelpful distinction. All plots are character driven. Without a character facing trouble that is understandable to the reader, you don’t have a plot at all. Further, you can have all the action in the world, but if your characters don’t ring true, your story will fail.

plots need characters and characters need plots. (Plot & Structure pg. 15, emphasis mine)

Writers are often asked to pigeon-hole their stories. Agents, editors, critique partners demand to know, Is your novel about a player or a game? Thus, the author is forced to take sides in the controversy. There is no doubt that stories emphasize one or the other. The Road is less about an apocalypse than it is the Man and Boy traveling through it. But this is no reason to focus on one to the exclusion of the other. The Man and the Boy have no story if not for the apocalypse. Why then must the novelist choose sides?

When it comes to self-analysis, it’s been said, “Too many autopsies will bleed you to death.” I wonder if the plot v. character debate doesn’t have the same effect.

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So where do you fall in the plot versus character debate? Do you think the distinction is helpful for authors? Or does it needlessly pigeonhole our stories?

{ 10 comments… add one }
  • Jay September 24, 2010, 6:10 AM

    Good post, Mike! My unprofessional opinion (i.e., a priori common sense paired with intuition and some armchair observations) tell me most stories are a combination of both, but some lean more toward one or the other. What distinguishes one from the other us perhaps the main object towards which the characters or plot move. Does the story lie in what that character do to further the action or what the action does to the character(s)? Is the literary “payoff” external, material to all characters, or internal and esoteric to one or a few?

  • R. L. Copple September 24, 2010, 7:27 AM

    It’s nice when I find willing partners in “crime.” 🙂 I’ve made this point before. The two have a symbiotic relationship. Good characterization is enhanced when you put your characters under struggle and tension. We get to see what they’re made of. Likewise, a plot shines when you have the right character to bring it out, and interaction between characters, and we can see them grow through the struggles. But its difficult to have them develop without struggle, and pointless to have struggle if you don’t care about the character. The two go hand in hand.

    That said, there are stories more focused toward one than the other. Purely character driven stories, however, I find boring, relying more upon word play and literary fanciness than actually having a story. And sometimes I come across stories that remind me of the old B-rated kung-fu movies, where the story and characters are there just to have an excuse to do a fight scene, or in some cases, just to make a point.

    But in my mind, good characterization requires a good plot, and a good plot requires good characterization. When you have both in good supply and done well, you generally have a great book.

  • Nicole September 24, 2010, 8:00 AM

    I think it’s a negative to pigeon-hole a writer’s work, but since novices can be clueless about how to identify the content of their story, many of these “quantify-ers” were deemed necessary. I agree with all of you gentlemen. Without some kind of character-driven (meaningful) investment into a plot-driven (worthwhile) story, you have characters you don’t give a rip about (undesirable) while something happens to them and you could care less (they deserve it).

  • Jeff Chapman September 24, 2010, 10:57 AM

    Interesting post, Mike. I think the plot versus character debate was invented by the literati to distinguish “literature” from “genre fiction”. Literature (fiction in the realistic genre) is about subtle changes in character while genre fiction is about cardboard people bashing each other with [substitute weapon appropriate to your genre]. This is nothing short of snobbery. And, as you’ve argued above, it’s ridiculous. Great fiction, no matter what the genre, combines character development with action.

  • Jessica Thomas September 24, 2010, 1:10 PM

    I actually think character-driven versus plot-driven is a fair distinction. I think it is very difficult to have solid characterization in a story with a hard-driving plot. If the purpose is the “thrill” with the plot-line, throwing in extra characterization mutes the excitement so I think it tends to get edited out (or is never added in the first place).

    On the flipside, maybe I’m weird, but I’m fascinated by stories in which very little actually happens, but the characterization is either so silly or so rich (or both) that the story ends up being entertaining. In those types of stories, big plot events don’t need to happen, and if they do it detracts from the mood.

    I suppose I’m also a weirdo in that I like to watch writer’s play with and stretch language. Oftentimes that stretching can only occur when the plot is minimal or secondary. Yes, there’s a plot there, but the main entertainment value is either the characterization or the writing style itself. Perhaps such stories get labeled literary because they only appeal to nerds like me. 🙂

  • Nicole September 24, 2010, 2:52 PM

    You know I love those novels, Jess. But I also love the thrillers. You make a fine point, but the characters in the thrillers still have to appeal to me. I need to know them beyond the surface level. Perfect example: Mitch Rapp in Vince Flynn novels. I think my favorite one is Consent to Kill because we finally get beneath his layers to see the man Mitch. However, we get just enough of him in previous novels to be totally involved in his life and persona. It’s a good balance.

    Most of us don’t live “extraordinary” lives with utter chaos and rampant action. To make the mundane extraordinary to read is so valuable.

  • Brenda Jackson September 24, 2010, 9:53 PM

    Well I don’t know how useful it is for the age old plot vs. character debate, but as someone mentioned above, it seems that stories vary on which are stronger. Someone recently referred me to Charles Martin’s books. A couple of those books I would call “life ramble” stories—strongly character driven. And while I use the term life ramble, they were no less interesting. But perhaps I only THINK they’re less plot oriented because I read more action/adventure type stuff than anything.
    Or maybe he’s simply so skillful with his stories he’s lulled me into thinking they are a rambling slice of life.

  • S.C. Wade September 26, 2010, 3:22 AM

    I was one who fell into the whole character-driven or plot-driven debate, and I took the side of the character-driven.

    Assuming we are talking about GOOD stories, everyone here has a point in that it’s really just one aspect of it is a little bit stronger than the other. You can’t have a plot without characters, or else that’s just called an event (and as the new NBC show, The Event, should heed the advice of: even if you have characters in your “event,” they need to be good, plausible characters… Or the holes in your “event” needs to be plugged. But I digress, lol).

    And you can’t have characters without a plot, or else that’s just a biography. You have to have both, but one can definitely outshine the other tremendously. But in any good story, they are both present, even if one is slight.

    With that said, is there really something wrong with saying character-driven or plot-driven? What do we mean by “driven?” Does it not mean that is the aspect of the story that really drove the story and moved it forward? In other words, that was the strongest aspect out of the two (which everyone has been claiming can be). So I think the distinction still holds. But they both need to be present. A plot-driven story can’t drive itself, just like a character-driven story can’t drive itself. ( Again, we’re working under the assumption that the stories are good stories 😛 )

    And in all honesty, I don’t think “plot-driven” is the actual term that people really mean. I think they mean more “action-driven.” I gave one of my stories to one of my coworkers to read, and I wasn’t surprised to hear him say that it needed a car chase or something like that (he’s that type of person — likes loud, action-packed, blow-up stuff). He said it was a good try (meanwhile that same story was accepted for publication not too long ago!), but I’m just throwing it out there that the difference should probably be action-driven and character-driven.

    My work is more character-driven because my stories don’t normally include chases and [physical] fight scenes and explosions and the like.

    ….was this too long? lol

  • Kevin Lucia September 26, 2010, 3:24 AM

    On the flipside, maybe I’m weird, but I’m fascinated by stories in which very little actually happens, but the characterization is either so silly or so rich (or both) that the story ends up being entertaining.

    I’m going to agree with both Jess and Nicole on this one. I actually DO believe in the distinction, simply because I’ve picked up so many novels that featured such flimsy characterization, I couldn’t care a less what happened to them. So for me, character always comes first. If the author hasn’t done a good enough job making me care about the character (characterization/character development) then I couldn’t care a less what happens to them (plot).

    Does this mean I pass on many New York Times Bestsellers? It most certainly does.

    BUT, I also agree with this: the masters can mesh both and make them work together. I’m almost done with Boy’s Life, by Robert McCammon. That begins with an essential plot element – a mysterious stranger’s death – but the character development in that novel is what makes it the masterpiece that it is.

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