Plot vs Character driven development

[Montero]

With massive, multi-stranded, multi-charactered books (and series) even if done with great skill, I get frustrated by how slowly the story makes progress and how infrequently the characters I like put in an appearance. Particularly if you have one set of characters in book 1, but they don't reappear until book 4.


Drawing in another thread - ebooks. I wonder if one day electronic books will be "selectable" like some DVDs. As in you select the five characters you want to follow and intervening story is summarised in a form that just tells you enough for you to continue with your selected characters story.

 

[chrispenycate]

Drawing in another thread - ebooks. I wonder if one day electronic books will be "selectable" like some DVDs. As in you select the five characters you want to follow and intervening story is summarised in a form that just tells you enough for you to continue with your selected characters' story.

Can you imagine 'authoring' such a volume? The entire story would have to be told not merely from each character's viewpoint, but every permutation of characters, and it couldn't be a computer program that would do the compression (or a subeditor with no more imagination than a computer, either) Add that the principal market for this preparation would be rambling, multivolume works, and that the author has worked at developing those characters you are now requesting him/her to tone down to insignificance…

No, I do not see this as a reasonable use for the potential flexibility of the E-reading medium (although editing out the interior illustrations that don't look anything like the characters described might be, and is less data-consuming.)

 

[Fried Egg]

On the other hand, stories with well-written characters of sufficient depth placed in interesting situations have never, in my experience as a reader, failed to deliver a wonderful plot.

Innevitably though, such detailed character drawing must place a constraint on the author that if violated, as you pointed out previously, frustrates the reader. In addition, such in depth character building, just like world building, innevitably disrupts the flow of the plot and pads out the book.

More than that, plots that arise naturally in this way engage me emotionally in the way that a book like The Worm Ouroboros never can. If there is also a remarkable imagination at work, and the kind of prose that I love to linger over and savor -- and there is no reason why a character-driven story can't display those same qualities as well as one that is plot-driven -- then I think it is a superior book. I may admire a book by a writer like Eddison, there may be aspects of such a book that I adore, but I can never entirely get past the sense that there is something missing at the core, a hollow place where there should be, if not something so utterly mundane and disreputable as a heart, at least something capable of touching mine.

I think a lot of people are the same. They need to engage personally with the protagonists for a book to feel complete (however much they may admire other aspects of the writing). I used to feel the same way but now, for some reasons, I don't.

 

[Connavar]

I'm like you then FE some stories i read and i dont even focus on the characters. I engage more with other aspects of the writing no matter how great the characters are.

Connecting with characters is overrated unless its a big epic fantasy type book. You dont read those for the traditional fantasy worlds that are almost always based on europen medevil times....

 

[Toby Frost]

I'd have said that the best books are those where the characters create the plot. Not just where the hero has to be brave so he'll actually turn up to the fight scenes, but where Character X, who isn't a stock figure, has done something which triggers Character Y, or event Z - and there's the plot. Plot to my mind is a series of events that come from people making decisions which arise from their characters (some of which may have been made before the story begins). So plot isn't just something that gets dumped on the characters but something they help shape. I would far rather have a story driven by the characters than by the need to stop the Dark Lord Of Doom/godless commie bugs just because they're there.

As regards detailed characterisation of heroes, etc, I rather like it. I know there is something useful in the "empty vessel" protagonist, who we can put ourselves into, but I prefer people who are properly 3D, or at least eccentric enough to stand out. Fine, you can have a stock knight or a carpenter if required, but if they are in the centre of the book they need a bit more than that. Take the courtiers from Gormenghast or Dune: these are epics, but the characters are really distinctive and strong (albeit grotesque). Or Winston Smith: at the same time he's everyman (nice enough, not terribly brave, wants a quiet life) but he is also an individual (has a bad ankle, fairly intellectual, phobic of rats etc). We can follow Winston along and to a large extent be in his head, but we also know he's not "you" like the descriptions in a Fighting Fantasy book.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Innevitably though, such detailed character drawing must place a constraint on the author that if violated, as you pointed out previously, frustrates the reader.

Constraints are not always a bad thing. Sometimes they force an author (or an artist) to dig deeper and put in more effort and imagination, instead of continuing on with what is the easiest.

And the author has (at least) two choices that don't require shallow or sketchy characters to keep plot and characterization from clashing.

One is to take the time to create characters who are likely to do the job of moving the plot in the desired direction. If you want them to make stupid choices, that you provide them with the necessary character flaws from the beginning, instead of producing what you need like a rabbit out of a hat when and where it becomes convenient (and then hiding the rabbit behind a prop when you need the character to be perfect again). If you want them to be brave and noble, then you must plant the seeds of greatness early on. Naturally, the circumstances of the plot can promote either the disintegration or the evolution of a character so that the necessary traits, hinted at before, gradually take over.

The other is to create the characters, invent a set of circumstances likely to generate interesting challenges and complications, and then let the imagination run free without the artificial limitations imposed by adhering too rigidly to a preconceived plot. There are, after all, many different sorts of constraints, and the author chooses which ones he or she plans to work within. The only question, I believe, is which kinds of constraints tend to make for the most interesting and satisfying stories. Obviously, we have different answers to that question.

In addition, such in depth character building, just like world building, innevitably disrupts the flow of the plot and pads out the book.

I disagree strongly. The best authors can reveal depth of a character with a few well-chosen words or acts here and there and continue the revelation of that character through his or her subsequent actions and reactions.

It is also a question of what the individual reader or writer might regard as padding. An author might, for instance, in the interest of maintaining the flow of the plot, decide to spend a few less pages describing Lord Juss's throne room in order to have a few words left over to explain his inner thought processes. Actually, I am having a hard time coming up with any other writer capable of padding a story like Eddison could. There is a great deal of charm in much of the detail, but it can also reach a stage that is well past cloying.

 

[paranoid marvin]

I think it's a given that characters must behave in a believable fashion in any novel , whether it is plot or character driven. I would say that there are very few successful books where the plot revolves around the character(s) rather than vice-versa ; but when it comes off it can be very effective. Frankenstein (in my opinion) is a classic example of a novel where the novel concentrates on the characters of 3 beings , and their relationship with one another - what happens around them is largely irrelevant and simply goes towards building their characters for which is better , who can say? But I would suspect that on the whole a novel without plot is more enjoyable than a plot without characters , which would seem - empty.

 

[Fried Egg]

It is also a question of what the individual reader or writer might regard as padding. An author might, for instance, in the interest of maintaining the flow of the plot, decide to spend a few less pages describing Lord Juss's throne room in order to have a few words left over to explain his inner thought processes. Actually, I am having a hard time coming up with any other writer capable of padding a story like Eddison could. There is a great deal of charm in much of the detail, but it can also reach a stage that is well past cloying.

I know what you're saying, there is a lot of description in the "Worm". But on the other hand, when I finished this book, I was actually suprised just how much actually happened in the story. Quite a feat given how the author didn't shy away from embellished description. In only around five hundred pages, he accomplishes a lot compared to many other writers, especially these days, who in many more pages accomplish far less.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I'm not sure how much my fantasy series is plot driven or character driven - I introduced various scenes or events because they seemed interesting - on the other hand the main character is taken from an early story I wrote, and the main female character arose because I thought it would be interesting to have a strong female character introduced into the story.
Lately I took a chapter of it along to a (general) local writer's workshop, and while they liked some aspects of it, they bashed my characterization as "two-dimensional" and the treatment of the female characters as "stereotyped". Apparently having a female character who gets to do stuff but is tall, thin and plain is a stereotype, and so is a female character who is pretty but ordinary.
I gather that the fashion is for characterization to be prominent in fantasy these days, so I feel a bit depressed.