What is the difference between character driven and plot driven

Plot-driven stories are often exciting and fast-paced. They compel the reader to turn the page to find out how the characters will escape, evade, prevail, or overcome. As an author of a plot-driven story, you have to meticulously tie together plot points to create a cohesive story.

You naturally focus on ideas instead of people and their motivations. In your story, you force your characters to make quick decisions that move the plot forwards. As a result, character development is secondary to plot development. An excellent example of a plot-driven story is Kindred by Octavia E.

Butler, a haunting time-travel slave narrative. The story is imaginative and relies on the choices that the characters make to move the story forward. Image Courtesy of Amazon. Every novel has at least one character, even if that character is the reader as is the case in a second person point of view. To be successful, your characters should be memorable, dimensional, and distinct from each other.

They must have a sense of agency. In other words, your characters should own and control their actions within the world that you create. A character-driven story is focused on studying the characters that make up your story.

Character-driven stories can deal with inner transformation or the relationships between the characters. Whereas plot-driven stories focus on a set of choices that a character must make, a character-driven story focuses on how the character arrives at a particular choice. When you zoom into the internal conflicts, you tend to focus less on the external conflicts. The plot in a character-driven story is usually simple and often hyper-focused on the internal or interpersonal struggle of the character s.

Many readers love character-driven stories because the author tends to put a premium on developing realistic, flawed, and human characters. Readers can see themselves or someone they love in these characters and, as a result, connect emotionally. She weaves together eight exquisite character studies of mother and daughter in a way that sticks to your bones. While things will happen to the characters, your story is in how the characters respond to those things. And to figure out how your characters will and should respond to those circumstances, you must be clear on who your characters are.

When deciding how the character will interact with the scene and drive the plot forward, you need to know more about the character. One of the best things you can do to develop your characters is to create a character bible.

This can feel your readers understand your characters and feel more connected to them. Your characters must interact and respond to their environment.

In fact, that environment should in some way shape your characters. Your task is to decide how that environment does just that. And on the other side you have the plot-driven writing style, where the plot takes center stage and the characters are added accessories.

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