Hypothetical: Someone walks up to you on the street and says, \u201cCharacter or plot driven?\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s go ahead and assume they\u2019re not wearing their favorite shade of inmate orange.\u00a0 Oh, and they don\u2019t have on one of those snazzy jackets with the sleeves that latch together at the back.\u00a0 Aside from slowly backing away while using your peripheral vision to scan for cops, what do you do?<\/p>\n
For my money, the only correct way to answer that question is \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like most things in life, the discussion of plot versus character driven fiction is a slippery one.\u00a0 It\u2019s not black and white, and anyone who says otherwise is either too inexperienced or too myopic to realize that all the fun debates are taking place in the gray areas.<\/p>\n
For what it\u2019s worth, I think character and plot are so interwoven that a discussion of one versus the other is really pointless.\u00a0 Every story has (or should have) a plot.\u00a0 There\u2019s a story question to be answered.\u00a0 Will the detectives find the missing child?\u00a0 Will the chubby, awkward kid make the school wrestling team?\u00a0 Will the young man in the life raft find rescue before the Bengal tiger he\u2019s sharing the boat with eats him?<\/p>\n
Depending on your tastes, these may or may not seem like questions worth answering, but if the fictional people struggling to answer those questions do not contain at least some level of depth and sincerity, the story will fall apart, regardless of whether or not the plot is engaging.\u00a0 Story and character are in symbiosis.\u00a0 Each informs and shapes the other.\u00a0 While the external conflict is raging, an equally important internal struggle is taking place, and both will result in change.<\/p>\n
At the core of every story is the journey from the familiar to the unfamiliar.\u00a0 For those of you waiting for me to add \u201cand back again,\u201d I won\u2019t.\u00a0 Because it\u2019s not true.\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t go home again\u201d applies equally to both real and imaginary people.\u00a0 Even if your characters physically end up in the exact same place they started, things are different now because their adventures have changed them.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s on a very subtle level, things will never be the same.<\/p>\n