The terms Plot-driven v. Character-driven need to die the death they deserve.
As usual, rolling out the origin story for the many terms you use in writing without questioning or knowing where they came from, and maybe dumping on them a bit. OK, dumping on them a lot, and then giving you a better theory to work from.
Introduction
Basics go like this, you can either have “Plot-driven” or “Character-driven” stories, thus cutting out the 98% of the other terms used around building stories. And if it’s so-called “character-driven” then the characters create the plot. If it’s so-called “Plot-driven” then it’s plot shaping the characters. But I can defeat this quickly by asing you: What plot doesn’t include characters?
In what imagination do you have that a story is all verbs?
falls, does, makes
In what imagination you have that it’s only characters and no events? Is it all nouns?
If a tree in a forest, it sound?
If a square is a rectangle, and you say, but all rectangles are invalid, that means you’ve thrown out the square. If the plot includes character, and you’re saying character is part of plot, then saying plot is irrelevant to shaping story, then you’re telling me, flat out, characters don’t matter. You can’t have it both ways. The thing is that plot is the larger circle, but not the entirety of a story. https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com/post/630079034534035456/definition-of-story There are more things to making a story than only the characters and events.
Makes absolutely no sense, like much of the 1980′s writing advice which was poorly cited, but absolutely repeated wrongly.
History
So why and wherefore did this whole plot v. character thing come from? I present to you the “Great Man Theory” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
This say great people, mostly men shaped history. That means schlubs and the rest of the people out there did nothing. This is the pro "character-driven” side. So, that person that threw the brick at Stonewall was secretly a “Great person” and that’s why the chain of events happened with pride (who was also later erased to be a white male.)
And the people we forget, say, Bass Reeves, who was whitewashed, was ranked lower than the people who created the Lone Ranger from his story, because, you know Bass Reeves deserves to be forgotten.
You can see about here what I think of this shit theory of time.
Of course people loved this theory. If you try hard enough, you can be great too, which is why you don’t remember who really created the Bamboo filament for the lightbulb. It was the height of imperialism, so of course people loved it.
There is an opposite time theory though, that goes, that events called someone to be great at the time, so with the people absent, it won’t change.
Both are shit theories, honestly, which was why by the 1980′s-1990s, they were abandoned, but writers latched onto them in the same time period, while the rest of the world, say philosophy, history theory, and physics lept forwards. Because people like buzzwords that make things feel simple. But it’s a shit theory.
So where is time theory now?
Time theory has jumped mostly towards string theory. Rather than a linear progression of events with either great people or people just filling in, that time, looks organized, while it’s truly chaos.
So a more popular theory of time would be Butterfly effect, which says, the smallest of events and changes affect everything in the scene. This means there is equal weight to events and characters, as well as the other 98% of what makes a story a story. This means things like, oh, say setting, tone, theme, etc ALSO matter to making the story more complete. So if you change a hat, it has ripple effects on the rest of the story. (It’s the more annoying, but feels more realistic, and less flat.)
People would HATE this idea. You have to keep track of things like dialogue, setting, props, etc? And of course you do. You have to anyway. But that should also have equal weight and effect on the characters.
Spies who need to meet secretly in a cafe, are not going to effing shout their plans at each other. WHERE IS THE SETTING? A public place. And you need time, weather, etc. It irks people when you’re setting it in the North Pole and it’s sunny and warm 100% of the time and there is no effect on how the characters act.
So use the butterfly effect and get your head out of the imperialistic period of human thought.
