What kind of stories do you want to read?

I’m asking, because I’m coming to the realization that one reason I’ve nothing in print just now in short fiction is what I’m writing. I had three stories in the Grantville Gazette, shuttered since Eric Flint’s death. All the stories were, well, just that – stories of things happening to people, and how they handled it.

I only recently wrapped my head around the idea that these were “plot-centered” stories, rather than “character-centered”. It struck me that one note that I got during the class I just took in writing from Odyssey Online was that “it’s okay to have plot-centered stories”.

Note that Tolkien is considered “plot-centered”, never mind the character development of Frodo and Sam, and all the others.

Meanwhile, from what I understand from panels, etc, is that a lot of editors want character-centered stories.

Come again, I thought. I thought “story” was defined as things happening to someone. My current thinking is along these lines: back in the eighties, at least, a number of sf & fantasy writers, Harlen not the least of them, complained of being in the “genre ghetto” – and so not even considered by a wider audience, or for more prestigious awards.

So over the last couple decades, there’s been a shift to what “real writers” do, which some writers started referring to as a genre of its own, “lit-fic”.

Is that what people want to read sf & f for? I’ve run into stories that I gave up on, because it’s all about what goes on in someone’s head, not about the world around them. To me, developing a character with plot being unimportant (if it’s there) means that the PoV is affected, and perhaps a few others around them… where plot-centered can affect many others, and change the world, or part of it.

I also think that putting people in a plot give the writer a better venue to show them develop and grow (for good or bad), to become more.

So what do folks here think? Please feel free to discuss, the way you would in a conversation at a con, not the limited way that people seem to expect on social media.