Continuing the last post, and just to make sure we’re all speaking about the same thing, let’s use this https://jerichowriters.com/character-driven-vs-plot-driven-stories/ to define our terms.
Now… what bothers me about “character-driven” stories: that’s what most “lit-fic” has come to be. In the recent writing course I took, the instructor made a comment about “plot-driven stories were okay”… as if there were a whole commentariat saying that they were not. And a lot of what I see in the well-known online mags, and what I have heard about, say, Asimov’s, are that they want character-driven stories.
Now, when I first got into fandom, the Big Thing about why “real litrachur” looked down on sf&f was lack of character development and growth. Then New Wave hit, and we got all of that… Of course, the lit-fic folks found other reasons to look down on us.
I should probably note that lit-fic is really what “real literature” has become, with a small audience. (Best sellers, some… but how many people read the whole book?) What sells the most? Why, books with plots.
To me, New Wave meant *both* – plot *and* character development. To disagree with the link, above, the plot should drive the character’s development, and should show the character responding to the plot in such a way as to show who they are, or that we can watch them become.
Don’t we see character development and growth, and who they are, and become, revealed to us by, for example, Merry and Pippin? And yet this is apparently called “plot-driven”.
How about plot-driven characters?
Come on, folks, this is the ‘Net. Everyone wants to shoot their mouths off, and has opinion – tell me what you think?