Character-driven versus plot-driven is an age-old debate, one that is particularly interesting to see when it rears its head in genre fiction, which by its very nature is the definition of plot-driven in the first place.
There’s also a bit of confusion on what this actually means–I’ve had to learn to tell the difference myself not that long ago. Because you can have plot-driven narratives with great characters, and vice versa, and the goal of any writer worth their salt is to be able to develop everything as equally as possible.
A Song of Ice and Fire is almost universally lauded for having great characters, but as many people have pointed out, it’s actually a plot-driven series. The characters give it great flavour and makes the experience well-rounded, but it’s the plot that drives the events–the wars, the wights, the scheming, the Lannisters, etc.
Thinking about this makes me look at some of my favourite novels with a second glance. What about Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana? Or The Lions of Al-rassan? Robin Hobb’s works are undeniably character-driven, particularly her FitzChivalry books.
The distinction lies in this: two things, given equal weight, what does the author choose to focus on? How the character feels about things, or moving the plot forward?
The Agartes Epilogues is character-driven because even though there’s a plot, the story doesn’t end until the characters have gone through their individual, personal arcs as dictated by the story. Interesting things might be happening, but we always have to consider it from the characters’ point-of-view. This is jarring to some people–the characters don’t always act in ways that make sense to them, and make frustrating decisions. But the goal of the character-driven narrative is not to get the characters from Plot Point A to Plot Point B, but to have their experiences recorded–one which, hopefully, ends up in growth.
Annals of the Bitch Queen is yet another character-driven narrative where the plot is juggled through the main character’s experience.
There is a plot. There’s betrayal, politics, trickery, and an all-star cast. There’s a villain. There’s action. There’s battles, monsters, fighting. The pacing is super-fast. It has all the elements of an action-heavy, plot-driven story.
But it is character-driven because the entire nature of the series revolves around Talyien’s image as “the Bitch Queen” and her eventual journey to break out of the mold cast around her, particularly the legacy her father built for her, and discover herself.
“Let them grumble, if they want…you do not have to make them like you. You have to be harder.”
“As hard as they say I am?” I asked him.
“As hard as they say you are,” he agreed, his eyes softening, speaking what he dared not say out loud: even though we know you are not.
-The Wolf of Oren-yaro
It’s a tricky story to tell. I’m always running the risk of turning people off because of the characters. The perfect example is my novel Birthplace, which was panned by its reviewers when it went through to the first round of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Sure, they were poor quality reviews because the reviewers never even got the main character’s name right (which means they never read past the first page), but they were also harping on his overall unpleasantness, which is a highlight of the novel. My husband was just telling me his biggest problem with the character: “I get it. He’s had a hard life, his dad is a dick. But he’s making it worse for himself by acting the way he does.”
Well, yeah. I don’t disagree with that assessment. (My husband has never read through the end, either, which is a first for him as he tends to inhale the rest of my stuff).
But that’s character-driven for you. We don’t care about how inconvenient it is for the plot, we care about the characters’ journey. Obviously, the story never ends with them in the same place they were before. Birthplace ends with Pablo discovering that there is more to life than himself–in fact, the unwritten end of that trilogy takes him from being that spoiled, sulky boy to the guardian of Emmanuel, his adopted son, and later aswang-hunter.
Definitely, YMMV when it comes to these stories. They’re definitely harder to write–the potential to mess up is way higher. But done right, they offer a different way of looking at things, which is always one of the highlights of books in general.
