Character vs. Plot

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For a while now I've been annoyed when people say things like "I don't care how well he can write, I just want to read a good story!" without really understanding why. It's not as if I have any great love for postmodernist fiction or anything. Then the other day I had a revelation: I don't LIKE plots that much.

A lot of people have told me they're disappointed when they read Catcher In The Rye because they've been led to expect the greatest story of all time. Instead they get 207 pages in which nothing really happens. That's what I liked so much about the book when I first read it, the fact that nothing really remarkable happened, so you never pull back from the narrative and think 'This is just a book.' It's like you're listening to (well, reading the thoughts of) a real person. And for the most part, the kind of fiction I like focuses on character. I've never been that interested in genre fiction for that reason. This mostly goes for movies as well: it's why I prefer Howard Hawks to John Ford. (On the other hand, I like "2001"...but HAL is a great character)

Not to say plots should be dispensed with, only that they should grow out of the characters, not vice versa. I think literature is more than just storytelling.

― Justyn Dillingham, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

This is why I read non-fiction: the characters are more complex and the plots never end and barely exist.

― Tom, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am a luddite on this as I love a good plot, but natch it has to be a synthesis of character and plot. It's quite the modern mode to be in to characters, largely cos they are a money spinner. People love them, but also you can keep it going. It's all about serials.

Comics, TV shows -- all about making the character creators major cash... and entertaining people. It's also easier, cos a good plot requires characters anyway, so once you have those, why bother with a good plot -- they're too much like hard work, and they've all been done.

― Alan Trewartha, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm very much a character man - which may seem odd since I really like detective fiction but it has become increasingly clear that what I like about it is the development of strong charcters over the wishy washy aspects of plot mechanics (and in this genre it is all mechanics). Nevertheless the importance of a simple structure underpinning character development should not be disregarded.

― Pete, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's the secon thread in couple of days where The Catcher in The rye got a mention.

I'm sure I remember an older thread where it got slashed to pieces.

― misterjones, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

there was a fellow called ian mcmillan (?) ran a tiny little column in nme in the v.early 80s called "SPEEDREAD NOVELS for the MODERN TEEN IN A HURRY" (or similar), which were plot stripped down to its minimum (eg 100 words). They were terrific (love story, crime story, sci-fi story etc), and I always wondered if they'd been collected as I long ago lost em.

― mark s, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

That's the secon thread in couple of days where The Catcher in The rye got a mention.

I'm sure I remember an older thread where it got slashed to pieces.

Yes Gavin. Here on ILE we like to slash them down then build them up.

― N., Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I like character-driven stories much more. BUT if not done well I want to break their spines and toss into the street below my window. Whereas I'm a sucker for a slowly unfolding plot, even if the book is rotten to the core I'll finish it just to find out what happens.

― Pyth, Thursday, 14 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i've known for, what, six months that buf was gunna die: and obviously since series six starts in a month i know that she's not going to stay dead, duh. this didn't stop me bursting into tears when she jumped off the gantry into the portal, and then all over again a minute later when spike was weeping

it ain't just plot

also i creid when i realised i tape five minutes of channel four by mistake at the start, and had to stop and rewind and start retaping. cheezis...

― mark s, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think that I often read things too quickly to appreciate characters or places because I get obsessed with seeing what's going to happen next. I blame this on too many detective stories in my younger years. It creates a compulsion to see if you have successfully picked whodunnit and how.

Novels based around strong characters, even if nothing much happens, are good cos they make me fight against this (I fear) greedy and/or naive reading style.

Not that stories aren't great. Fairy tales, for eg, are fascinating to read and in them characters are cliches: the story is the important thing.

― isadora, Friday, 15 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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