NMS,
That’s unacceptable. The very act of picking up an Agatha Christie novel is based on the strong assumption that either Miss.Marple or Poirot will encounter an unsolvable murder mystery, which baffles everyone and in the end go on to find an ingenious solution. How well do you think you will enjoy a Poirot novel which has a plot like water? So you see although characterization is important, it is the plot, the premise, the twists and turns that keep the reader hooked and compel him to keep turning the pages till the end.
Now I know what you are going to say to this NMS – “ The plot still is trivial, it is the way is which the cool characters react to the circumstances and the conflict that will keep me engrossed”. Unacceptable again. In the first murder mystery involving Marple or Poirot we get a complete character sketch of the both of them INCLUDING the way in which each will react to different situations and these traits do not change all throughout the books. So what makes you read every adventure of theirs with enthusiasm? The plot naturally!
Take James Bond for that matter. He is spy, a strong tough guy who drinks a lot, seduces women at the drop of a hat and is licensed to kill. Now this character does not change anytime. There isn’t even a character arc. But we still enjoy Bond movies don’t we? Not for who he is but for what he does and that is plotting for you.
With character-driven stories, the problem is internal and is usually caused by a weakness in the main character that has to be overcome before he can resolve the problem that makes up the story. The pivotal point is when the character understands this and takes the first steps to right his weakness.
A plot-driven story begins with a problem that is external – in a thriller, this might be a terrorist attack, in a mystery it might be an unexpected murder. The characterisation influences the plot by the reaction of the main character to the problem. At the pivotal point, the character finds the tools, internally or externally, to solve the situation.
So it goes without saying that when one is working on a genre based script, one is compelled to give more importance to the plot than to the characters and vice-versa.
Look at what a reputed screenwriter has to say about this issue.
Most writers have a preference for one style of writing over another. Some writers are more adept at developing complex, interesting, and quirky characters. Others excel at page-turning action. The lucky ones are writers who are good at creating both the Character Emotional Development plotline and the Dramatic Action plotline. Become aware of your strength and learn to address your weakness, and you, too, can become one of the lucky ones.
Broadly speaking, writers who prefer writing plot-driven stories focus on logical thinking, rational analysis, and accuracy. Plot-driven writers tend to rely more on the left side of their brain. These writers approach writing as a linear function and see the story in its parts. Plot-driven writers like structure. They usually pre-plot or create an outline before writing. Plot-driven writers have little trouble expressing themselves in words.
On the other hand, writers who write character-driven stories tend to focus on aesthetics and feelings, creativity and imagination. These writers access the right side of their brains and enjoy playing with the beauty of language. They are more intuitive, and like to work things out on the page. Character-driven writers are holistic and subjective. They can synthesize new information, but are somewhat (or more) disorganized and random. They see the story as the whole. Right brain writers may know what they mean, but often have trouble finding the right words.
Agreed. Amen!
Raghu.
Then I'd have to pose the question to you -- granted that the relationship between Holmes and Watson came full-born and completely developed from the head of ACD -- it was, to all intents and purposes the same in the first Holmes and Watson story as it was in the seventh or the tenth.
Certainly, there were developments -- Moriarty was introduced, for instance -- but by and large, the characters and the world of Holmes and Watson were set right at the beginning.
Does that mean that the reason we come back to Sherlock Holmes was because we wanted to puzzle out the mysteries?
What mysteries exactly were they? I suppose I've read every Sherlock Holmes story at least a couple times, and with only a few exceptions, I doubt that I could even tell you what the "mysteries" even were.
I know that the speckled band turned out to be a snake. Maybe a few others.
With Agatha Christie, I remember that it turns out that everybody did it in Mystery on the Orient Express, and that somebody we thought was dead turned out to be the killer in Ten Little Indians.
Beyond that, I couldn't begin to tell you who did what and when and why and how.
No. The structure of the mystery, that is the plot, is simply an enabling device -- it enables the protagonist to confront the fundamental themes that underly these sorts of stories -- in which the heroes embody the forces of law/reason/order -- and, as a rule, the murder or murders embody the forces of chaos, crime, and disorder -- and those forces engage one another over the course of the story.
It is that *struggle* that we want to see played out over and over again. The mystery, as such -- the puzzle, is secondary.
The problem that I have with the dichotomy that you, and others raise above, between "character-driven" and "plot-driven" is that it ignores the larger and more fundamental over-arching story structure.
And that is that Story is "theme-driven" -- and that when you are dealing with entities in a story in thematic terms, there is no difference between a person and an incident.
That is, in thematic terms, there is no difference between the struggles that go on inside somebody's head -- which must, in any case (in drama) be externalized and expressed through action, and literal external action, which must, in any case, be chosen to embody the thematic journey of the characters.
It's important to understand this distinction.
Take a movie like "In Search of Bobby Fischer" -- it's based on a true story.
Now, in the true story, there's obviously a real little kid chess prodigy. He has a real father, a real mother. He was taught by a real Chess Master who had taught Bobby Fischer, who was also real. The kid did go on to win this chess tournament.
Now, in the movie, he also played chess with this guy in the park -- I have no idea whether there was such a character in real life.
But what those people were or were not like in real life is almost tangential to what they were in the movie.
That is because in order to make the movie, those real people have to undergo a transformation. They have to stop being people in the traditional sense and become iconic -- they become representations of ideas -- thematic entities.
And those thematic entities are at war -- at war over the soul of this boy -- and that struggle for his soul forms the basis of the story.
And once again, you have the *internal struggle* externalized in the form of people -- the people representing points of view -- the mother and the chess guy from the park on one side -- the father and the chess master on the other side.
But again, it's absurd to talk about the "plot" of this story as it were a thing that was separate from these characters. The character exist to unfold the development of the protagonist's character.
And the protagonist's character is not something that exists in isolation. It exists in tension -- an internal tension that plays out, by extension though characters whose only reason for existing *in the story* is to externalize that internal struggle.
I don't know from right brain or left brain writing -- so far as I know, language and speech is virtually completely specialized on the left side of the brain, so that all sounds like a lot of metaphorical fluff.
Whether one has an intricately plotted or a thinly plotted story sort of depends on the story you want to tell and on your own aesthetic preferences. Whether you have a story that is very grounded in reality or highly fantastical, likewise depends on what story you want to tell and your own preferences.
But whichever kind of story you want to tell, in the end, you are still going to come down, at the most basic level, to characters, situations, images, events -- that embody ideas that ultimately converge on a single thematic resolution -- the thing that your story is about.
And it is neither plot, nor character but that -- theme, that is really driving your story.
NMS
