Have you ever heard the phrase “character-driven”? Have you ever wondered what it means? I must admit, the first time I heard the phrase, I had no idea. I kept hearing the word bandied about at conferences, in conversations with other writers, and it’s especially a favorite of agents and people in publishing, but what does “character-driven” even mean?
Simply put, it means that the plot doesn’t drive the story, the characters do. Now, some people might wrinkle their forehead, rightly so, and say, “Seth, hold on a second. I thought a plot is what moves a story along. That’s why we’re there. That’s like the definition of plot, the things that move the story along.”
Yes and no. You’d be right that, yes, plot is what moves the story along, but there’s a particular nuance here that I missed for a really long time, which is why I had no idea what “character-driven” meant. Finally, however, some kind soul explained it to me in a way that made sense.
You might think of plot as a list of things that happen, but plot is only interesting insofar as those things happen to someone. Let me give you a really simple example. I could tell you a story about a volcano that erupts, and it could be majestic. It could be awe-inspiring. It could be terrible. This incredible scene could stir you in various ways, but unless there is a village of people or anthropomorphic animals who live at the foot of that volcano and are in imminent danger of being swept away by a flow of lava, it’s not going to be interesting. It’s not going to be a story. Instead, I would just be recounting events that happened.
A tendril of black smoke drifted up into the sky, mixing with the clouds. Faint rumbles could be heard. Boom. The volcano explodes.
That’s just a list of things that happened. There’s no plot there. Plot only comes along when those things happen to someone. We have to go a step further. We want to be character-driven, not plot-driven. If all of the people in the village were faceless, if we never learned their names, and all we knew is that they ran screaming like ants this way and that, trying desperately to save their belongings, that would be plot-driven. They’re trying to escape. The volcano is sending lava down the mountain.
But if we know that one of the villagers is named Martha, and she has a father who is close to death, and their relationship is estranged because of some of the terrible things that he has done in the past, and we get to witness Martha struggle as she faces this flow of lava and thinks of her father, now we are starting to have a character-driven story. The events are still happening. The volcano is still exploding. The people are still running. But because we now have an individual who has struggles that transcend the physical environment, now we have character.
And this is why we want character-driven. Because the story about Martha, and whether or not she saves her ailing father, is way more interesting than a story about a volcano exploding, or even a story about a village needing to evacuate so they don’t die to the lava.
See, story is found in conflict. Story is found not just in conflict between two people, but in the conflicts that we carry in our hearts. A story can be exciting while also leaving us feeling emotionally flat, and there’s a place for exciting stories that leave us feeling emotionally flat, but more people want a story that is also going to stir them. That is going to reveal new truths about the world. That is going to make them question their own thoughts and assumptions. That will maybe make them think, “Hey, you know, maybe I should call my dad.”
In all of this, when we say “character-driven”, we mean that characters should grow. They should have those struggles and those questions, and they should evolve as a result. We could spend a long time talking about character and character arcs, but I just want to highlight really quick the three main character arcs that you see in character-driven stories.
The first is the positive growth arc. This is the most popular, and the mass majority of books are going to be this arc. This arc starts with a character believing some sort of lie, and by the end, they have discovered the truth.
Then we have what’s called a negative growth arc, which is where the character starts believing a lie, and then by the end of the story has doubled down on that lie.
And then finally, we have what’s called a flat growth arc, which is where the character believes the truth, and by the end of the story has a better understanding of the truth, but the story is really not about them. It’s about how other people are changed because of them.
Those are the three main types of growth arcs that we see in stories, and all of them can be used to help your story become character-driven.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/VIwoDbeG8kA
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