City of IF

[misterbiz]

Ok, peoplings it is time for the IFQuirer debate! So let's see whats in those pretty little noggins of yours, shall we?

Ok. So Mass Effect 3 officially dropped on Tuesday. In honor of the release of this final chapter of one of the grandest space epics of all time, I present to you this little quandary: What is more important, the characters or the story? There are plentiful examples of stories that have wonderful story or idea but wretched characters. The same can be said of seeing awesome, deep characters in a plot that is less than satisfying.

So which matters more? Is it more important to have a well constructed plot? Or is it the deep and unique characters that matter most? If a story is lacking in one, which is it better to be lacking?

There you have it. Discuss.

[Kalanna Rai]

For me it has always been the character. I credit the character of Rand al'Thor making me read as far into the Wheel of Time series as I did. If I can connect to these people, then I will follow them. I become invested in their lives and how everything plays out around them. In some cases, when the plot is as thin as a sheet of rice paper and has more loops and leaks than a sieve, I end up yelling at them for not seeing the obvious. Sometimes it makes me angry that good characters cannot see their way through the horrible plot. You know they're smarter than the choices that they make, but they have to make those choices because the author made it so. Stories like that I just want to hunt the writer down and slap them until they see reason.

Poor characters are just a major disappointment to me. Take the Harry Potter series. The plot wasn't bad, the idea was kinda cute...the characters...oh how I hate them. They were flat and two dimensional, they never really seemed to grow up, and they never seemed to progress beyond the stereotypes they were molded from. I stopped reading when, after four or five years, they still didn't seem to be making any emotional headway. Harry was still 'the obvious hero' Harmonie was still 'the obvious smart girl' and Ron was still 'the obvious best friend here to make the hero look good'.

If your character is made of cardboard and flat as can be, I'm just so disappointed. You are their everything...and you couldn't be bothered to even try to think about them? Perhaps the story was just so much more important to them that they forgot that the plot doesn't drive itself. The characters do.

However, a poor plot will eventually make me stop reading. Some plots are lacking in substance, others are so amazingly overly complex that god forbid you're not keeping notes or you'll never remember anything. In situations like that a truly good character is so utterly wasted you want to scream. You see a highly intelligent private detective missing the obvious clues that even you spotted. Or worse you're reading the mystery novel and spot the villain in the very first encounter, even though the author wasn't trying for that at all.

If you want a percentage breakdown for everything though I'd say that you need 70% good characters and 30% good plot. You need enough of a plot for the characters to justify having really decent and believable characters. And you need those characters to draw the reader in. The Lord of the Rings would not be nearly as interesting if you couldn't emotionally connect with the characters. Would you really care if middle earth was plunged into total darkness if you couldn't understand the real fears and confusion of the Hobbits? If you don't care about them, you certainly won't care about their homes.

And that is my seventy-five cents on that.

[Reiso]

To be lacking in either one of those things is absolutely 100% unacceptable all of the time. Having said that, you're right; both failings are all too prevalent in current fiction, from books to webisodes we are plagued by them--and no few stinkers that fail in both respects.

I think it would be a mistake to approach this argument as if to determine which thing is better to leave undeveloped. That's not something we want to be teaching people. But taking the position of being more mindful of one mistake than the other because it is more damaging to the work as a whole, I would have to say it is a greater crime to have weak characters.

If you cannot get your readers to connect or relate to your characters in some way, they will not care what happens to them, no matter how good your plot is. They will never appreciate it, because they will not stick around to see what happens. But well developed characters have a much more immediate payoff that happens not only right away, but consistently enough to keep the reader turning the pages, AND have the potential of helping the plot along. Good characters practically write themselves. Properly explored, they can lead their writers to epiphanies and story developments that in the end can strengthen your plot if you take advantage of them. Whereas broken characters cannot be fixed by the greatest plot in the world, because no one will have the patience for it.

My two cents anyway. Great question.

EDIT: Kalanna's post came in while I was writing mine, else I would have merely seconded most of what she said (Hey Kalanna, great additional points as well about good characters being wasted on horrible plots), instead of seeming to redundantly repeat her. She said it better too, lol.

[DeadManWalking]

As someone who started out his writing career (hobby, what have you) as an extremely structured plot-based writer, I have to say that the characters are more important. Which is not to say that either can be ignored, though if forced to concentrate on one or the other I'd say that lack of a great character is worse than lack of a great situation.

Honestly, great character create their own plots, in my opinion. I think Stephen King once wrote that the best stories come not as preplanned plots, but simply character put into interesting situations. I think this is especially true of the science fiction/fantasy genres, which offers a much larger range of interesting than most other types of fiction.

[PopeAlessandrosXVIII]

2 more days after today is the news deadline. Make sure your voice is heard!

[Vikas Muralidharan]

Well, a story would be at it's best if had both, a good plot and good characters, but if one had to be missing, I'd say the plot can leave.

A RL example- "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. When my friend first suggested the book to me and gave me the basic storyline, I wasn't too impressed, but for the past few years, whenever someone asks me what my favourite book is, it's easy to respond to. The writing quality is phenomenal and the characters are those I can really easily relate to which made reading the book a really amazing experience. Ofcourse, the way the plot was put forth by Martel was far better than the way my friend put it, but yeah.

Personally, I'd prefer a book with amazing characters, also because characters can make a plot look better/worse. Bad characters kan kill an amazing plot and good characters can breathe life into a dead story. I've never come across a story where an amazing plot made stupid characters look bearable. And I probably never will.

[Murport]

My knee jerk response is that they should be equally important. I was reading a few previous opinions and a few people mentioned good and bad characters. I'm not really sure what is meant by that. If it is to mean poorly written and poorly developed characters then yes that is catastrophic to a story. I've always favored spending a large amount of time on character development. For me there is something appealing about a story where most of the characters are seriously flawed or of a dark nature. An example that immediately comes to mind is The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. The characters in that novel and film adaptation were not very likable but it enhanced the story instead of hindering it. I honestly believe that a fascinating tale can unfold easier with less than admirable characters.

;)

[sagittaeri]

Like some earlier than me have indicated, I believe a good story must have both. But if one had to go, well, I think it highly depends on the length of the story.

A short story will be much more impressive with well-developed characters, as it adds a lot of depth to the story pretty much instantly. There isn't enough space to develop an epic and deep plot in a short story, so it makes sense to sacrifice the plot if one must go.

A longer story, however, require a well-constructed plot, or it'll bore the hell out of the readers very quickly. If the readers can't identify with a situation or an "end game" that they care about, well-developed characters can only hold a reader for so long. To truly keep a reader's interest for the long term, the plot cannot be sacrificed.