Banzai

I'm just wondering what people generally think up first for stories, their characters or the plot?

Personally it varies, but for the story I'm working on at the moment, the main character came first, and the plot kind of developed as i went along. Does anyone come up with anything drastically different first?

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Lord-N

I have quite a few archetypes floating around in my head (based on real people), so normally I just need to come up with adventures for them, and then of course choose the right protagonist/antagonist.

dwellerofthedeep

I find in my limited experience that it's slightly more complicated than that, here is what I do:

1. Original idea (A what if statement with the most important part of the story that cannot be changed)
2. Characters
3. Inciting Event (Beginning of Plot)
4. Plot

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cacafire

Characters, always. Without a character, the plot is useless. Of course, plot's are important too. They are an interdependent circle, yes, so they are both equally important, but it's the character that starts the circle, as you can have a character without a plot, but you can't have a plot without a character. Make sense?

Well, just my 2 cents.
-Cacafire

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Min Min Light

Well, if you're trying to make a statement, give a moral, or otherwise assign a purpose to your story, I'd say plot first. In short stories especially, there's less time for character development. Personally, I think the 'what if' statement dwellerofthedeep was talking about would actually be the seed of a plot.

IMO, a character-driven story works fine if you aren't trying to break any new ground. If sucessful, you'll have created unforgettable characters whose tale could not have happened to anyone else.

But the stories that stick with you, haunt you, and impress upon you (or maybe just me) are usually concept-driven. My example is Asimov's The Last Question. The characters, other than maybe Multivac, are all rather unimportant. But the concept of the story is just wow.

mwd

Both. They go hand in hand for me... I need characters that are going to help my plot along, and I need a plot that is going to reveal my characters. When I get an idea for a story the plot and characters come together, because if I changed the characters the plot would become different, and if I changed the plot I'd need different characters, so I might as well be telling a different story.

Of course these are the main characters I'm talking about. Supporting characters come and go, but they appear as needed while I'm writing, when I realize that, "Hey, I need someone to come in and do this, and none of my other characters can."

But yeah, I think of the characters and the plot as a package deal. You can't change one without changing the other to match it.

Firewriter23

Well with me it depends, sometimes it's the characters and other times its the plot. One time I came up with the end of the story then the sequal before I actually started writing.

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simon woodhouse

I normally think of a very basic plot first, and if it suggests interesting characters, then I develop it a bit further. Most of my junked ideas have gone in the bin because they didn't lend themselves to incorporating characters I'd like to write, or they'd only have worked with stereotypes.

I keep telling myself to try and write something without a plot. Instead I'd have a cast of well-defined characters, an environment and an ending, and I'd let the players sort themselves out as I write. I can't do it though, because every time I work on character development I get ideas for individual scenes that I'd like to write. These scenes get elaborated on and in the end I have a plot.

Mike C

I disagree. Shorts that concentrate on plot rather than characters end up getting rejected in double-quick time. (Actually the same goes for novels - life is character-driven)

Plot is the framework within which characters operate, and the thing that makes plot exciting is how the characters respond to it.

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Fantasy of You

Lol, I think plot and character sort of come at the same time. I tend to think of a situation to put my character in three seconds after the character is in my mind.

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pjune

Right-on, Mike! As an editor, character development always out weights plot.

Take care,
June

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pjune

I posted, but didn't answer the original question. LOL!

Sometimes I have the character first. Next on my list would be the title. Yes, I sometimes come up with a cool title and build characters and a plot around that. The storyline comes in a distance third for me.

Take care,
June

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Dookie

Yeah character driven is the way forward. I wrote a long long piece, not quite a novel but still, getting there. And anyway, the plot of that followed a man character as he chased a criminal. But, it's what happens to the main character on this quest which the story is truly about. How he develops, how flashbacks lead you to understand the way he is. Until the final moment, when character is where it's at!

valeca

The most mundane storyline can be made fantastic with well-crafted characters and are, with few exceptions, a better read. For myself, I'd say character first...mine work that way. Some of my characters carry from story to story if they've struck a particular nerve or are more memorable. I'll just drop them into a basic 'what-if' question and see what happens.

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Min Min Light

Well, well. It looks like I'm the minority here. *dabs forehead with hankerchief*

Perhaps I should rethink my statement then. Maybe what I mean is that premise is more important that characters. Plot, being the series of events that happens in a story, is a chain-reaction of events set off by the character's actions. So in most cases, it can't happen without characters first being created, unless you like 'writer on board' situations.

Good premises can be used with any good set of characters, but the plot will be different in each case. So premise usually comes first, then characters, then plot.

Sigh... I sound like I'm begging the question, though. My writing's really bad today.