Character-driven or plot-driven fiction?

[Relish in Chaos]

What do you prefer: character-driven or plot-driven fiction? Personally, I prefer character-driven fiction, because you can have characters without a plot, but you can't have a plot without characters. But of course, plot's still important too, otherwise there may not feel like a driving force and/or it can drag if it has poor pacing (as is the case with numerous slice-of-life anime I've watched).

 

[Tom_green_day]

Well I've seen too many examples of 'character-driven' mess up, so I think it's best to have it plot-driven. Bear in mind most comedies, while having funny characters (the whole point) are driven by the plot which causes them to do these funny things. There are rare examples of the characters being funny, like Wayne's World, but most of the time I find the plot makes the characters create humour. That's where sit-com comes from.

 

[thesilentman]

Character driven. Plot doesn't really impact me once I realized a long time ago that there's only 36 main plots. I'm in to see the different execution of the plots, which makes good characters a necessity.

 

[Miss G.]

Character-driven. You can have all the good plot you want but if there's no good characters what are you watching/reading exactly? I imagine something like The Last of Us or The Walking Dead wouldn't be that good just because of the the tired 'zombie apocalypse' plot but they do something different. They showcase their characters and let the plot act as the supporting role, making something old hat into something interesting and compelling and I give them props for it.

 

[Silly Hats]

Character driven. Most plots are very similar to each other and are relatively predictable, I get the impression to have a truly dynamic set of character is harder to write than a story you can just fudge up.

 

[socialtangent]

I love character-driven stories. The problem is, the characters MUST be well-written and believable, or else the whole thing falls apart. It's much easier said than done.

With a plot-driven story, well-defined characters are less important because they're defined by the plot anyways.