Characterization Vs Plot

Thoughts by Khorale

I've been on Fanfiction Net since 2011, first as a lurker traversing through fanfiction, and then finally gathering my courage and joined in with writing. It's been fun, and there's been moments where I obsessively wrote and edited for hours on end. There are days where I didn't feel like doing anything at all, and then there are days where I despair over my computer at a story I want to write but was jammed with writers block.

The thing is, I've seen a lot of fanfictions, and I've written a few myself. I've noticed there are two categories that most fanfiction fall behind: Ones that favors Characterization over Plot, and ones that favors Plot over Characterization.

I've known and read stories in both categories, and I found that neither of them are worse, nor better than each other. I've favorited some, I alerted some, and I outright hated some. I don't know which ones you prefer to read or write, but that's entirely your choice.

What I'm doing here is to list the patterns and things I noticed about these categories to you guys.

Plot over Characterization

These stories often collect many reviews. People love plot - because fanfictions are places where you write what would have happened, what might have happened in these universes. It's always fun to see canon get twisted in ways you never imagined, and take a peek into somebody elses mind.

Even different stories with the same popular plot can be reused again and again, because it can be told differently with each different person. I've noticed a lot of revenge plots are popular for some reason... For example, the main character is betrayed, and they tried getting revenge by training or joining the enemy. I've seen numerous stories of these plot floating around Fanfiction Net. Some are well-written and gets a load of reviews, and some are grammar-nazis rampage grounds and get slightly less reviews but more than it would have gotten if it wasn't riding on the popular fic coattails.

Writing plot over characterization is easy. You think of what you want your character to do, and you write them. Thanks to that we have a whole archive full of unique, awesome stories. It's enjoyable to write and read, especially if the writer's skills are high. If not... then it might get some reviews anyways, because no matter how badly it's written, if the plot is interesting enough then there will still be people who read it.

A weakness for stories that prefer Plot over Characterization is that there could be plot holes and OOC-ness. Sometimes you just want to write on and on and then the character became you talking through them instead what they would normally said. That's fine - if everyone acts as they're supposed to then the universe would have gone on just the same as canon.

But there's a limit to how much you can do OOC without warping the characters. Sure, if you grant this character a super awesome attack and change their appearance to be more badass, and shift their personality to show how they 'changed', and even giving them a nickname/alias to go under... Then the won't even be the same character anymore - you've just created a Canon Sue, or an OC.

I love plot-based stories though, don't take my ramblings as me hating it. Well, I like the well-written ones or even the warped what-the-hell-happened-to-this-character ones... occasionally. But I do have limits and sometimes I silently scream at my computer screen at the terrible ones.

Characterization over Plot

As much as I love plot-based stories, I find myself writing stories in this category a lot.

And man, writing these are HARD!

I mean, you have to research a lot about the character, their relationship with other characters. You have to read and edit over and over because you don't feel like it's something your character would have done. You agonize for hours behind your computer trying to fit inside their shoes. The result? Your hard earned work gets easily surpassed by a fic with a summary of "Lolz so these two characters have smut. Enjoy XDXD".

It's frustrating, it's hard, sometimes you don't feel like you're being rewarded and barely anyone commented.

But sometimes it's the characterization that really draws people into a story. Personally, whenever I came across a badly characterized story with the characters so warped and OOC that it's barely recognizable, however good the writing is - I would turn tail and run in the other direction. I've actually grown less tolerant of it with the more stories I've read, because I could count out the many plot holes and unintentional bashing of characters, I've seen the plot they're trying for that just won't work with these characters.

A weakness to this category is that sometimes people concentrate in relationships or interactions so much, there isn't even a plot. Yes, I've ran from these too because of the sheer boredom I feel, I'm sorry (I know I'm being a hypocrite since I've wrote these things too). But this is the money-tree of writers in this category - this is how they get reviews. By writing interactions between two people that some either OTP or brOTP, then shippers will swarm the story with fervor. That's fine, but not all of us are romance writers.

Strong points in Characterization based stories: They're through, because the author's researching a lot over these characters so the plot holes will decrease. The characters are wonderfully in character, which is a relief as you can nearly imagine them doing these things in canon. There are people who enjoy going inside a character's head and analyze them, and they will enjoy these kinds of stories.

My point is, both categories have their ups and downs. Neither is better nor worse than the other (as I've said before). I find that it's best to get a nice balance between the two. Plenty of plot but not straying from the character's personality. But these are only my opinions and my observations, there's no guarantee for it to be true.

If you ever feel curious about this subject, feel free to look at some stories and observe - form your own conclusions.