Character vs. Plot

By: Lawrence Konner

The best stories are character-driven as opposed to plot driven because it's the only way that you're going to get a believable situation. If you try to get characters to do what the plot determines, then they're moving falsely. Then it's just writer's intervention that's getting them to move. It seems to me that the ideal situation is to create a character and then put them in a situation.

An audience must first identify with the character rather than the story.

You will never get them to engage fully if they don't believe in this person and this person's dilemma.

Therefore, I think the first thing you should do before writing a script is to sit down and write a biography of that person. It should be as detailed as you want to make it: their background, their schooling, their social class, their interest and most importantly, their dreams.

Dreams are the most important because, almost always, what their dreams are will help you motivate the story. It's something they want.

Characters' weaknesses are essential too. You've got to know about their flaws. It helps feed the story because their flaw is what is going to be part of the obstacle that's going to prevent them from solving the story.

Characters in a good story have a set of outside obstacles to deal with and also a set of internal obstacles to deal with. To the extent to which those two things can be tied together, is to the extent which the story gets better and better.

The story's much less interesting if the protagonist doesn't have some kind of internal conflict or personal problem. Then it's all just "white hat" stuff. The best stories that we remember from myths on down, westerns, detective stories, any kind of genre movie, combine action plot with the internal conflicts. It's as if you can't catch the bad guys until you've beaten your own internal demons. Having more than one layer of conflict is more difficult and that's what separates the average action scripts from the good ones.