Focus: characters / world / plot?

When you create and write stories, what do you think you tend to put the most emphasis on? Developing the characters as individuals and making their feelings and opinions be very important, or building the world around them and making sure to get in information and lore whenever you can, or is the most important part of your stories the events and plot? Maybe something else, even?

Of course, to make a good story, you often need a bit of all these things. But if you think about your writing, what would you answer?

To me, the events and plot. And I feel I'm concentrating too much on those.

When I write, character is definitely at the fore. The initial spark may be a unique setting or plot, but when it comes to actually doing the writing I find that character is my main focus. Well-written characters should drive a plot, in my opinion. This is because the plot is focused around them reaching their wants/goals and what impedes them from achieving those. An intriguing plot premise won't be half as intriguing if the characters are flat. Regarding lore, even if I've built up a wealth of lore, I'l probably only use it as it's pertinent to the characters. I'll probably plan the world on a macro scale and then build up the smaller details as my characters interact with the setting.

I actually often get character ideas first, and then need to build a plot and world around them to let them thrive and develop in the most interesting ways. Sometimes I'm not sure of how to get out of a pinch without invoking deus ex machina (urghh), but that's when you've gotta think about your characters and what they would be most likely to do. And often, solutions do come up.

But yeah, I focus so heavily on characters that I've noticed some boring cliches in my plots sometimes. Because the plot was background to chars, not the other way around. I need to work on balancing it.

Pikachu said:

But yeah, I focus so heavily on characters that I've noticed some boring cliches in my plots sometimes. Because the plot was background to chars, not the other way around. I need to work on balancing it.

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This is such a problem for me too. I'll be able to tell you which way a character wears their hair every 2nd Sunday, then I'll set them off on a somewhat generic 'save the land/world' quest. I think clich?s are bit more acceptable if your characters are unique. But I totally agree. I'm so intent on having an interesting set of characters that sometimes I forget they can't do all the work.

When creating my own worlds, I work through this obsessive order of doing a lot of private world building first, and then just dreaming up the plot with the characters. I feel that in a good story characters and plot should be almost the same thing. Plot is just character development. Because of the way I work, I think world building is the last on my list of things that I focus on. Once I've gotten the basis of the world down mechanically, I don't plan on adding to much more stuff onto it. If you establish these rules well early on, you're also able to make stronger twists and turns in that system. But from there on, it's all plot and character. I would definitely say that the focus used to be on plot when I was younger. Thirteen year old me could make what he considered great plots, but they mostly only relied on one or two characters having depth, and it wasn't the main character most of the time. I now try to have my character have a little more depth, or just be stupid fun while maintaining a strong plot. It's a bit more of a balancing act. Having said that, I would still say plot, although to a lesser degree because of what I just explained. I tend to develop stories mentally by thinking: "where do I want the story to go?", instead of "How do I want to develop this character?".

Characters > world > plot

If the characters are decent then they make the plot themselves and the world itself fills in any holes that they can't make up for.

I'm always more interested in how the characters develop compared to what actually happens to them. Action scenes and world-building just pass on by, while scenes where the characters go through developments take forever and I have to force myself to move on.

As I mentioned in the Main Characters thread, I've been writing characters from canon lately, so their personalities and motivations are already laid out for me. Unless I'm writing an AU, the world is already there for me too. So that leaves me with plot, right?

Even with me writing mainly characters from canon source, I still go with characters then world then plot. For instance, if I were to write something that happens after the main events of the source material is finished, I would write how the characters deal with the changes around them (the world) and the plot just writes itself.

Im often more interested in the plot than anything, but characters isnt that far behind. Mostly I guess it varies from story to story, though.

It's a really big tie between characters and plot for me. The plot is the first thing I come up with when writing a story, but the characters are what aid me in exploring it; saying that, that leaves world-building as the thing I do least.

I have a tendency to do more character development than plot development. A lot of it is possibly either ADHD-related or laziness. XD I end up being really quick at writing them because I just can't seem to handle trying to develop a solid enough plot. I always put as much heart and work into characters instead.

So, I think for me... I tend to do my characters first. Plot usually is the last thing I worry about, and with worlds... well... I don't actually do them. I don't even do setting that much either. It's just been sort of challenging for me. :/

I live for characters, so they're my favorite part of any story, whether I'm writing or reading it. Despite this, I normally start on my plot, then go to world building, then the characters. People are shaped by the world around them, and if I can create a character that conflicts with the world in all the right spots, then I think motivation comes naturally. I do normally flesh out characters last, but I do spend the longest amount of time at this point, and I usually change a few things about the plot and world to fit the characters better and make the story more interesting overall. It's all about those characters.