What is your dominant approach in narrating your novel?

[Eldoria]

What is Your Dominant Approach in Narrating Your Novel?​

There are four main approaches to narrative fiction: plot-driven, character-driven, moral-driven, and worldbuilding-driven. Each emphasises different aspects of the story and influences how conflict, theme, and narrative development are structured:

1. Plot-Driven
Main focus: External events and conflicts.
Characteristics:

• The story is driven by major events, twists, or plot twists.
• Characters often react to situations, not create them.
• The narrative structure tends to be tight and directed: beginning–conflict–climax–resolution.

Examples: Death Note, Attack on Titan, The Da Vinci Code.
Advantages: Intense, suspenseful, page-turning stories.
Disadvantages: Characters can feel like mere narrative devices if not developed deeply.

2. Character-Driven
Main focus: Character growth and choices.
Characteristics:

• The story develops from the character's decisions, emotions, and internal conflicts.
• The plot emerges from character changes or dilemmas, not from "big events."
• Tends to be more intimate and reflective.

Examples: Your Lie in April, The Catcher in the Rye, Girls' Last Tour.
Advantages: Emotional, engaging, strong at building empathy.
Disadvantages: Can feel slow if there is no clear external conflict.

3. Moral-Driven (Driven by Ideas or Values)
Main focus: Ethical questions, ideology, or philosophical messages.
Characteristics:

• The story becomes a medium for exploring values, moral choices, or big ideas.
• Characters and plots can be constructed to represent a particular point of view or philosophy.
• There is often an ideological confrontation between characters (not just physical conflict).

Examples: Sophie's World, Blood Rose Princess, V for Vendetta, Les Misérables.
Advantages: Meaningful, thought-provoking, and able to outlive its time.
Disadvantages: If unbalanced, it can feel preachy or overly symbolic.

4. Worldbuilding-Driven
Main focus: The richness and uniqueness of the world being constructed.
Characteristics:

• Fictional worlds have complex logic, history, systems, and details.
• Stories can arise from systemic conflicts within the world (politics, culture, magic, technology).
• Sometimes characters and plots follow the needs of the world.

Examples: The Lord of the Rings, Made in Abyss, Dune, Tower of God.
Advantages: Invites exploration, suitable for long-running series, imaginative.
Disadvantages: Can lose emotional focus if the characters are flat.

Approach​	Core Question​
Plot-driven	"What will happen next?"
Character-driven	"Why did he/she do that?"
Moral-driven	"What is right and wrong in this world?"
Worldbuilding-driven	"How does this world work?"

Note:

• Most works of fiction combine several of these approaches.
• However, there is usually one dominant approach that forms the main narrative structure.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Would likely say 10-15%/50%/0-10%/whatever is left % between the four.

 

[Ai-chan]

Ai-chan's approach is basically:

1. This is the character. This character is retarded.
2. This is the world. This world is crap.
3. This is his friends. His friends are shit.
4. Let's see how this retard survives in this crappy world with shitheads for friends.

Nothing philosophical about it. It's just how the game works.

 

[Clo]

All of my stories share the same DNA of character-first. The plot, the world, the ethics are all in service to the character's journey.

The system might be a weird mirror that allows them to see their action painted in a different light. The rules of the world exist because the character needs them.

 

[Cookiez_N_Potionz]

I feel like I've written more plot-driven stories than character-driven stories.

Funny enough, I love playing interactive video games because the plot relies on the characters choices.

Examples: Life Is Strange, Until Dawn, Infamous: Second Son, and Beyond: Two Souls

 

[lambenttyto]

I'm almost allergic to character driven stories. It harkens me back to American TV shows, where you have what ultimately is supposed to be a heavily plot driven show like The Walking Dead, turned into a drama fest where we bounce from character to character to character each with their own deep seated emotional issues to work out, which makes the whole show an exercise in schizophrenia. I think western storytellers have taken the "character's fatal flaw" concept way too far, and it's boring as hell and I don't need that angst crap. As I've gotten a little older I've really come to appreciate older fiction, like Conan the Cimmerian and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser.

Brandon Sanderson's writing is imitative of this angst drama that I couldn't care less for. I live for strong characters without all the unnecessary repetitive drama I've seen so many times.

 

[Supperset]

This is first time I read these exist.