Quote:
Originally Posted by James_Wilde
[...] As GM pointed out, characters have a way of going in a different direction from the original plan and I think this is quite simply because one doesn't know the character yet, and a character has to act with integrity to his nature. [...]
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I think this is an important point. Some stories are event driven, the characters don't matter that much (obviously it's better if they're interesting, but how they're interesting has little impact on the events of the story). A lot of TV shows fit this mould - you see this in the various crime-related series, they're all essentially the same, just the actors have changed. But other stories are character driven, the nature of the characters forms an integral part of the story, and so you can't plan the story in great detail while you are still learning about your characters.
I suspect that event driven stories are probably best written with an outline, they need to keep everything focused on the events (the mystery or action that is central to the story), any asides for character development are just there for a bit of colour. For character driven stories the author has to find and define the characters, and that takes a different sort of preparation. Letting the story evolve (and then cutting out all the bits you don't need) is just one way into this process of discovery, another is to write detailed backgrounds (actual dialogue and interaction is the only way to get a good feel for them), and a mixture of both is what works best for me.