I have a big old love-hate relationship with the writing concept of plot versus character. Supposedly, a story is either plot-driven or character-driven. Many have strong opinions about which of the two is superior. The common wisdom is that plot-driven stories are more entertaining, while character-driven stories are more thematically potent. Plot is the domain of cheap genre fiction for the masses. Character is the domain of literary soul seekers who want their stories to hit them in their deepest feelies—and maybe give them something to feel superior about.

So, the debate usually boils down to this question: Is it better for a story to be entertainment or art?

I’m tired of this discussion. It gets under my skin in a way that other writing-craft debates don’t. Frankly, I was surprized by just how passionate this topic can get me.

The typical nuanced resolution of this debate boils down to this: “Stories can have plot-driven and character-driven elements simultaneously. So, stories are more complex than this neat binary.” Even that nuanced response isn’t enough to quench my ignited passionate objection to this framework. For the longest time, I wasn’t sure why.

It’s hard to just throw this framework out wholesale. There is wisdom in being able to identify the different things that drive stories—writing frameworks don’t stick around if they don’t have some use, after all. So, what was I to do? What framework should I be giving the authors I work with, and what frameworks should I use in my own writing?

I can’t answer those questions until I figure out this first question, though: Why do I find this topic so charged? Why was this discussion making me feel the same level of passion as discussions on gender equality and personal rights? That’s when it hit me: It’s because this discussion is implicitly yet fundamentally tied to our frameworks of gender. It’s connected.

That conclusion may seem to come out of nowhere. You may also be thinking, “I’m just here for literary theory—why can’t we leave the philosophy of gender out of it?” I hear you, but as I’ve said, the world is complicated. Things are connected. To understand the world better—and that includes writing theory—sometimes you need to get interdisciplinary.

So, let’s get a little philosophical and dig into a bit of gender theory. Please humour me—this diversion will lead us back to literary theory, I promise.

Dichotomies in Literature & Gender

In our quest for knowledge, we love putting things in boxes. “Everything in this box is blue. Everything in that box is red. Look how neat and orderly the world is when I can put things into boxes!”

We love it even more when we can identify things as polar opposites. By being one thing, it’s definitionally not the other. We call these fundamentally opposite traits dichotomies. If it’s wet, it ain’t dry. If it’s bright, it ain’t dark. If it’s loud, it ain’t quiet. Et cetera, et cetera.

These boxes are the building blocks of human knowledge. They can be incredibly useful, but gosh darn, they can be so limiting sometimes. Where on earth are we supposed to put the colour purple?

These examples were all physical, but we also have social and psychological dichotomies. Let’s take a look at some social dichotomies that are common in Western cultures:

• Logic Versus Emotions: To be logical is to be unemotional. To be emotional is to be irrational.
• Intelligence Versus Creativity: Technical skill is the polar opposite of artistic expression.
• Power Versus Compassion: To be powerful is to be aggressive, assertive, independent, and uncompromising. To be compassionate is to be empathetic, soft-spoken, docile, cooperative, dependent, and compromising.

Wait—Why Are These Dichotomies?

When you stop to think about these concepts, you may realize that there aren’t very many good reasons to treat them as incompatible opposites—as dichotomies.

For two traits to be truly dichotomous, they normally need to exist on opposite ends of the same spectrum. Here are some examples:

• Temperature Spectrum: Hot Versus Cold
• Light Spectrum: Bright Versus Dark
• Water-Content Spectrum: Dry Versus Wet

When two spectrums are closely related, we can use one spectrum to make a guess about another. For example, light and temperature are related. When something creates heat, it often creates visible light as well. So, you can make an educated guess that a bright thing is warm and a dark thing is cold. That assumption is often right—but it can still be wrong.

As someone who lives in one of the coldest cities on Earth, I can tell you this: the coldest days of winter are not dark—they are blindingly bright. At a certain point, it gets too cold for clouds to form. Then the white snow reflects all that unimpeded sunlight. Where I live, the brightest days of the year are by far the coldest.

So, even though light and heat are related, the traits “bright” and “cold” are not true dichotomies.

With this framework for dichotomies in place, let’s take a closer look at those cultural frameworks for social dichotomies.

Logic Versus Emotions

To figure out if logic and emotions are actual dichotomies, we need to establish what they are first. This is where my bachelor’s degree in psychology comes in handy.

I’ll define reason as the use of language and logic to understand the world. In neuroscience terms, the part of our brain that’s responsible for reason is called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that handles language and problem-solving as well as self-control and perspective taking.

Evolutionarily speaking, our prefrontal cortex is the most recent development. It’s also the part of our brain that sets us apart from other animals. Though other animals have similar structures, humans have the largest prefrontal cortex by far. Our prefrontal cortex—our capacity for language, reason, and perspective-taking—is what makes us human.

Reason is the part of our mind that can give us the most nuanced and accurate understanding of the world. However, it takes a lot of processing power. The more complicated the situation, the more time it will take to work through all the details and truly understand it. So, the benefit of reason is nuanced understanding. The drawback of reason is a slow reaction time—which is where emotion comes in.

I’ll define emotion as our instinctual responses—in both our bodies and our minds—to a given situation. For example, when we notice a potential threat, we instinctually react with fear. Our bodies experience fear with an increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and wide eyes. Our minds react with heightened sensory focus and a jittery reactivity to any sudden changes in our environment. These responses empower us to respond rapidly to any given threat, which is incredibly useful for helping us survive.

The fancy word for our brain’s emotion system is the limbic system. Because it’s so critical for our well-being and survival, the limbic system is evolutionarily much older. It’s also the part of our brain that we have the most in common with other creatures.

Emotions come to us instinctually and rapidly. Because our emotion processes are faster than our reasoning processes, they have access to more sensory information. As a result, our emotions can act like canaries in a coal mine—an early signal to our conscious mind that something isn’t right.

Of course, there are more emotions than just fear. They all serve to help us recognize, communicate, and meet our needs. This communication can happen without even using words. Crying, laughing, moaning, screaming—these are all emotion-driven behaviours that quickly and clearly communicate critical information about our situation and needs.

Having fast, clear ways to communicate about safety and danger is critical to our survival. That’s true in adulthood, but it’s especially true in infancy before we’ve learned language. In fact, our emotions’ capacity to communicate is incredibly practical—not fundamentally irrational.

So, with all this information in place, can we say that reason and emotion are dichotomies? No. They’re like temperature and light—they have a relationship, but they operate in separate spheres. Reason is a slow process that helps us consciously understand a situation. Emotion is a quick process that helps us implicitly understand a situation.

Sure, our emotions can override our reason and vice versa. Still, the two can just as easily work in tandem to inform and bolster each other. Emotions are instinctive and quick. Reason is slow and methodical. In complex situations, we need careful, nuanced assessments to find the best response. Other times, a situation is straightforward, and we just need to act fast. Reason helps with the former, emotions with the latter. We need both of them, and they can even work together.

Instead of viewing them as incompatible opposites, it’s more accurate to think of emotion and logic as complementary abilities that help us understand, communicate, survive, and thrive.

Intelligence Versus Creativity

The same is true of intelligence versus creativity. In fact, the way people talk about intelligence versus creativity is very similar to the way they talk about reason versus emotion. An intelligent person is someone who is good at using reason to explore and communicate how the world works. A creative person is someone who is good at using emotion to explore and communicate how the world works. This is really just an extension of the reason-versus-emotion framework. As a result, treating reason and emotion as dichotomous has all of the same problems.

The best technical geniuses are able to engage with their domain in flexible, fresh, and creative ways. The best physicists, coders, and mathematicians find creative solutions to problems. They also often find beauty and self-expression in their work—which is incredibly motivating.

Likewise, artists without any technical skills are functionally incapable of creating effective art. All art involves some type of “intellectual” skill, such as prowess in language, dexterity, observation, sometimes even mathematics, and so on.

Just like reason and emotion, intelligence and creativity aren’t opposites. They are entirely compatible, complementary facets of learning and creating.

Power Versus Love

This is my favourite dichotomy to deconstruct. MLK has already covered this point so beautifully in his speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?”:

Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often we have problems with power. But there is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly.

You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites, polar opposites, so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. It was this misinterpretation that caused the philosopher Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject Nietzsche’s philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love.

Now, we got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. (Yes) Power at its best [applause], power at its best is love (Yes) implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. (Speak) And this is what we must see as we move on.[1]

This text so beautifully and powerfully outlines how fraught it is to treat power and love as incompatible opposites. This false dichotomy can trap people in abusive relationships and harmful power structures. It implies that it’s inevitable that those with power will lack compassion. It then encourages the compassionate to accept their disempowerment as a necessary cost of being good.

Power and love do not need to be incompatible. The path to finding healthy relationships and community often lies in reclaiming your personal power without sacrificing your sense of love.

This false dichotomy is also related to the false dichotomy of reason versus emotion: the powerful use reason to control, and the loving use emotions to support.

Okay, we’ve now looked at three examples of cultural concepts that detrimentally cling to the framework of incompatible opposites. The last two dichotomies are also linked to the first one: reason and emotion.

What’s going on here? Where is this implicit cultural obsession with incompatible opposites coming from?

Now is the point where we turn to gender.

False Dichotomies in Traditional Gender Roles

We just analyzed three common false dichotomies: reason versus emotion, intelligence versus creativity, and power versus love. These are all concepts that, on their own, don’t have anything to do with sex and gender. Yet these concepts are all deeply embedded in traditional gender roles:

• Traditional Concept of Men: Stoic, logical, practical, intelligent, skillful, independent, confident, aggressive, powerful, physically and psychologically strong.
• Traditional Concept of Women: Emotional, irrational, impractical, creative, caring, loving, docile, dependent, physically and psychologically weak.

In this framework, everything about manhood and womanhood is incompatible, opposite, diametrically opposed. The traditional framework for gender is the ultimate dichotomy.

Honestly, whenever we talk about philosophical and social dichotomies, they tend to have a link back to traditional gender roles. For example, I was recently researching the origins of Gothic art. One of the texts that highly inspired the art style is a book by the eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke. It’s called A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful.

The book explores what causes us to feel a sense of beauty, awe, and dread. Burke’s book has got a lot of great insights. It’s especially good at naming specific techniques that elicit a sense of terrible awe. You can see why artists would find the stuff useful. I was thoroughly enjoying it until I figured out the foundation that his theory was built on.

According to his framework, we feel a wonderful and terrible sense of awe—what Burke calls “the sublime”—when we behold something that is beyond comprehension, is fundamentally superior to us, and has more power than us.

Then, the opposite of the sublime is the beautiful. According to Burke, we experience beauty when we behold something precious that is inferior and has less power than us. His prime examples of the sublime are fathers and God. His prime examples of the beautiful are women and children.

I was there to learn about the origins of Gothic literature and art. I was then hit with another fundamentally opposed dichotomy. The theory reduced everything back to gender and power, inherent superiority and inferiority. Because Burke was writing in the eighteenth century, he was entirely comfortable explicitly naming his theory’s foundation: sexist gender roles.

Is that why dichotomous frameworks are so common in Western philosophy? Is it all just building off the core principles of gender fundamentalism? If so, would our theories be more helpful and accurate if we moved away from binary frameworks and toward more multifaceted ones?

Look, dichotomies still exist. Hot is still the opposite of cold. It can be helpful to recognize opposites as opposites. Dichotomies themselves are not the problem. Rigid, inaccurate, and limiting dichotomies—those are the ones to look out for.

When it comes to social theories—those of psychology, philosophy, literature, and art—we need to be careful. Gender fundamentalism primes us to group all things into two opposed camps—even when it is not accurate or constructive to do so.

And now we come to the messy writing framework of plot versus character.

Gender’s Influence on the Plot-Versus-Character Framework

Let’s go over those traits of plot-driven versus character-driven stories again:

Plot-Driven Stories:

• Focus on external action, not internal character development
• Exciting and entertaining
• Thematically shallow
• A hallmark feature of genre fiction

Character-Driven Stories:

• Focus on internal character development, not external action
• Slow and often boring
• Thematically deep
• A hallmark feature of literary fiction

To unpack this plot–driven-versus-character–driven (PVC) framework, it’s helpful to separate this “drive” into two parts:

• What motivates the protagonist to take their journey?
• What motivates the reader to read the story?

Let’s start with the protagonist.

What Motivates the Protagonist?

Within this framework, plot-driven stories tend to emphasize characters that focus on external action, the aggressive pursuit of a goal, and achieving success through physical or intellectual superiority. In other words, plot-driven stories are often ones where the protagonist does a good job of fulfilling the role of manhood. Think of any film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the James Bond franchise, and you get the picture.

Character-driven stories, on the other hand, focus more on the protagonist’s internal landscape. These stories are all about character arcs: the journey to overcome limiting beliefs and achieve personal self-actualization. These stories often touch on the protagonist’s emotions—which does make them a bit more traditionally feminine. Still, these stories often tend to explore emotions in an intellectual way. There’s often a focus on overcoming limiting emotions to gain better clarity and insight.

These are the stories of the journey toward intellectualism, stoicism, and maturity. As a result, these stories often play toward the aspects of masculinity that are more educated and high class. The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, and 1984 all fit into this category.

So, within the PVC framework, what motivates the protagonist? You can boil it down like this: Plot-driven protagonists are driven to pursue traditional low-class masculinity, while character-driven protagonists are driven to pursue traditional high-class masculinity.

What Motivates the Reader?

The protagonists aside, what motivates readers to engage with so-called plot-driven and character-driven stories?

Within the PVC framework, plot-driven stories are for people who are not driven by intelligence but by emotion. Plot‑driven stories are all about hitting you in the feelies. Love stories make you feel warm and fuzzy. Action and adventure stories make you feel excited. Horror stories make you feel scared. You don’t come to these stories to think—you come to them to feel. According to this framework, if a story focuses on eliciting entertaining emotions in readers, then the story is inherently more superficial and less intellectual.

Character-driven stories, on the other hand, are for people who are driven not by emotions but by intelligence. It’s all about exploring the protagonist’s individual, internal journey on their path to personal self-actualization.

These are very cerebral stories, and they easily come across as slow, even boring—unless you are intelligent enough to “get it.” They can impact the reader’s emotions, of course, but it’s a route to emotional impact through insight. These stories are not here to entertain—they’re here to enlighten.

Literarily acclaimed stories tend to emphasize the high-class masculine trait of intellectualism over the low-class masculine trait of physical prowess. Character-driven stories often need to provide a deep intellectual exploration of philosophical ideas—usually in the context of a very independent, self-oriented hero’s journey—in order to be considered true literary works of art.

As a result, this PVC framework really starts to break down in the stories that are culturally considered to be the most feminine and low-class: romance genre fiction.

How Romances Break the PVC Framework

The PVC framework really started breaking down for me when I was analyzing romance arcs in my clients’ manuscripts.

In romances, the story starts with two characters who internally feel dissatisfied and unfulfilled due to the lack of an external relationship. The story follows the external actions that the characters take to overcome both the external and internal barriers keeping the two lovers apart. In a happy ending, they will fulfill both their internal, psychological needs and their external, situational desires.

In other words, stories about relationships completely break down the false dichotomy between external action and internal development. In romance, these two arcs—the plot arc and the character arc—are not only mutually compatible but fundamentally linked.

When character interactions—rather than physical or intellectual acts of achievement—become the primary arena not only for character arcs but also for plot development, the dichotomy between plot and character utterly breaks down.

As a result, people who tout plot-driven stories as the best form of storytelling will often describe romances as being “too boring—the characters just talk, and nothing actually happens.” Then, the highbrow literary crowd will also critique romances as being “too dependent on genre tropes and superficial plot points to be valuable literature.”

The only saving grace of character-driven stories is highbrow intellectualism. If a character-driven story fails to deliver this last critical trait of traditional masculinity, then it’s worthy of disdain and disregard.

The PVC framework is not only limited and reductionist. It also works to separate and judge stories the way that traditional gender frameworks serve to separate and judge people.

Though I should also clarify—I don’t think anyone is being sexist by using the words “plot-driven” or “character-driven.” Most people aren’t thinking about gender when they use them. These terms also have their use—they’re just limited as well. What I’m interested in is finding better ones.

Some Alternative Frameworks

To do a better job of describing stories—and to break out of the implicit gendered judgments that go with it—we need alternative frameworks.

First of all, what’s useful about the PVC framework? It’s helpful to be able to name what drives a story and its protagonist forward. It’s also helpful to name what motivates readers to read different genres. Then there’s value in being able to name when a story lacks entertainment value or thematic depth. I don’t think the PVC framework is the best tool to help us name these things.

We just need better frameworks—better language. However, this post has already gone on long enough. So, I’ll discuss my suggested frameworks in a future blog post.

For now, just remember: none of these concepts need to be dichotomies. Entertainment value and thematic depth are entirely compatible. External action and internal character development are entirely compatible. Reason and emotion are entirely compatible. Being smart and strong is entirely compatible with being emotional and empathetic.

There is nothing fundamentally dichotomous about any of these literary and social concepts. You can pursue any of these two traits without fear of sacrificing the other or being worthy of judgment. I hope that idea is as helpful and freeing for you as it has been for me in my own personal and writing life.

Lastly, I have a recommendation for further reading: The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger. That book delivers a fantastic overview of the history of devaluing women’s fiction while also providing encouragement to writers. Of course, the meat of the book is also a feminine-coded alternative to Joseph Campbell’s masculine-coded hero’s journey. All of it’s great, and if you found this post interesting, you’ll love her book too. You could also see if Gail Carriger’s webinar on the heroine’s journey is available again through Writing the Other. I happen to have taken that one, and I heartily recommend it as well!

Other Posts You May Like:

Practical Guidelines on Writing Diverse Characters

Writing Scary Scenes: Tips from a Fiction Editor and Escape Room Gamemaster

How to Write Within a Genre Without Being Limited by It

Eradicating Reader Boredom: How to Hook Your Reader and Never Let Go

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[1] King, Martin Luther Jr. “Where Do We Go From Here?” Standford: The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Accessed August 15, 2025. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here.