: Re: How is character development a major role in the plot of a story People mostly say that the characters of a story have to be developed first, but I don't really understand why characters play

The main distinction to be made here is between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories.

Character-driven stories, as you can imagine, focus mainly on the characters, their struggles, their growth and their relationships. The central questions of these stories could be, What will Bob do in this situation? Will his relationship with Alice survive? How can Charlie react to such an event? and so on.
In this case, there must be at least a subset of characters (e.g. the main cast) that have to be well fleshed out, so they can't be classified as objects.

Plot-driven stories, on the other hand, tend to put more emphasis on the plot. The main question could be Will the great evil be defeated? Can this nation win the war? Can the police stop this killer? etc.
Characters are less central in these kind of stories.

For example, a lot of detective stories revolve around getting the guilty in jail. Those stories do have interesting characters (a troubled detective, his steadfast colleague, a shady informer, the witty morgue doctor, and so on) but developing this character is not the point. The point is the current case (in other words: the plot).
The main character in those kind of stories usually gets some development, but its often diluted in a series of books rather than a single one.

So, in a way, characters are instrumental in pushing the plot forward.

Yet I wouldn't say that characters may be considered objects.

Even when you're writing a plot-driven story, whether it is a thriller, an action packed adventure, a war novel or a daring science fiction, treating your characters like disposable objects is a risky operation at best.

The audience won't feel engaged towards characters who are as shallow as cardboard. Shallow characters are bad for a story since they can dim a good plot.

Another risk is that if you don't define your characters, you risk making them inconsistent. Good stories are made up by conflict, but it has to be meaningful conflict. Characterization is a tool that helps you determine what choices a character should or should not make; and which character should move the plot forward.

If your cast is just a bunch of faceless puppets ready to do anything that's needed to advance the story, the audience will notice.

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: Re: How is character development a major role in the plot of a story People mostly say that the characters of a story have to be developed first, but I don't really understand why characters play

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: Why is the construct "'hello' says Pete" most common? I am asking this from the point of a reader not a writer and just wondering why, so sorry if this is a bad place. I read loads of

: Depending on how you want to play that, both ways are viable. You could explicity tell that the character hadn't a name then: Ai remembered when the fire nation attacked. Of course,

: Avoiding info-dumps when writing about amnesiacs In the story I'm writing one character suffers from amnesia as a result of an accident. I want another character, with whom they were in love,

: In the story Worm, there's a major catastrophic event. The author decided that 1/3 of characters had to die and rolled dice for each. The main protagonist was not exempted. Some of the

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