What is the difference? Let's take for example, plots that are definitly NOT character driven. Nature vs. Man God vs. Man So you could have characters dealing with back to back problems thrust on them, like a meteor smashes into downtown and they try to flee, but then aliens come out of it and kill everyone on the street, so they make the only escape available and climb a tower, but then the aliens cut it down with a laser, so they jump to the next building and ride a helicopter out. Everything the characters do is a reaction to an outside force. They were just going to work when all that happened. But can't that be a character driven plot as well? There is a reason why I prefer to watch Dwayne Johnson escape an avalanche while saving the cat and baby, over watching Shia Lebouf doing the same thing. The way they play the character, what they say, why they take the path they take, what they say they care about, how they say it, all that makes a huge difference. In those movies, does the actor MAKE it character driven if he sells the character while it's happening? In that way, can an adventure story about Captain Everyman responding to each attack be character driven if we are really with Captain Everyman and how he feels as he does what he has to do?
I don't think character driven vs active antagonist is the usual spectrum... usually it's expressed as character driven vs plot driven. I see absolutely no reason a story couldn't be character-driven and also have an active antagonist. Really, it may be MORE likely that a story with an active antagonist will be character-driven, since you'd have the opportunity to play with the protagonist's character arc AND the antagonist's character arc, and the interplay between them.
You should always have an active protagonist. Protagonist = your main character. They can't be a main character if they don't do stuff. Character drive plot is when your plot is more concerned with the character development than with the things the character does. The "action" happens because the MC changes their character somehow. You can have a character driven plot about Regular Joe, who does a regular job and we follow him through his every day routine. The routine may or may not be interesting but Regular Joe has amazing internal life, he thinks things over, he changes from being an unsocial sloth to being a lively gym fanatic, and while the book starts with everybody hating Regular Joe, it ends with everybody loving him. The plot follows how that change happens, what makes Regular Joe stop being a sloth and what makes him decide to follow a rigorous gym schedule, get in shape, get social etc. Example of character driven plot: Brokeback Mountain. It's about cowboys. Not much happens yet we are eager to see what happens next. Not so obvious character driven plot can be Shawshank Redemption, although that one can be also seen as a great escape plot, full of activity. Example of active protagonist: The DaVinci Code. This one is quite obvious, with the MC running around all the time and doing things. This could become a character driven plot, too, if we had Princess Sophie as a main character and she went through all these adventures, changing from a boring business woman into a spiritual creature because (spoilers).
First, I'll agree with Bayview that the spectrum is character driven vs. plot driven. Whether the protagonist is active doesn't really figure into it. You can have reactive protagonists with either type of focus. Turning to this specific question, I'd say yes, if the emphasis is more on how Captain Everyman feels and how he's shaped by the events, rather than the events themselves. I'd say the whole "The War of Jokes and Riddles" story arc from the current Batman run is a good example of an adventure type story that's character driven. Framed as a story Batman is telling Catwoman shortly after proposing to her, it features a gang war between Joker and Riddler early in his crime-fighting career. However, it's not a solve the mystery/foil the plot sort of arc. Only a few major incidents from the war, key for context, are shown in detail. At its core, "The War of Jokes and Riddles" is about Bruce still being deeply troubled by an...extreme choice he made near the war's end, and fearing he's unworthy of Selina's love because of that choice. His insistence that she know all the details before answering his marriage proposal drives the present-day portion of the arc and a good chunk of the tension. Batman himself alternates between being an active and reactive protagonist as the story unfolds, but the arc never steps back from the heavy character focus.
Great posts. I’m sorry I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean character driven vs active protagonist was a spectrum. I meant to talk about the differences between them, or if one could be the other.
Ah. See, the OP makes it seem likes it's an either/or thing. Really, they're two completely different dimensions of storytelling. An active protagonist merely controls the tempo of the story by making choices, as opposed to reacting to the actions of the antagonist and other characters. Character driven fiction already got covered pretty heavily. So, you can have an active protagonist in character driven fiction, but an active protagonist doesn't make fiction character driven.
What makes it character driven is the main conflict. I'll use your example of the cat in the baby. If your conflict is trying to save the cat and the baby from an avalanche, your conflict is external and you're probably writing yourself a plot driven story. This is regardless of how well written and developed your character is. However, if the main conflict centers around whether or not Dwayne Johnson is morally just for saving the cat over the baby, you've probably got yourself something character driven. The conflict here is internal as Dwayne Johnson now struggles with his morality and whether or not the decision he made was just.
I've always seen plot-driven as external conflict with maybe some internal conflict. It focuses on choice and what happens after a choice. Maybe I'm wrong.
This is like asking the difference between pounds and miles and whether a road can be measured in pounds, and apples in miles . There's a difference between protagonist and character, to begin with, like there's difference between thumbs and fingers. An active protagonist drives the plot. Character driven plot is when the character drives the plot in a certain way. As explained in Google (I'm sure you can find that ).
