Hot take: character development is overrated in book club picks

I sat through three straight months of books where everyone in my club raved about how "complex" the characters were, but the plots barely moved. Last week we discussed a 400-page novel where the protagonist argued with her mom for 200 pages and nothing else happened. Am I the only one who cares more about what actually happens in a story than how "deep" the people are?

2 comments

2 Comments

jamie7121d ago

Plot matters SO much more than people want to admit. You can have the deepest characters in the world but if nothing happens for 200 pages, that's just boring. There's a reason movies with great action scenes still get praised. A good STORY needs both.

taylorb941d ago

Last summer my book club had a whole run of those slow-burn character studies and by August I was ready to scream. Then somebody brought a thriller called "The Chain" where the plot just grabbed you by the throat and didn't let go... turns out everyone loved it way more than the literary stuff. We ended up swapping genres every other month after that, and our discussions got way better because people actually finished the books. Characters can be interesting without spending ten pages describing how they feel about a lamp or whatever.