Traditional character-based stories often depend on traditional notions of self and psychology - religious ideas of Soul having morphed into Freudian concepts. Stories reach a climax when the protagonist learns/accepts something of their "true self" after removing repression or discovering/remembering some key event in their past.
Trad writers who write for/about themselves tend to measure success by how well they think they've expressed in words what's inside themselves.
Various 20th century developments have confused the situation -
- Modernism - Kafka, etc
- The trend towards interpersonal methods of growth
- Socialisation (including the effects of social media, role-play, compartmentalisation, etc)
- A distrust of unification and tidiness, and a greater tolerance for neurodivergent PoVs
- all contributing to a more fragmentary concept of self/selves and a consequent change in the character-based story template. Linear plots with epiphanies and happy endings no longer seem to model typical characters. Frag writers who write for/about themselves might measure success by how many Likes and hits one of their online personas get.
I write trad stories, but not very well. When I write frag stories, I'm conscious of omitting the very features that people would like in a trad story. I don't know if my frag stories are any better than the trad ones, but there are more outlets for them in this fragmentary publishing world.
See also
- Literature, depersonalisation and derealisation
- People who need people (a workshop about character)
- Empathy and literature
My story collection "By All Means" (ISBN 978-0-9570984-9-7), published by Nine Arches Press, is on sale from 
My poetry pamphlet "Moving Parts" (ISBN 978-1-905939-59-6) is out now, on sale at the 
