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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47680
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

If you are talking about chapters which have some significant plot development but the focus of the chapter is on the characters' interaction, that's perfectly okay.

However, if the the advancement is just that the characters are moving toward a particular location, I have always found this is _not_ a good idea. My main critiquing group refers to this (not fondly) as the "road trip syndrome". Just recently when we were critiquing someone's chapter, I was reminded of that scene in Poltergeist where the mom is walking down the hall and as she walks, the hallway stretches out, and the longer she walks the farther away the destination seems, and she breaks into a run and suddenly, snap, she arrives.

We had listened to four chapters of traveling to get to the city. There were interesting things that happened and there was good character development, but, as one fellow critiquer had remarked of the previous chapter, "good lord, when are they going to _get_ there?"

Being a character focused writer myself, one thing I know I have to watch out for is the fact that although my characters are fascinating to me, they aren't always going to be to other people. Too heavy on the character development, and plot-focused readers get impatient.

I have always heard from critiquers and teachers and panelists at writing cons that it is a hard rule that each chapter _must_ advance the plot in some way, and it can't be the same way. Thus, you can have a chapter of "they travel to the city" but if it stretches out for more than a single chapter you have to include other plot developments.

That doesn't mean you can't spend time for character development, or that you can't have chapters that focus on character development, but that development needs to come with plot advancement. It doesn't necessarily have to _cause_ the plot development, but it needs to be mingled with it.

For example, say you have two characters and you want to have them get to know each other, and have an incident that changes their relationship. (BTW, I am assuming this is not a romance. If it _is_, then the romance _is_ the plot...) Perhaps their interaction is triggered by a discovery that one of them makes which is part of the mystery that they are trying to solve.

If you have a strong interest in your characters, then all you need to do is drop "plot seeds" into your story; items that advance the plot by a step, and then have your characters' personalities react to that. Remember, characters are best developed through interaction with external forces.

Here's a rule of thumb that I have found useful. When you get done with a character driven chapter ask yourself "what action was taken by a character in this chapter that will have obvious consequences on the plot?" If the answer is nothing, try to find something that will, and weave it into the chapter.

A good plot is like a box of chocolates, whoops, I mean a box of dominoes. You set them up so that the first one needs a push (whatever triggering incident or condition launches the story) and after that, the fall of each domino causes the next to fall. If your story goes too long without a major plot point it's like two dominoes which are too far apart and even if your characters are fascinating it can feel like your engine is racing but the car isn't in gear.

Original score: 9