Character or Plot

From my previous post I'm working on 1400 Earth colonists. What I forgot to add was I'm also doing all their children as well but only for the next 1000 years. This can become a lot of characters most of which will be ignored. Yet, knowing there are that many people will influence how the story is written. What places are particularly crowded? Where can a person go to find some peace away from everyone else? Plus, any other more important questions dealing with population.

What drives a story forward character or plot? I think that's like asking which came first the chicken or the egg. A good novel has a good mix of both. Sometimes a novel will be more plot heavy and others are more character driven. I believe it just depends on what kind of story you are wanting to write. I believe that with creating so many characters it will be safe to say that the situations in my novel will come from the characters themselves. I have only been able to do this after years of trying out different ideas and reading lots of books to find something I can stick with.

Two of my favorite books that I have read numerous times are, 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters by Victoria Lynn Schmidt and 20 Master Plots: and how to build them by Ronald B. Tobias

In order to keep track of all of my characters I not only have a computer record but I also have it on index cards. You can never be too careful. I've lost whole short stories due to corrupted files, power outages during use, and forgetting to save the story due to becoming distracted.

For the original colonists I use this form:
Name:
Age:
Married to:
Children:

For descendants of the original colonists I'm going to use this form:
Name:
Birth: _____ Death:_____
Parents:
Married to:
Children:

Almost forgot: 58/1400