Take the MICE quotient. Card points out that all stories contain four elements, but that usually one of them is dominant in the story. What are they? The first is the milieu story. Milieu stories are about the world, the planet, the society, the family, the weather.
My novel Jade, about a sentient planet, is very definitely a milieu story. In a milieu story the characters will go to a strange place that's different for ours, will see interesting things, and come back to what passes for normality a changed person. Kaath in Jade certainly does that. She learns that her parents aren't who she thought they were, and they have a strong link with the spores that are an essential part of Jade's sentience.
The second is the idea story. It involves asking what happens when certain tech is invented, or why did complex alien civilisations disappear. Idea stories ask a question, and then get the characters to answer it. The plot of the story is about finding those answers. In some respects, my novel Jade is an idea story too, as it's about the characters slowly uncovering the intertwined sentience of the planet.
The third type of story is the character story. Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's war books are character stories. They follow Kylara Vatta from being kicked out of her home world's Spaceforce to commanding a multi-world Space Defense Force. She's all that all that stands between civilized worlds and a vicious pirate. Quite a change of fortune for the wronged Ky.
The fourth type of story is the event story. It starts when something is wrong with the universe, the world is out of order. The event could be the appearance of aliens in a planet's skies, as in Anne McCaffrey's Treaty Planet, or the reappearance of ancient evil thought to be dead, as in the rise of Sauron in The Lord of The Rings.
Most stories contain elements of all four types, but knowing which type is strongest in your story can help to keep you on track and checking that your story is doing what it should.
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