What is the difference between [characters] and [character-development]?

Question

After answering this question: Character is onscreen for three seconds I took a look at the tags. characters and plot

I added character-development but realized I didn't know if I should delete characters or if both were appropriate, or maybe I was wrong to add character-development.

characters - Real questions about imaginary people. x550
character-development - Anything pertaining to developing the details associated with characters in your writing. x387

I checked the synonyms and there are none for either of these tags (except that character points to characters).

The only relevant Meta question I found was Moderator re-tag requests: [characters] and [character-naming] The question is about a different but related problem, though character-development is mentioned in an answer.

Other character related tags are: child-characters and character-naming

So...how are characters and character-development different? When would we use one vs the other? When would we use both?

Answer 1

Sometimes a question can be about other aspects of the character than character-development. For example, my own Writing diversity is about having a diverse cast of characters. It's not about how the characters grow and change - it's about having them there in the first place. Another question that fits one tag, but not the other: Writing witty/funny characters with deadpan humour. On the other hand, I can't think of a question that would go under character-development but not also fit under character.

As I understand it, character-development would be about the arc of the character's change, whereas character can also be about various static elements of the character.

This is not the only case we have of one tag being sort of a sub-tag for another. Consider fiction or creative-writing: anything that discusses characters would probably also fit under those two, right?

My own tendency is to apply to a question the tags that are a bit broad (e.g both character and character-development) but not the tags that are very broad (e.g fiction) if there's a more specific tag to be found. My logic is that if someone is looking for information on an aspect of character development, he might look under "character" - it makes sense. So it's useful to apply both. But looking for the same information under "fiction" would lend him more irrelevant information than relevant information, so there's no sense in applying the tag - one wouldn't be looking for this question there.