There are approximately a million and one writing rules, but once you’ve got a basic handle on craft it all comes down to one thing that I’ve heard over and over from published authors — you’ve got to make the reader care. Care about your characters, care about what happens to them, care how the story ends. How many times have you read a book that was just okay, kind of vanilla or blah, the type of story that you forgot almost as soon as you closed it after reading the last page?
To make the reader care, you have to make your characters as three-dimensional as possible. Give them good and bad traits, quirks, things that make them distinctive so that readers will think about them long after they’ve closed that last page. How many people can ever get Scarlett O’Hara or Harry Potter and friends or Jamie Fraser out of their heads? You’ve also got to make your characters suffer on occasion. Push them to the brink where all seems lost before bringing them back from that brink. Don’t be afraid to go further than is comfortable. Truly memorable books often push the envelope in some way. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to keep all of this in the forefront of my mind as I begin work on a new project this weekend. Must get this freelance editing project out of the way first, hopefully tomorrow.
So what is a book you’ve read where the characters were so alive, so real that you’ve remembered them way after reading that last page?
October 28th, 2005 at 12:28 am
A Tree Grows In Brooklyn.
Fantastic story. Great Characters.
Teri
October 28th, 2005 at 5:51 pm
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. The woman is brilliant.
Tanya
October 28th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Jamie Fraser, absolutely. And most of Loretta Chase’s characters. Suzanne Brockmann. Oh, and Lisa Gardner … her characters with all their scars stay with me for ages after I close the book. Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Gee, ahve you noticed I’m mentioning authors, as in, pretty much all their characters?
October 29th, 2005 at 9:10 am
Stephanie Plum from Janet Evanovich’s series. So original, so distinctive.
You know exactly what Stephanie (and all her supporting characters) would do, say, etc. because she seems like someone you really know. A kooky someone you know.
October 29th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
All of you have great examples. Heather, I totally agree about the Plum books. I can “see” and “hear” Lula and Grandma Mazar, especially.