What Makes a Novel Memorable?

There are books we remember and books we forget. Sometimes we may forget most of the book but remember a character or a setting we found particularly appealing. Every writer hopes her novel or short story will be memorable. What, then, makes a reader always remember a book?

 Great characters. Atticus? Scout? They live in our memory long after the story has faded. Madam Bovary? Han Solo? Hannibal Lecter?  Memorable characters don’t always have to be good, but they have to capture our imagination. Every writer would like to know how to create characters so memorable they can’t be forgotten. I am thinking of Lolita and Humbert Humbert.  The reader won’t forget those two. It helps if a character is somehow unique. Think of Natasha and Pierre in War and Peace. Pierre is not your everyday hero.  War and Peace
I hope I have set you to thinking.

What else makes a book memorable? An intriguing setting will do that, be it Middle Earth or Tony Hillerman’s New Mexico. Empty spaces in the barren desert, but oh, how he makes us remember them. We remember Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, too. Do you remember each story? Maybe not so much, but you recall the characters and the setting.  Tony Hillerman

My friend and fellow writer Ray Daniel has a mystery series set in Boston. Ray is a native and he knows the area well and his descriptions are spot on. Be brings you to Boston. His character, Tucker is also memorable because he’s a little odd. He’s a techy, but sometimes he’s not very smart and he is likely to break into tears in the course of a book. The combination of Tucker and Boston are pretty much irresistible. Ray Daniel

 Which brings me to Voice. Tucker has a memorable voice, and we do remember voices in books. Think of Scarlet O’Hara. She had it in spades. Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone does, too. If someone ripped the cover off these books, you could still recognize the voices. The thing about voice is, it’s hard to teach.  You either have it or you don’t.

The last thing that makes a novel memorable is, of course, the story, and many writing teachers will tell you a good story trumps everything, but I disagree. Naturally there has to be a story, and we hope it will be good, but the best plot won’t be memorable with cardboard characters, generic settings and a blah voice. 

Writers work hard to bring you their best efforts. What books do you particularly remember? One of my favorites is the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. Each book is narrated by a different character, all unique.  The city, Alexandria, comes alive. You can see it, feel it, small it, and immerse yourself into it. The stories have intrigue and politics and love affairs with quite a few surprises, but it is the characters and the setting and the characters’ voices that last in memory.

 The Alexandria Quartet

Here are some great bloggers with good ideas about what makes a memorable novel. 

Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Dr. Bob Rich  http://wp.me/p3Xihq-I4
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

Secondary Characters? Secondary in Name Only.

Secondary characters have many functions in stories. Often, my secondary characters have surprised me, indeed, they have gobsmacked me. Who are some of my favorite secondary characters in my own works? In other books?  Read on.
In my first novels, I didn't understand about plotting, and the stories underwent much critiquing and rewriting as I tried to make them good.  One of the (many) things I had t learn was to go deep into each character if he/she  appeared multiple times.  
In The Shadow Warriors, my first published novel, there was a "bad guy" named Stephan, a secondary character.  Truth be told, I modeled his physical appearance and even some of his personality on a co-worker whom I didn't like. He didn't like me, either.  We exasperated each other.  Then, we were thrown together on an important corporate committee.  Not only did we see each other daily, but we had to work together.  Familiarity bred__not more dislike but understanding.  I would never say friendship, but I learned where he was coming from.  We started to like each other.  Just a little.  And as like grew, the Stephan in The Shadow Warriors became more complex, and at the book's end, he did a magnanimous act.  It helps to know your characters. 

Festival Madness, my Burning Man novel,  has a lot of zany characters. Sometimes, when I need to get a character from point A to point B I'll have something happen en route, something important to the story, which can mean a new character, but the reader doesn't know that the person will be important. Sometimes I, the writer, don't know how important that character will become.  When the protagonist, Emma, is driving from Reno, NV to the Burning Man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, she stops by Pyramid Lake to enjoy the scenery.  (It is spectacular.)  Someone nearby is having car trouble, and Emma asks is she can help.  She is astonished and a little rattled when she sees this person closeup.  It is a man?  A woman?  It is Daze, soon to be Daisy, a man undergoing a change of gender.  Right away I liked Daze and his/her sense of humor.  I even bought a book by a woman who had changed her gender.  Daze became, while still a secondary character, important to the plot of the book. And she emerged as a full blown personality from that one encounter seen looking under the hood of her  (glittered encrusted) car. 

Festival Madness is free on the Amazon Kindle from March 18 - March 22nd.  Catch Festival Madness!

The novel I'm currently working on, Promiscuous Mode, (a computer term) has a character, a female Episcopal priest called Reverend Josie, who is modeled on a good friend of mine from college.   She was always eccentric, and when I introduced the character (as a distraction for waiting for another character to appear), I didn't know it was my friend, I just knew I was describing her garb.  Suddenly, she appeared again in the story, and then again. With her French phrases, her odd  speech and her all black wardrobe, she stood out among the somewhat bland corporate types.   My friend died during the writing of the book, and if /when it's published, I'll dedicate it to her.  Writing about her was almost like reliving our friendship, as we seldom saw each other after college.   

An anecdote from college days: I stopped by my friend's dorm room so that we could walk to our gym class--all the way across the campus and usually a total bore. She was reading Epicurus and began reading aloud.  Suddenly we had a bottle of vodka, and after each saying of Epicurus, we'd shout, "I'll drink to that," and swig the vodka.  We left for gym class (finally) and probably staggered all the way.  I remember hysterical laughter.  It was so like her.  Crazy but fun. We had a wild time at a party in the Adolphus Hotel before a Cotton Bowl. 
I never do outrageous stuff like that anymore, and sometimes, I wish I did.   

What other authors have secondary characters I like?  Old Toby in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.  Rat, in the Easy Rawlins stories of Walter Mosley, and Maria Bolkonskaya in War and Peace.  So different all, and yet all so memorable.  

Who is YOUR favorite secondary character?  My fellow bloggers will surely have a lot to say on the subject.  Give them a read. 

Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.webs.com/
Helena Fairfax  http://helenafairfax.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Hollie Glover http://www.hollieglover.co.uk
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-CZ
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com/