What Makes A Character Memorable?

I am a collector of characters, starting when I was a girl and read The Little Colonel books by Annie Fellowes Johnson.  How I loved that character!  She was so different than anyone in my Colorado town.  And was she ever spunky.

 My next favorite character was Scarlett O'Hara.  Another spunky woman.

  Do we see a pattern here?  I admired her tiny waist and her green dress, but it was her bold personality that fascinated me.
 A shy kid, I had few characteristics in common with The Little Colonel or Scarlett, but that didn't keep me from fixating on them. And admiring them and even wanting to be like them. Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, a comic book character was brave and daring and got herself into awful scrapes. I cowered and read on.

Anne of Green Gables was another character that I loved.  When our teacher read those books aloud to us, even the rowdy boys shut up and listened. Anne was spunky too, but no Scarlett!

When I began reading the classics, I found a lot of the major characters downright scary.  Ulysses and Achilles were so bloodthirsty! I didn't identify with Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina, but then I read War and Peace and discovered Natasha.  I still always see her as a young Audrey Hepburn.  She was a girl I could relate to. It was a shock at the end of the novel when Tolstoy said she grew fat, but I always thought of her as a slender young girl.

Characters from Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet have stayed with me:  Justine, Balthazar, Mountjoy and Pursewarden, as well as Clea and Justine and Lila.  Darley and Nessim.  These characters were like no one I had ever read about, not larger than life but living very vivid lives, so different from mine.  I think that the city of Alexandria was also a compelling character.  I read these books over and over, never tiring of them.

Of more recent vintage is Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, a private detective.  Of course she is spunky, but she also has doubts.  She is never a TSTL (too stupid to live) character.  I can relate to her and I love her sense of humor and fair play. It will. be sad to see the series end.

Do I find any of my characters memorable?  If you have lived with a character throughout a series, he or she stays with you, eats with you, sleeps with you, and hangs out with you.  So yes,  Emma Lee Devens, no better than she should be, is gutsy and sometimes brave, but also sometimes foolish.
I created a character in a historical novel (set in 1928 California and as yet unpublished.)  Carla Curby is loosely based on my mother, but bigger, bolder and yet vulnerable and uncertain.  This was psychologically wrenching to me, because she was and was not my mother at a time in her girlhood that I just had a few clues to work with.  I am sure she is my favorite, although I am now writing about a Mennonite woman, forty years old and a widow, who will solve a crime.  She is another gutsy one who went off to be a missionary in the Congo before World War II.  I like characters who decide to act, rashly or wisely.  The words gutsy and spunky rise up again.


What kind of characters do YOU like?  The authors below will tell you about theirs:

Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
 Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Heather Haven http://heatherhavenstories.com/blog/
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com
Rachael Kosinski: http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/

 

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