Fully Booked EP31: The Secret to Creating Unforgettable Characters

If you think back across all of your favorite books and movies, it’s more likely that some of the great characters of those tales spring into your head faster than many of the grander plot details. Just as images of Darth Vader and Yoda are conjured up whenever we hear the words “Star Wars,” would “To Kill a Mockingbird” be so well-loved without the character of Atticus Finch? How many of us can recall the details of the mysteries he solved more vividly than the character of Sherlock Holmes himself? If you want your stories to be memorable, you’ve got to fill them with characters that readers can connect with. But how? To answer that question, Author Melinda Curtis turned to psychology, studying the character traits that define a person, how they develop, and why they drive the decisions we make. Melinda then put what she learned into her book “Frankly, My Dear: Creating Unforgettable Characters”, and today she sits down with Fully Booked to go through some of the fundamentals. Because just like real people, our characters need a backstory, a set of conflicts, internal and external, that drive who they are and the decisions they make. If you get that right, you can transform your fictional characters from mere words on a page, to true three-dimensional people that live in the minds of your readers long after they’ve gotten to the end of your book. Melinda Curtis https://www.melindacurtis.net/

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