The Creation of Character
The one unassailable fact with fiction is that it will contain characters – characters that live and breathe on the page in their own unique ways. The characters may not necessarily be human (Paul Auster’s Timbuktu [1999] is from the point of view of a dog) but there will be some quality within each character that endears them to the reader. A qualification: this endearment may not necessarily mean that the character is likeable – think of one of the most beloved figures in British fiction, Heathcliff, and how his passion at times overwhelms into madness. He is not, by any definition, a loveable character, and yet he is loved. Or there is Becky Sharp, a character defined by her abrasive wit, and yet it is this that makes Thackeray’s Vanity Fair [1847–48] such a joy. Guy de Maupassant A sentence beloved of Ford Madox Ford and Henry James comes from the Guy de Maupassant story, Le Reine Hortense [1883] and it is this: “He ...