A Conversation on Craft: What Makes a Character Unforgettable

We sat down with our editors to unpack the alchemy behind characters that stay with you for years.

Ask any devoted reader about their favourite book and they’ll rarely start with the plot. They’ll tell you about a person — a character so vivid it feels like a friend, a rival, or a version of themselves. So how do writers conjure people out of ink?

The answer, our editors agree, is contradiction. Real people are inconsistent: brave and frightened, generous and petty, sometimes within the same breath. Characters who contain those tensions feel alive, while flawless heroes quickly fade from memory.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”

Desire is the engine. A character who wants something desperately — and is forced to choose what they’ll sacrifice for it — pulls us through every page. The wanting reveals who they truly are far more than any description could.

And finally, specificity. The tiny, telling detail — a nervous habit, a treasured object, an odd turn of phrase — does more than a paragraph of backstory. It’s these small human truths that turn characters on a page into people we never forget.

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