Diary of a Mad Editor

I had this friend back in high school. He had this face . . . well, he had acne real bad — the kind of face the best acne treatments in the world couldn’t fix. Looked like a burn victim it was so bad. People used to call him “Freddie Kruger”. The thing about this guy is that he was the nicest person, I’ve ever met. Didn’t have an unkind thing to say about anyone. Wasn’t resentful. He was upbeat. It was this dichotomy between his physical appearance and personality that made him memorable. I can’t remember most of the people I went to school with, but after 25 years, I still remember Joe. Which brings me to the point of this post: creating characters. When you write a story, it’s far less important to create a likeable character than it is to create a memorable one. Regardless of whether or not your characters are morally correct or not, they should be more than one-note. People are complicated and never just one thing. Conflict and contradiction makes characters interesting. Also, as my little trip down memory lane should prove, You should never automatically judge a book by its cover.