What makes your cast memorable?
Saturday, I brought home a short piece of railroad track — because of a novelist.
The previous weekend, my wife and I spent time with a friend we knew because her late husband and I belonged to a book collectors’ group. As she works to find new homes for the items in his collection, she keeps discovering ones that leave her mystified.
She looked at us and shook her head. “Why did he have a piece of railroad track?”
I knew exactly why — because of novelist Jack DuBrul and his protagonist Philip Mercer.
When Mercer needed to do serious thinking, he liked to occupy his hands. So this fictional character would set to work with steel wool and a piece of rusty railroad track. By the time he’d made a section shine, he’d have the puzzle solved.
This fictional character would set to work with steel wool and a piece of rusty railroad track.
My friend, along with signed first printings and advance reading copies of all Du Brul’s novels, completed his collection with nearly two feet of train track.
If you want your characters to stick in readers’ minds, what quirky habits do you use?
In one novel I edited, the protagonist went to the same restaurant every day and ordered the same meal. One fictional protagonist collects antique dueling pistols. Another carries the world’s largest purse. Yet another has a gift for mangling metaphors. And one of my favorites drives a rusty Porsche convertible and loves old jazz trumpet music.
If you met these characters, on the street or in print, you’d remember them. Could your readers say the same about yours?
