Remember When...or where...or why...or WHO

Novels are composed of events, plots and lots of little facts and misconception shakers that it is hard to determine what sells a story.  But when we tell stories about life what is the key ingredient?  When the story takes place?  Where the story takes place?  While both of these factors can help a story, they only true element we remember are actions.  And actions are produced by what?  The characters.

Let's sat your favorite novel is A Christmas Carol.  Now let's look at the time period.  Early Victorian era Britain where Christmas practices were immensely popular.  Also Dickens' references to the protagonist Ebeneezer Scrooge's childhood offer a glimpse into the hard working conditions of the times.  Surely these images are memorable. 

Where the story takes place?  Of course the gloomy snow covered background of England add a gloomy feel on the night when the ghosts come about.  An eerie, haunting presence.  This certainly helps create a vision in the mind's eye.

But would any of it imprint any memory on any reader with Ebeneezer Scrooge himself?  Not a chance.  Scrooge's own bullish actions toward others early in the novel show us what a nasty man he has come to be.  However his actions toward the end reveal that the monster was made one over the years with no real intention of harm toward anybody.  I am sure most of us can relate.  Life has many distractions that pull us each in directions we never intended to go toward or seek out.  Yet hey.  It happens.  And so Scrooge may be a bitter old miser at first that we can see but the beauty of the novel is that we see how all this came to be and then we are treated to his magnificent transformation into the generous soul at the end. 

So in the end, novels and stories are about characters.  They are what we truly cannot forget.  And how often does a question start out with "Remember when..." and not be followed in the next word with a person?  Remember when Joe fell off the tractor?  Remember when mom burnt the birthday cake?  In fiction as in real life, it is all about the characters.

Best of luck

Anthony David Mitchell