What Makes an Unforgettable Character? By Sylvie Perry (aka Keziah Frost)

LUCY BURDETTE: I'm delighted to host Sylvie Perry, author of THE HAWTHORNE SCHOOL. You might remember her as Keziah Frost, who wrote THE RELUCTANT FORTUNETELLER, which so many of enjoyed. But now she's turned to the dark side, where characters still rule. Her new book is spooky, creepy, and thoroughly gothic. And PS, Sylvie and I had a lovely conversation to celebrate her new book, hosted by Madison Street Books. You can watch that here. Welcome Sylvie!

SYLVIE PERRY: If I ask you to name one character from fiction—or two or three—that you will never forget, which names come to mind? 

Do you see these characters alive in your imagination? Do they seem almost—or even actually—like real people?

I would argue that a memorable character trumps a memorable setting or even a memorable plot.  Do you agree?

Let’s see if any of your unforgettable characters are the same as mine. 

Characters I will never forget include: Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca—even though she is dead before the story starts and we only hear about her from other characters; Lewis Carroll’s Alice, the girl who made me first connect with fiction, a girl after my own heart who tried to make sense out of a nonsensical world of mad adults; Uriah Heep, the servile, writhing, snake-like creature of Charles Dickens’ who pretended to be so “humble.” And then I hasten to add Dickon, the boy in The Secret Garden who could talk to all animals and birds and really knew their languages, as well as the secrets of plants and trees. And who could ever forget the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein? Or the idiosyncratic Sherlock Holmes or the insightful Miss Marple? Or how about Rhys Bowen’s Lady Georgiana?

Whom would you add?

As great as the books these characters live in may be, I believe the characters are even greater, and keep us coming back to re-read, and return to our thoughts from time to time our whole lives long. They make an impression on us as much as—or perhaps more than—flesh and blood people we have known.

A good rule for a writer is to put a compelling character into an interesting situation. That is a place to start with a protagonist, but it can also work for any character in the book. Not all the memorable ones are main characters.  Ophelia is unforgettable in Hamlet. Think of all the brilliant characters in The Wizard of Oz.

So what is the special sauce? What is it that makes a character memorable?

I think there has to be something very relatable about them, and also something very surprising. We want to marvel at them—and at the same time feel that they could be expressing ourselves, or a part of ourselves. Is that right? Do we tend to empathize with these book-people, and also admire some special skill they have--or else recoil from something tragic, horrifying or disturbing about them? Maybe there has to be something very realistic in their personalities, so that we can believe in them, and yet they need in some way to be larger than life, unlike any real person we know, so that we will be mesmerized and read until the very end, and then never forget them.

So we have Alice, as puzzled by grown-up ways as any other seven-year-old, but ten times more clever. And we have Shelley’s monster who only wants acceptance and belonging as we all do, but he is gigantic and terrifying to look at. Even the eponymous Rebecca strikes us with awe because that is the effect she has on the book’s protagonist, but we are repelled by her cold black heart.

Who are the characters that live in your mind, and why?

What does a character need in order to make that permanent impression on readers?

About THE HAWTHORNE SCHOOL: Claudia Morgan is overwhelmed. She’s a single parent trying the best that she can, but her four-year-old son, Henry, is a handful–for her and for his preschool. When Claudia hears about a school with an atypical teaching style near her Chicagoland home, she has to visit. The Hawthorne School is beautiful and has everything she dreams of for Henry: time to play outside, music, and art. The head of the school, Zelma, will even let Claudia volunteer to cover the cost of tuition.

The school is good for Henry: his “behavioral problems” disappear, and he comes home subdued instead of rageful. But there’s something a bit off about the school, its cold halls, and its enigmatic headmistress. When Henry brings home stories of ceremonies in the woods and odd rules, Claudia’s instincts tell her that something isn’t quite right, and she begins to realize she’s caught in a web of manipulations and power. 
 


The author’s work as a psychotherapist, with a focus on narcissistic manipulation and addictive power dynamics, guides this exploration of a young mother wanting to do the best for her child.