Characters we love...

During all the many years in which I was an editor and publisher, what did I hope for when I picked up the manuscript? I wanted to fall in love, to be swept up as quickly as possible into the life of the character so interesting that I couldn’t bear to shut the manuscript in the desk overnight. It went home with me so that I could continue reading it.

We know what love is, we think of the other person at odd moments, we wonder where they are, what they are doing, we seem a bit crazy to the rest of the world. That’s exactly the feeling I have about characters I fall in love with in books.

--Sol Stein, Stein on Writing, p. 49-50

Tricia’s Thoughts:

Here’s a line written by my writer friend, Robin Jones Gunn, about my second novel, Night Song: “Readers easily connect with her characters and find themselves thinking about them long after the final note has been sung.” I take this as high praise from such a talented writer!

I feel the same about the characters in books I’ve read. I still think about Hadasseh from Francine Rivers’ “Mark of the Lion Series.” Or Marty from “Love Comes Softly”—the first Christian novel I remember reading as an adult. These are “people” we remember with fondness after being allowed an inside glimpse of a segment of their life-journey. And isn’t that what fiction is all about—taking part of a grand journey with someone we care about?