What makes a story? Setting, plot, dialogue, characters? I think all of the above, but no good story is without a memorable character.

Those of you who know me know that I am a big fan of Stephen King. King has written a lot of memorable characters, but he has one that has been in multiple books.

King recently said in an interview he is not done with Holly Gibney, after six books. And he’s probably not, unless he once again stops writing.

So, what made Holly so memorable? Why did King use her over and over again? She was unusual, and probably bi-polar. A reluctant hero. In Mr. Mercedes she helps the detective catch the serial killer because he needs her and because he befriends her. She is brilliant and needed. Her one vice is she smokes because she says it helps her think. It probably causes her to breathe more deeply and calm down. But she smokes to everyone’s dismay.

In Moby Dick Herman Melville created the character, Captain Ahab, who was out for revenge. Ahab has been driven crazy by his hatred for an albino whale who had bitten off his leg from the knee down. And he will find him eventually as he sails the world.

The Will Trent series by Karen Slaughter, uses a very unusual character who overcomes adversity in his daily life as a special agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta, Georgia. He was abandoned as a baby in a dumpster, raised in foster homes where he was abused and never learned to read because he was dyslexic. He always wears a three-piece suit being sure to cover his physical scars. He carries a Dictaphone and dictates his notes into it as he works. He gets others to read things to him on the sly and tries to not let anyone know about his learning disability. He is flawed, but he is brilliant.

Characterization is the representation of the traits, motives, and psychology of a character in a narrative. Characterization may occur through direct description, in which the character’s qualities are described by a narrator, another character, or by the character him or herself.

Part of your job as a writer is to learn about your characters by observing how they interact with the world around them. Characterization is an essential part of writing a novel or short story; it helps you understand your characters, and how each character’s personality can help drive the plot forward.

Remember that characters, like people, are imperfect. They don’t need to be likable, but they must be interesting. I love unlikable characters. They are fun to write. But it seems contradictory, that a character who is wholly unappealing—repulsive, even—should be something readers might seek out. And here, I think, is where unlikable and uninteresting are confused.

You can make your protagonist as low-down and dirty or as mindful and generous as you please, but she has to be the engineer of her own conflict to earn readers’ interest. A character—good or bad—must be an active participant in her own story. And if you want a character with a built-in conflict machine, you should go low-down and dirty.

A character who sets himself up for conflict and consequences through his own doing—is unlikable, but also magnetic. You want to watch him ruin his life. He repulses you in the same way a car accident is simultaneously disturbing and hard to look away from. Every time he does something unwholesome, immoral, felonious, or just rude, he creates a conflict. The anticipation and delivery of that consequence are deeply satisfying for a reader, and by their very nature, not-nice characters create these conflicts almost constantly. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “The suspense is terrible; I hope it will last.”

The best characters are the ones that seem to take on a life on their own. For example, when the reader is always drawn back to the book because they can’t help wondering what the character is up to. It’s not as hard as you think to create a character as memorable as Harry Potter or Sherlock Holmes.

To allow the readers to engage with your characters, they need to become multi-faceted, living, breathing individuals. You have to know them as personally as you know yourself.

If you are stuck in writing your story and it just isn’t coming out like you wish it would, check your characterizations. Maybe they need more depth, more humanization. No one character is all good or all bad.

What are you reading, writing, or creating this week?