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One of my favorite Christmas pastimes is watching reruns of popular Christmas stories. This year with all the family activities taking

Copy of Sketch of Charles Dickens (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

place, I didn’t get a chance to watch any of them. However, a post on AWAI’s The Writer’s Life, a blog I subscribe to, set me thinking about the authors and what they had to go through to create and market these stories.

The first one that sent me digging for information was the perennial favorite, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. This manuscript, which was later to become a masterpiece, was first intended to be a political paper championing the cause of the poor and their children. Dickens himself had suffered humiliating childhood poverty after his father was imprisoned for debt and Dickens, at the age of twelve, was forced to leave school and work in a shoe-blacking factory. Dickens later decided that a Christmas narrative would be the most effective way to awaken the population to his concerns about poverty and social injustice.

Dickens took six weeks to write the story and it was published on Dec. 19, 1843. The book received immediate critical acclaim in London, and the first run of 6000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. Initial reaction in America was not as enthusiastic, but the book later caught on after the New York Times published an enthusiastic review. Despite this, revenue from the self-published book was disappointing. Production costs ate into his profits, and to make matters worse, the book was later pirated in January 1844. Dickens sued and won, but the pirates, Parley‘s Illuminated Library, simply declared bankruptcy and Dickens was left to pay £700 in fees.

A Christmas Carol may not have been an economic success for the author, but it has impacted millions over the years and continues to do so today. So, which do you prefer – economic or artistic success? This famous work by a beloved author proves that no matter how magnificent our writing, financial success is not guaranteed. Rather, we should always strive to produce our best, most heartfelt work and let God decide the outcome.

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Joyce Carol Oates at USF (Photo credit: shawncalhoun)

If you are a fiction writer, one of your major challenges is creating memorable characters. Think of your characters as the pillars of a structure. If they are not strong, or don’t have the necessary qualities to support that plot, it’s likely to collapse. If your readers don’t care for your characters, especially the major ones, chances are they won’t care for your story either. Think of a movie you saw that you really enjoyed. Why did you enjoy it? What do you remember about it? Of course, great acting may be one of the reasons you enjoyed the movie, but if the main character was weak, then the acting couldn’t do much to improve on it.

In my critique group, I get a lot of praise for my characters, even the lesser ones. I think it’s because I try to get to know them – their likes, dislikes, what makes them tick, what is likely to set them off – that sort of thing. When I began my first book in the Egypt series, I searched faces on the street and in magazines looking for the right faces to match my characters. I found that people in public gave me what I wanted more than magazine photos, for the simple reason that I could commit to memory their build, their gait, facial expression, mannerisms etc. Nothing gives me more pleasure than when my critiquing friends say, “I just love Marva,” or, “I just love David.”

In the video below, popular writer Joyce Carol Oates discusses how to create outstanding characters. Enjoy!