Fiction writers know this. Whatever themes they might want to write about, whatever issues they might want to explore, they know that people make it happen. Novelist Jane Smiley once said that all great stories begin with either someone arriving or someone leaving. Characters make plot; plot creates movement; movement generates drama and tension — all of which keep the reader’s eyes on the page, and keep those pages turning. Although writers may have many different goals — to enlighten, instruct, edify, entertain or enrage, to motivate, persuade or comfort — although they may write in different genres for different audiences, all writers share one overarching goal: to be read and remembered. Creating memorable characters is the key.

Nonfiction writers of all stripes are beginning to understand the power of people in their stories and are looking for ways to make characters come alive. When I studied journalism and started my writing career, journalistic writers were allowed little creative leeway in developing characters. In fact, the word “character” was never uttered. People in journalistic stories were either one-dimensional objects — the bank teller who got robbed, the politician who got re-elected, the scientist who made a discovery — or they were sources. Objects had things happen to them. Sources communicated information or expressed opinion. If you wanted the reader to get to know any of these folks, you could throw in an adjective or two, or you could quote some particularly pithy statement. Quotes were where color and insight came from. Quotes were the sparks of stories, the gems, the liveliest moments you were allowed.

I followed this teaching for longer than common sense should have allowed me to. I had to have known — don’t we all know? — that what people say (especially to a writer interviewing them for a story) and who they really are may be startlingly different. Still, I clung to the primacy of the quote. It took me years of reading and writing to see the limits of this approach. It took me years to see that people in stories can be characters instead of talking heads. It took me years to see that the way to explore personality and temperament, ego and individuality often lay not in the artificiality of the interview and its bi-product, the quote, but somewhere else.