First, a note of caution. To slice up fiction into categories such as "plot", "voice", "point of view" or "character" is to risk presenting it in a way that neither writer nor reader normally experiences it. The suggestion might seem to be that the writing of a story or a novel is a strongly segmented or layered activity, something orderly, dry and technical. But stories, when they come, come in organic gobs, as though gouged out of the living fabric of world -- character tangled with plot, plot with setting, setting with scraps of language embedded and so on. But laying that aside, that large proviso, there are a few remarks that might be usefully attempted under the heading of "character". First off (and at the risk of being punched in the face by some follower of the nouveau roman school), let it be loudly asserted that character, strong characters, are at the heart of all great literature and always will be. Plot, even in detective fiction, is a very secondary matter. Not many readers could outline the plot of The Sign of the Four but no one has any difficulty bringing Holmes and Watson to mind. A writer who does not create convincing characters will fail. A writer who creates thrilling, troubling, seductive, insistent characters need not worry too much about any other aspect of writing. You do not need to know how to spell. You do not need to know much about grammar. You do not even need