If you haven’t heard about our very special Character Cavalcade Week yet, you should probably crawl out from under your rock and join the rest of the world (but only after you take a shower, you dirty rock dweller!).

Yesterday, we announced a whole week’s worth of blog posts stocked with tips, tools and tidbits related to the all important role of the fictional character.  In the midst of this super amazing week of character calamity, we will also be unveiling a unique tool developed right here in the Duolit studio (a.k.a. my apartment) to help all of our author friends with their character development struggles.

I would love to tell you more about it…but then I’d have to kill you.

Instead, you’ll just have to wait like everyone else for the big reveal tomorrow, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3RD. This thing is SO BIG that there might even be FIREWORKS to celebrate. (On a related note, there might also NOT be fireworks—we don’t want to set the Interwebs on fire).

We kicked things off Monday with the ever-so-helpful Character Glossary, now we’re inaugurating our first class of literary characters into the Duolit Pantheon of Incredible Characters (DPIC). Feel free to nominate some of your own characters in the comments section and we might just let them in!

So without further ado, I give you…

The Duolit Pantheon of Incredible Literary Characters

Class of 2010:

Classic Genre:

Holden Caufield: The original phony-hater himself, young and rebellious Holden set the tone for teenage protagonists in fiction. For decades, teens have been able to find pieces of themselves woven into the cloak of J.D. Salinger’s main character in Catcher in the Rye.  Holden represents that desire in all of us to give the finger to our oppressors and fall of the grid into our own world of adventures.  The original copy on the book jacket (possibly written by Salinger) says it best:

“The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it.”

YA/Children’s Genre:

Voldemort: The DPIC Inductees are not limited to only protagonists. In many cases, a great antagonist can be just as essential to a story as his heroic opponent. In the case of the Harry Potter series, the cursed young wizard is only as powerful and brave as his foe is mighty and evil (I mean you know you’re kind of a B.A.M.F. when people just refer to you as “He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named”). J.K. Rowling did a splendid job creating the three-dimensional character of Voldemort from his past as a troubled boy named Tom Riddle to his resurrection as part-snake, part-human. He was eerily evil in every way, and yet still human enough to be understood.

Modern Genre:

Grandma Mazur: Janet Evanovich’s stellar series of numerical mystery novels might center around the main character, Stephanie Plum, but Grandma Mazur steals every scene she’s in.  As a fearless octogenarian sidekick, she gives us hope that life’s excitement does not end when you climb over the hill. She is a hysterical firecracker who was seemingly created from equal parts Sophia Petrillo, Lucille Ball, and each of our own wise-cracking grandmothers.  This pistol-packing lady is the perfect illustration of a colorful character who can make you laugh out loud (before you realize that you’re sitting in crowded a crowded public area giggling to yourself over a book like a total crazy person).

Science Fiction Genre:

Arthur Dent: The hapless lead in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Dent’s quick, dry, distinctly British wit shines through in every page. His total, well, ordinariness makes the adventures he goes on, and his reaction to them, all the more believable and engrossing. From his insistence that the interstellar highway bypass not be built in his front yard to spending almost the entire series in his dressing gown, Arthur grounds a series that is built on total (and amazingly fun) absurdity.

Fantasy Genre:

Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry): We had to include a character from Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings in this category, of course, but you can keep your Gandalfs and Frodos, because little Meriadoc is finally getting the recognition he deserves. While technically acting as a sidekick to Frodo on his quest, Merry is portrayed by Tolkien as exceptionally intelligent and perceptive in contrast to the often bumbling nature of the other hobbits. With his wit and knack for mischief rounding him out, perhaps if Merry was chosen to be the Ringbearer, the whole trip may have been a little less dour.

That’s a great-looking class! Of course with all of the incredible characters turned out every year, choosing just a few was incredibly difficult. But that’s why we have you, our faithful readers, to help us out. Who is your favorite character? Let us know in the comments!

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