If you don’t love Anne Shirley, you’ve never read Anne of Green Gables.

I only discovered Anne about two years ago when an actress I’ve been following for a long time made a wonderful audiobook of L. M. Montgomery’s classic. Since then, I’ve been leisurely making my way through the rest of the series. My wonderful mother-in-law recently lent me her copies of books 4-6, and I tore through Book 4, Anne of Windy Poplars, over a busy and difficult weekend. 

I have to say, though, that I almost didn’t make it to Book 4. While the first two Anne books were delightful, the pacing in Book 3 was problematic and the new characters weren’t very memorable. In fact, when Anne refers to her college acquaintances in the later books I’m currently reading, I have no clue who she’s talking about. The characters from Anne of the Island didn’t have distinct voices and personalities like the ones from Books 1 and 2.

Book 4, however, was a pleasant surprise. Though the cast of characters was entirely new and, as far as I know, none of them shows up again in the series (as Montgomery actually wrote the book later to fill in a gap in Anne’s timeline), the pacing was better and it felt more similar to the first two books I loved so much. It definitely had a more standalone feel, like a side note in the grand scheme of Anne’s journey, but that didn’t hinder my enjoyment of it at all—especially since I liked it so much better than Book 3!

Imagine my surprise, then, when I looked up how people rank the books in the series and commonly found Book 4 ranked low while Book 3 was ranked high on almost every list!

It just goes to show you that your readers will all have varying opinions. That’s why it’s important to write every book like it will be someone’s favourite, because it will be! The Anne books may vary in quality (the story goes on for eight books, after all!), but one thing Montgomery got right was keeping Anne just Anne. That’s why we can love all of the books: despite the quality of the story, we still love reading about Anne.

You know where I’m going with this, right? It’s all about characters! When a series gets long, it’s almost guaranteed that the story will lag somewhere or other. But as long as we take care of our characters, as long as we stay true to them, our readers will keep coming back. Of course, to do this for a series, you have to create meaningful, memorable characters in the first place.

So, thank you, L.M. Montgomery, for proving my point that characters are key. Even if your plot struggles, good characters can cover a multitude of sins—but please make good plots, too!

Remember, if you have a question big or small about creative writing, leave a comment or contact me!

Happy writing!
—E.J.

---

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider buying one of my books, donating to the blog, reading my stories on Vocal, and/or taking a look at my RedBubble shop so I can continue to produce 100% free content!

Photo by Tobias Negele on Unsplash