Say that you, the writer, are writing about a character you have just created.

Say, it is a girl.

The girl must be alive. That's what we must achieve as writers. Give life to our characters. I mean, how real is a real person? It depends on what you want to achieve. What is the girl's role in your book? Still, you must work harder if you want your female character to be another Anna Karenina, Scout Finch, Scarlett Ohara, Daisy Buchanan, or Katniss Everdeen.

(By the way, can you tell me what books these girls are from?)

I tried to achieve the quality of a strong character in the narrative while creating Bella, a beautiful, deceptive woman in my book "The Shoplifter, " a dense, dark story of love breaking bad. Did I achieve that? It's not my answer which is valid, but my readers. But I tried hard not to fall in love with Bella, deceptive as she is, which is a trap every writer would avoid—falling in love with their characters. Remember, love, blurs reason.

And no matter what, as in the examples above, your character, the girl, must be created with such universal appeal to resonate with every reader, as the unforgettable female characters named above. As a writer, are you able to do that? You better be.

So, if you can show, not tell, how the girl talks, smiles, gestures, walks, her voice, her personality, how she carries herself, if you can make the reader feel that her warmth transports them back to the bonfires of their youth if you can do it all in a spark of words, just a spark, then you have created an unforgettable character.