Like Shakespeare, another imaginatively fertile and vivacious writer, Dickens created dozens of characters who continue to delight readers today. His ability to invent such living characters was aided by his experience as a newspaper reporter: The job forced him to observe people's looks, words, and manner very closely and then record these observations accurately.
Of course, the disposition was already there. Even in childhood, Dickens was fascinated with images — the eternal features of things and people — and his talent for creating comic and grotesque characters manifested itself quite early. Aside from the generous amount of adventure in most of his novels, what draws readers to them year after year, through all the changes of fad and fashion, is the vitality of the characters and the fun — or drama — they give rise to in dynamic episodes.
Worth noting is the fact that characters in fiction do not actually have to be lifelike, in the sense of being complex and highly individualized, in order to be successful and memorable. Talking animals aren't at all lifelike, yet more than a few have achieved status as compelling characters. The Fool in King Lear has relatively few lines, some of them rather obscure, yet few minor characters have become more memorable. Claggart, the villain in Billy Budd, is barely characterized at all, but he haunts us. What adds a character to the permanent repertoire of our minds is not dependent on "realism" or even on complete credibility, but solely on the magic vitality that an author is able to endow from the depths and riches of spontaneous creativity. Dickens possessed both the vitality and the skill to find the words that conveyed it.
