Do you think a story about Jacob Marley would be interesting?

No. Very little was said of him in the book, “A Christmas Carol,” and what was said about sums up his whole life. I doubt an additional book’s worth of interesting info could be put together.

@kritiper Hmmm, you don’t have much imagination. It is precisely the fact that not much was said about him, that a book about his life and how he ended up with a similar (but not the same) personality as Scrooge, would be interesting. Not every rotten person ends up that way for the same reasons. I would be very curious to read a book to find out how he, rather than Scrooge, because we already know about Scrooge, became that way.

I’d read it. Needs to be a dynamic character though.

@KNOWITALL exactly! If a good writer took up this story with this character, it could be very intriguing.

You can write a spellbinding book on the history of mildew if that is your preference. And secondary characters are seized from great works of fiction at a prodigious rate to star in their own spotlight. So of course the book COULD be interesting or drivel. Great writing is great writing, whether it’s Marley’s life or the instruction manual to your steam iron. Write a few paragraphs for us to read. It’s dull as hell here these days. If you want us to be interested in Marley, MAKE it so.

Due to the way he lived his life, Jacob Marley was a chained and tormented ghost, doomed to wander the earth forever as punishment for his greed and selfishness when he was alive. Marley roams restlessly, witnessing the hardships others suffer and lamenting that he has forever lost his chance to help them. Marley arranges for the three spirits to visit Scrooge and gives his friend an opportunity for redemption, which Marley tells him was ”...a chance and hope of my procuring.”

I’d think the story touching on his life then continuing on into his torturous death & roaming with NO hope of relief could be an interesting concept. Of course, the writer would make or break the book by having ALL the weight on their shoulders to make the afterlife worth reading!!!

^^ Now that’s the spirit! No pun intended. I was thinking about the continuation into the afterlife too. He’s supposed to travel far and wide. I like to know where he goes, and who he sees, and if somehow other things change, including his own suffering, even though he has to float around forever.

I also have some interesting ideas about how he came to be so mean and greedy. But I think the way he got that way would be very different from the way Scrooge ended up that way.

I am no writer of stories, so I wouldn’t try to write the story myself. I just have ideas floating around in my mind about how Marley became the man he did.

Also, did he just keel over dead on Christmas Eve, seven years past, or did something else really happen that night?

I would be interested as long as the characterization and plot turns are as equally engaging and as emotionally satisfying as Scrooge’s tale with several inventive twists in it.

^^ Twists! Yes of course. Like Oliver Twists. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

I wouldn’t. Sure, such a novel could be interesting. Anything could. But as it is there’s nothing that I find inherently interesting about the character. He’s a plot device for Scrooge’s own salvation and nothing more.

The other reason I asked this question is because I read several books that are written as part of a bigger series. One character might be the main character in one of the books, where as in another book, that person might be only a reference, or a background character, while the other book focuses on the life of one of the minor characters in a different book. This idea has been a great way to continue a story, but maybe it goes a completely unexpected direction.

One of the series of books that I read, that employs this technique is The Elm Creek Quilters Series. What I love about this series is that you can read any of them out of order, and still understand the bigger picture. The books move forward and backward in time, and feature different characters as the main focus in each book, but you are still aware of the other characters, even in any given book, but those people will be given different weight and value.