The first blog of this series laid the foundation for character introductions. Now we’re going to go deeper into ways to introduce characters. The final two blogs in this series will explore each type of introduction with specific examples and explanations.
Bringing your characters to life begins with the introduction, no matter whether it’s in fiction or film, it’s how you choose to begin that matters. There are many options:
Introduce with Voice
In most cases, the main character is the narrator of the story and the first voice a reader encounters on the page. Voice is a powerful way to introduce your main character—to get inside her head and see the world through her eyes. The key is to show who your MC is through voice. What details is your MC picking up on, what does she ignore? Do those inclusions and exclusions offer clues to her opinions and attitudes? Do they offer a clue to personality? Do you get a sense of who she is from voice alone? Remember that narration is familiar, intimate. It is a peek inside her mind and, as such, should offer a glimpse into the MC’s heart and drive.
Start by Doing
This falls under the “show, don’t tell” mantra. Instead of telling us who your MC is, show us. Use action. Is she awkward or proficient in what she is doing? Is she hesitant or confident? Is she alone or racing away from a villain? Use the action to show more than what is happening to reveal who your character is by how she is acting and reacting.
Show a Complete Person
Consider introducing your MC’s fatal flaw in the opening scene. This will help foreshadow the obstacles to come and offer a deeper character. Perfect people are not interesting. They lack texture and interest. No one is perfect, just as no one is pure evil. Don’t be afraid to show your MC’s good and bad sides. Make your characters complex from the beginning. There is nothing less satisfying than a Mary Sue character or a flat villain.
Hint at the Ending
If you can embed a clue to the ending in the beginning, it will be more satisfying for the reader. I’m not saying you should spoil your ending or use that trope where you show where your character ends up and then flash back to the beginning to tell your story. While this works sometimes, it can be a lazy way of creating tension and interest. What I am suggesting is to include a line of dialogue or a thematic element or symbol or situation that can be echoed in the ending. This cyclical way to telling a story is more complete and offers a sense of closure. It’s often how comics tell jokes to emphasize the punch line. Not every story lends itself to this, but if you can add a hint or foreshadowing, it will help.
Tell Sometimes
But keep it brief. There are times when exposition is necessary. Sometimes there are facts your reader needs to know they won’t easily pick up on though showing. The trick to telling is to keep it short. Use as little space as possible to offer a clear understanding to the reader without losing your pacing or tension. Often you can get away with one line of exposition. Maybe a paragraph. Be sure to surround it with showing to keep up the pacing.
Reveal Details
Character descriptions should include more than a cursory description of the person. The action, description, observation should reveal as much about the MC as it does about the side character. A short flashback may help share a connection from the past or a memory that haunts the two characters. What your MC chooses to focus on and share can reveal how she really feels about the new character. If she only shares negatives, then you know what role this person is likely to have moving forward. Although there is always room for a reversal. This is a hallmark of romance novels, where the two main characters dislike each other in the beginning only to fall in love later in the book.
Introducing Side Characters
Side characters introductions should remain focused on their relationship to your MC. Every person in the story should be filtered through your MC. This means staying true to your point of view. If you’re writing first person or third person limited, then all you will know of side characters is what your MC knows. If you are writing third person omniscient or objective, then you need to establish the relationship between your POV narrator and the MC, and then use that to reveal relationships. If you are using multiple points of view, then filter your introductions through the POV character for that scene and keep the relationship tied to that character. Side characters should never be introduced as independent of the narrator or MC. They should only exist in relation to the MC, unless there is a plot-driven reason to break this rule.
Keep Up the Tension
Explore the tension present in the relationships and people you introduce. It’s not enough to provide a description, you have to provide context. How does this new character fit into the plot? Are they a suspect in a mystery? Are they a witness? A person of interest? Are they a love interest, a rival, an ex? What role do they play in the overall cast of characters? Use these relationships to keep up the tension among characters. If you don’t want to reveal their role just yet, keep up the tension by withholding key information to heighten the mystery.
Remember that an Introduction not only establishes your MC, but your story too. Here is an example of how Louise Penny introduces her detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in her first book of the series (Still Life):
Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much a surprise all round. Miss Neal’s was not a natural death, unless you’re of the belief everything happens as it’s supposed to. If so, for her seventy-six years Jane Neal had been walking toward this final moment when death met her in the brilliant maple woods on the verge of the village of Three Pines. She’d fallen spread-eagled, as though making angels in the bright and brittle leaves.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec knelt down; his knees cracking like the report of a hunter’s rifle, his large, expressive hands hovering over the tiny circle of blood marring her cardigan, as though like a magician he could remove the wound and restore the woman. But he could not. That wasn’t his gift. Fortunately for Gamache he had others. The scent of mothballs, his grandmother’s perfume, met him halfway. Jane’s gentle and kindly eyes stared as though surprised to see him.
He was surprised to see her. That was his little secret. Not that he’d ever seen her before. No. His little secret was that in his mid-fifties, at the height of a long and now apparently stalled career, violent death still surprised him. Which was odd, for the head of homicide, and perhaps one of the reasons he hadn’t progressed further in the cynical world of the Sûreté. Gamache always hoped maybe someone had gotten it wrong, and there was no dead body. But there was no mistaking the increasingly rigid Miss Neal. Straightening up with the help of Inspector Beauvoir, he buttoned his lined Burberry against the October chill and wondered.
With these three paragraphs, Penny sets up her victim, the scene, the season, and her main character. In these few lines, we already know that Gamache is an optimist who has hope even though he is an experienced homicide detective. We learn his age (mid-fifties) and that his career isn’t going as well as it could be, though we don’t yet know why. We see that he needs assistance in getting up and that he is thoughtful, kind, and had a grandmother who smelled of moth balls. Penny accomplishes a lot in a tiny bit of space.
In a later book in the series (A Trick of the Light, book 7), she re-introduced Gamache like this:
From far off Armand Gamache could hear the sound of children playing. He knew where it was coming from. The park across the way, though he couldn’t see the children through the maple trees in late spring leaf. He sometimes liked to sit there and pretend the shouts came from his young grandchildren, Florence and Zora. He imagined his son Daniel and Roslyn were in the park, watching their children. And that soon they’d walk hand in hand across the quiet street in the very center of the great city, for dinner. Or he and Reine-Marie would join them. And play catch, or conkers.
He liked to pretend they weren’t thousands of kilometers away in Paris.
But mostly he just listened to the shouts and shrieks of neighborhood children. And smiled. And relaxed.
Gamache reached for his beer and lowered the L’Observateur magazine to his knee. His wife, Reine-Marie, sat across from him on their balcony. She too had a cold beer on this unexpectedly warm day in mid-June. But her copy of La Presse was folded on the table and she stared into the distance.
“What’re you thinking about?” he asked.
“My mind was just wandering.”
He was silent for a moment, watching her. Her hair was quite gray now, but then, so was his. She’d dyed it auburn for many years but just recently had stopped doing that. He was glad. Like him, she was in her mid-fifties. And this was what a couple of that age looked like. If they were lucky.
Not like models. No one would mistake them for that. Armand Gamache wasn’t heavy, but solidly built. If a stranger visited this home he might think Monsieur Gamache a quiet academic, a professor of history or literature perhaps at the Université de Montréal.
But that too would be a mistake.
This re-introduction of her MC reveals that Gamache misses his grandkids and son so much he imagines them close. We see the love between Gamache and his wife. We see their relationship in the camaraderie of sitting on the balcony reading and drinking beer together. We see his gratitude for her presence. We also learn how someone else would see Gamache, so we can picture him clearly in our mind, even if we’ve met him before from previous books. This re-introduction lets us know this book will focus on his marriage more than the previous books and the differences between Gamache and the typical detective.
These two examples alone (as well as all of Penny’s work) show how much detail and information a character introduction can contain.
Character introductions in screenplays are more concise and not for the audience, but the director and crew to create the character on screen. They must reveal the character enough to be realized by an actor. Here is an example from the screenplay for Warm Bodies by Jonathan Levine.
R (21, undead). Blank face, sunken eyes. Blueish lips. If we didn’t know any better we’d think he was a junkie, a runaway from the set of My Own Private Idaho. Then we might notice a few thin gashes cutting across his cheeks. And then we might hear a soft groan humming from his frozen lips. And then we might start to wonder…
This brief paragraph gives us all we need to know R. It’s not just plain physical description, but an image of what we can expect to see on film. This description allows us to see R before we read his opening narration (found below).
What I’m doing with my life?
I’m so pale. I should get out more.
I should eat better. My posture is terrible.
I should stand up straight.
People would respect me more if I stood up straight.
What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect.
Why can’t I connect with people?
Oh, right.
It’s because I’m dead.
I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
I mean, we’re all dead.
This girl is dead. That guy is dead.
That guy in the corner is definitely dead.
Jesus, these guys look awful.
I wish I could introduce myself, but I don’t remember my name anymore.
I mean, I think it started with an R, but that’s all I have left.
I can’t remember my name or my parents or my job.
Although my hoodie would suggest I was unemployed.
Sometimes I look at the others and try to imagine what they were.
You were a janitor.
You were the rich son of a corporate CEO.
You were …
A personal trainer.
And now you’re a corpse.
In the next two blogs, we’ll explore ways to introduce characters by looking at more examples from fiction and film.