I Spent 9 Years Creating the Perfect Way to Introduce Characters

I've been working about 9 years on the ideas for this video on how to introduce your characters 9 years ago I wrote a post for book Fox on character descriptions when you're introducing your characters then about 5 years ago I wrote a whole chapter in the Lynch pen writer about how to introduce your characters and then two years ago I did sort of a trial run of this video on Tik Tok with just a 29 second video also character introductions are something that I focused on with editing books over the last decade both looking at

what they're doing well and also places where they could improve now I'm putting all those pieces together into a single video it's eight steps they are absolutely brilliant and they apply to every single character protagonist antagonist minor characters everyone after you watch this video you are never going to introduce a single character without thinking of these ideas so let's get started with number one when you introduce a character for the first time make them do something usually it's best if you interrupt them in the middle of what they're doing and make sure that they're doing

something that says something about them as a character it's not just a meaningless thing that they're doing you're trying to show who this person is through what they're doing in Game of Thrones the very first time that we meet Tywin Lannister he is skinning and gutting a deer what does this tell us about him as a character one it's signals at his ruthlessness right but it also tells us that he's very handson and he's not afraid to get his hands dirty in The Walking Dead the very first time that we meet Negan he is carrying

a baseball bat with barbed wire around the ends of it and spoiler alert he kills two people the very first scene that we meet him now every time I bring up this point there are always dozens of people that bring up the same exact objection what about Strider or Aragorn in Lord of the Rings the very first time we meet him he's just sitting in the corner of the prancing pony but if you read the book He's not just sitting there passively he is actually listening to the conversation and watching them very intently so surveillance

is definitely not doing nothing and what's more on the very same page he immediately goes to Frodo and warns him of the danger of his friends being too loud now I'm sure there are some exceptions that exist out there but in general it's a fantastic idea if you make your character do something when you show them for the first time the second thing you should do when you're introducing a character is you should make them say something now what I'm not talking about is just a throwaway line you know someone saying oh hey how are

you or just this generalized greeting you're looking for something that's memorable you are looking for something that's quotable you're looking for something that tells us something about this character so the first lines of dialogue that a character says it's actually so important I devoted a whole chapter to it in the Lynch pin writer so let's look at the first line of Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones he says attacking him was stupid and Lannisters don't act like fools so what does this show us about him as a character one he's kind of a Savvy strategist

like he's thinking through things and is cautious about what moves he makes two he's a pretty smart canny character this is nobody's fool and then three he's very devoted to protecting the family honister like the Lannister family name for a second example let's go back to Negan and The Walking Dead what does he say for his very first line this in our Fant yet it is such a short line but I think it contains so much about him as a character he is all about exerting power over others and he's all about using fear as

the mechanism by which he can control others so when you're introducing a character for the very first time in your book pay very close attention to the very first line of dialogue that they say look for dialogue that explains who they are as a character look for dialogue that might foreshadow what's going to happen in the future also please leave a comment below with your favorite character's introduction and why it's so good so this next point is honestly the most controversial one in this whole video and it's also the hardest one to do number three

is show this character's problem now I'm not saying you need to spell out very clearly what the main problems of this new character are that would be very difficult to do but I think there is a way that you could hint at it so someone coming upon your book for a second read would be like it was there from the beginning with Tywin Lannister I think that we see that his obsession with control and manipulation over others specifically in terms of his own family honor ends up biting him in the butt and with Negan I

think that his Devotion to violence signals that hey you live by the sword you die by the sword but I'd like to bring up one more example here from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian uh specifically the way that he introduces the judge the judge does something he interrupts a revival tent meeting he says something he falsely accuses the preacher of being a pedo and and third we learn the judge's problem because he basically represents Satan he is fighting against faith and goodness and God for the entire rest of the novel now before we get to Point

number four I'd like to say really quick that I am opening up some spots for developmental editing so if you're interested in having me give you feedback and edits on your book check out the link below now for this next point I think it is the easiest one to do badly it's number four characterize them through description now if you need some examples of how to describe your character for the first time I actually wrote a whole post on it so check out that link in the description now the old school method of describing a

character for the first time was to write a very long paragraph real chunker with every single detail you can imagine about how this character looks but that style of writing has really fallen out of favor in modern times the more modern way to do it is just to have a couple lines describing the most Salient or important parts of how this character looks for an example of how to do this well let's look at Fourth Wing by Rebecca yaros what she does really well in this section is due description through contrast so the first person

she describes is the older sister merera we learned that mea is very tall learn that she's very strong and that she has very short hair which is ideal for combat and then we get the description of the main character Violet and we learned that in many ways she's the opposite of her older sister she is short she's very frail because of a childhood illness and honestly that physical Frailty is important because it's one of the main obstacles to her becoming a dragon rider really the only other thing that we learned learn about Violet's appearance is

about her hair it's long and it ends in silver tips which ends up being important later on in the books so yarus does a fantastic job with this description because we only learn the most important details and the details all feed into the storyline in some way they're not negligible details they help us understand this character one thing the readers frequently tell me is they absolutely hate when they get halfway through a book and the author first mentions the character's height or their hair or something and that was completely different than the image that they

had in their brain of what this character should look like so I do think it's best to try to tip off the reader as early as possible perhaps the first time you introduce them with something about them so the reader can imagine what they look like now most authors actually forget this next point that we're going to talk about when you are introducing a character it's essential that you choose exactly the right spot where do we meet one of your characters for the first time place is very important think about the first time we meet

Captain Jack Sparrow he is riding a sinking ship which is a perfect metaphor for his career and what's going on in his life however he manages to step onto the dock with marvelous a plum and self-confidence or think about when we first meet indiia Jones He is hiking through a thick forest in Peru and goes into this underground passage or consider Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol when we very first meet Ebenezer Scrooge where is he he is in a Counting house counting his money perfectly exemplifying his greediness and once more it's about when it is

this is Christmas Eve now I should point out that if you're not writing a super adventurous or high concept book you can still use this advice as well look at Sally Rooney's book beautiful world where are you this is a book about romance between multiple characters so where does she choose to introduce Alice her main character she chooses to introduce her in a bar she is sitting and waiting for a blind date that's the perfect location for a book like this which is all concerned about coupling and relationships and love now this next point is

probably not one that you've heard of before it is number six opposite of their narrative Arc so when you're introducing a character you have to think about how they're going to change over the course of this book or even over the course of say a series and what you want to do is you want to introduce them in a way that's completely opposite of where they're going to end up what that does is it makes their character Arc even more extreme and more pleasurable for the reader to see that wild change let's look at sooka

in avatar The Last Airbender so in the very first scene where we meet him paddling through this frozen lake he's introducing say this sexist immature jerk and that gives the authors a lot of room to have him change and transform over time now I know this is really difficult for those of you who might not know how the end of your book is going to play out but I think it is something to think about hard right now how you introduce them affects how they're going to end up by the end of the book now

this next Point really is about how authors frequently mess up when introducing their characters and it is point number seven avoiding common introduction mistakes now the first mistake that I see really frequently is authors trying too hard to make their character seem mysterious and they'll say things like this to me what if I don't want the reader to understand the character I think this mistake comes from a misunderstanding of mystery publisher Frank Sheed said this a mystery is something that you can't say everything about it isn't something that you can't say anything about what that

means is you don't create mystery about a character by delivering nothing to the reader you create it by delivering really interesting tidbits and then the reader craves more so when you introduce a character really your goal is to communicate as much as possible about this character to get the reader interested in them the only caveat is if you reveal too much it's going to slow down the pace right so how do you reveal just the right amount to keep the pace moving and remember that no matter how much you give away about a character when

you first introduce them there's always more that the reader is going to be curious about and that's where the true mystery lies the second mistake that I see really frequently is introducing a bunch of characters at once if you have sort of a group scene where you're like oh here's these four people and you spend a paragraph on each one of those people the reader is going to have a really hard time remembering who was who who was named what and they're just not going to have a sense of them as people please when you're

introducing characters focus on one at a time it's hard enough to introduce one single character really well so if you throw in multiple characters of course you're going to fall on your face and the third mistake that happens sometimes is they pass a mirror and introduce what they look like themselves all right this is so cliche that most authors like realize that this is a terrible idea but I want to throw it in there because you know these cliches persist and that's that's not how you want to introduce a character now for our eighth and

final point we're going to look at reintroductions a reintroduction is simply when you need to introduce a character after it's been a long time since we've seen them last for instance how do you reintroduce a character in book two or book three or book Seven I think your goal is not to just repeat the most important information like you would with a first introduction but to slip it in really naturally into the text just to remind the reader oh that's what they look like for an example of this let's go back to Fourth Wing specifically

the sequel iron flame now if you remember Violet had silver tipped hair in this book so how far do we get into iron flame before we are reminded of that silver hair it's actually not until page 29 and it's not mentioned in a very explicit way but sort of tossed off casually another character looks at her and in the second half of that sentence it just casually mentions that half of her hair is silver or you could take the Lord of the Ring strategy the way that Gandalf is reintroduced after a long period where they

thought he was dead the way Gandalf is reintroduced is not as Gandalf but just simply as an old man they don't know who he is and even he is confused about his name what was my name oh that's right I was called Gandalf so I like that the way that that reintroduction actually ends up being a lot similar to a first introduction because he's been transformed in and Gandalf the White and he's kind of a new person now and I also like that there's some mystery with this reintroduction because we're wondering who this old man

with wizard like Powers is and then it's revealed oh this is Gandalf and he survived the attack from the ball Rock don't forget to like And subscribe and good luck with introducing your characters