How to Introduce a Character in Your Story or Novel

To introduce a character, whether the main character at the beginning or a new character somewhere in the middle, you need three things:

1) The character must be a character. 

They can't be flat or shapeless. They can't be neutral or wussy. They have to be for or against something. That's important. You have to give your reader something to react to. You can have them hate or love the character, but the reader has to have a reaction.

2) The first time he appears, the character should perform an act that characterizes him. 

This goes back to Sunday school: don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. Your reader will watch what the character does, and it should be something important. Is he a thief? Have him steal something. Is he honest? Have him give back a nickel to make correct change. Generous and sweet? Have him over-tip the waitress after charming her.

And make that waitress important later.

If he's not generous and sweet, have him charm the waitress and then stiff her.

That doesn't mean to make the charecters flat. You can add contrast later, and should. Just show what they essentially are, in their core, first. More about adding contrast in these posts:

http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/contrast-makes-your-writing-more.html
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/07/3d-characters-easy-formula.html

3) The characterizing act must be both pertinent and characteristic. 

That means you should show the most important characteristic of your character, not a side characteristic. If he's supposed to be courageous, don't show first how kind he is, etc.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Even 3D Characters Have One Dominant Trait

We've discussed several times in this blog how to make your characters seem three dimensional.

Easy Formula for 3-D Characters
Character Complexity
Naming Your Characters

However, if you have too many contrasts and nuances, you can end up with character mush.

For that reason, it's a good idea to identify a dominant trait in each of your major characters that will predominate during the story.

A story is an enactment of what is, most probably, the worst and or most exciting thing to ever happen to your main character. When this one major stimulus occurs, one part of your character's personality will determine their reaction.

Your main character should be heroic in some way. For him/her, choose a heroic trait, like bravery, or kindness, honesty, or compassion, or maternal/paternal/fraternal/sororital bonds. The Seven Cardinal Virtues are an easy list. I like the ones first espoused by Aristotle and Plato: temperance, wisdom, justice, and courage, supplemented by the three virtues from the New Testament: faith, hope, and charity/love.

Your other characters, co-protagonists, antagonists, etc., can have heroic, anti-heroic, or neutral traits, such as the seven deadly sins (PEWSLAG: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony,) or any of the heroic ones above, or such neutral ones as stupidity, ambition, recklessness, introversion or extroversion, etc.

More about characters and how to introduce them, next.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

How Not To Write: Be Vague

Specificity about objects, emotions, and characters creates startling, fresh fiction. The details should be pertinent to the character and mood of the work.

Vagueness and cliches suck all the lifeblood out of your fiction, like a condor-sized Alaskan mosquito. (See how it wasn't a vampire, there?)

"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. ... The barrel of the gun pressed the back of my throat, Tyler says, 'We really won't die.' With my tongue I can fell the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun." (Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk)

Wow. That's a specific detail.

"Lyme Disease?" "Spread by tick bite. They're seething in the grass. You get Bell's palsy, meningitis, the lining of your brain swells like dough." ("Modern Love," T.C. Boyle)

"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tell the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, 'Be My Baby' on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. ... Price calms down, continues to stare out the cab's dirty window, probably at the word FEAR sprayed in red graffiti on the side of McDonald's on Fourth and Seventh." (American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis)

Complex Emotions in Fiction

Complex emotions are easy.

Characters should not have just one emotion at a time. Mix them up and describe the shades between them.

Happiness can be tinged with nostalgia, remorse, satiety, loneliness, euphoria, triumph, vindictiveness, condescension, schadenfreude, earnestness, desire, sexual desire, or hysteria, etc.

Anger can be mixed with hate, schadenfreude, envy, stupidity, berserker rage, annoyance, self-aggrandizement, irritation, ignorance, suppression, or vindictiveness, etc.

Describing the whole, round emotion makes your characters seem 3-D.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

3D Characters: The Easy Formula

No kidding: making characters seem 3 dimensional is easy. There's a stupid formula that works every time.

The character desires a certain outcome. When the opposite outcome happens, they are surprised that they feel the opposite of how they expected they would feel.

Seriously, that's all there is.

I read a really, really bad novel (that was glowingly reviewed) that actually had one character, a rather minor character, write a letter to the main character and tell him that when the unexpected thing happened, he "felt the opposite of what he expected." Literally in those words.

Stupid, clunky writing. All sorts of crap is being published by the Big 6 these days.

Show it. Have the character feel it. Bring the character on screen and let them scream their head off.

Don't have a character write a flippin' letter to another one and say it. Arrrgh.

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)

Your Main Character and Food: What can or will they eat?

What are your character's food preferences, predilections, and prejudices?

I was in Paris this weekend. The French will eat anything they can kill.

I'm a (mostly) vegetarian and a celiac.

Sometimes, I compromised my morals to not get sick, but I didn't go as far as fois gras or veal.

During your WIP, what does your character eat, and would they eat that normally?

The Five Stages of a Writer's Career (according to publishers)

Who the hell is TK Kenyon?

Get me TK Kenyon.

Get me a TK Kenyon-type author.

Get me a young TK Kenyon.

Who the hell is TK Kenyon?

Thanks for reading!

Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)

The Law of Large Numbers (Kindle Store on Amazon)

The Law of Large Numbers (All Formats)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (Kindle Store on Amazon)

Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)