Relationships & Partners and Writing Skills Tips. (A Writing Advice Guide Book

Lecture 5 How To Properly Introduce A Character

Lecture 5 Introducing Characters Properly.
In our first two lectures about character, we talked in general about how characters are different from real people and from each other, but in this lecture, we'll talk about what all characters have in common— primarily, that they are all constructed out of specific details. Further, both the writer and the reader are most aware of those specific details in the moment they meet a character. In this lecture, we'll look at how you make that first impression by exploring five ways to introduce characters: (1) through straightforward description, (2) by showing the character in action, (3) through first-person narration, (4) through report by other characters, and (5) by placing the character in a specific time and place.

Straightforward description
Perhaps the most straightforward way to introduce a character is to simply describe him or her. For example, here are the first few lines from Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim: He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud, and his manner displayed a kind of dogged self-assertion which had nothing aggressive in it. ... He was spotlessly neat, appareled in immaculate white from shoes to hat, and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living as a ship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular. (p. 1)
Here, the main character comes right off the page at the reader; we see him vividly and whole. This introduction is compelling and intriguing: Here's an attractive character who also has a bit of mystery about him. In addition, the introduction sums up the main character in a nutshell: He has something to prove to himself, and the rest of the book shows why that's so and how he goes about it.
Conrad's introduction is also economical. Rather than lingering over details, it merely suggests physical attributes that evoke awkwardness the slight stoop of the shoulders; the deep, loud voice and adds a few conjectures about Jim's character that his manner was assertive but not aggressive. Jim is shown to us here, not told; he is evoked.
Notice that although this description is detailed and specific, it's not tied to a specific moment in Jim's life. Note, too, that this is an example of a character being introduced to us from the outside in: We're seeing how he appears to other people, not how he seems to himself.

A Character In Action
A character who is introduced to us through a specific action comes from the book Light by Eva Figes: The sky was still dark when he opened his eyes and saw it through the uncurtained window. He was upright within seconds, out of the bed and had opened the window to study the signs. It looked good to him, the dark just beginning to fade slightly, midnight blueblack growing grey and misty, through which he could make out the last light of a dying star. It looked good to him, a calm pre-dawn hush without a breath of wind, and not a shadow of cloud in the high clear sky. He took a deep breath of air, heavy with night scents and dew on earth and foliage. His appetite for the day thoroughly aroused, his elated mood turned to energy, and he was into his dressing room, into the cold bath which set his skin tingling, humming an unknown tune under his breath. (pp. 1-2)
This opening is dynamic in a way that the opening of Lord Jim is not.
The character is in action, with all his senses awake, right from the first sentence. And, unlike the opening of Lord Jim, where we can only surmise what Jim is thinking from his appearance, Figes gives us direct access to the character's thoughts. Although we don't know it yet, this is the French artist Claude Monet, and he's just decided that this will be a good day to paint.
Again, unlike the opening of Lord Jim, this opening tells us nothing of the man's physical appearance and very little about his psychology.
In Lord Jim, it's the hint of complexity in the character that invites us to keep reading, but in this case, it's the character's energy and our curiosity to discover why he's so engaged with the natural world that propel us forward.

Direct Address To The Reader (Movies it's called Breaking The 4th Wall.)
Another way to introduce a main character is to have him or her directly address the reader. Three of the books that are often cited as the great American novel open this way: Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
A modern example of a novel whose narrator addresses the reader on the opening page is Kate Christensen's The Epicure's Lament: October 9, 2001—All the lonely people indeed. Whoever they are, I've never been one of them. The lack of other people is a balm. It's the absence of strain and stress. I understand monks and hermits, anyone who takes a vow of silence or lives in a far-flung cave. And I thought—I hoped, rather-that I would live this way for the rest of my life, whatever time is left to me. (p. 3)
In the subsequent paragraphs, we get some more information about this narrator, Hugo Whittier, but mainly what this opening does is draw the reader in with a specific and intriguing voice. We see immediately that the character is literate and erudite; that he not only prefers his own company, but he harbors an active hostility to other people; and that he's something of a fatalist, who doesn't expect to live much longer.
With these types of introductions, the paragraphs that follow the opening lines start to fill in details about the character's history and current situation, but what draws us in is the fact that we're hearing individual people tell us their stories in a way that only they can. Even if we don't know what they look like or see them in action right away, we know we're hearing from a unique individual.