Introducing characters ~ DON'T

A story without characters isn’t a story. There has to be at least one character, be it a person, animal, plant, alien, or mountain.

With that said, however, your characters can’t just randomly poof into the story (… unless they really do poof), or be treated as if they’ve been there since before the beginning.

• Poof! Here’s my 10-page biography 

“Let’s go get some cake,” Mark said.

Jenny also wanted to tag along. Jenny was a really nice girl, with really long chocolate brown hair and the smoothest skin I’ve ever seen. Her parents were divorced, but she was still a really happy kid. She’s shorter than me, but last year she was taller. Jenny’s also terrified of moths and grasshoppers because of an incident when she was little. When she was five…

We had never met Jenny, but that paragraph is too much for a first meeting. Going to get cake with someone new doesn’t mean you should proceed to give their life story. When you first introduce a character, I would suggest giving their name, their relation to the main character/narrator, and a few thoughts and opinions about them. We don’t have to learn about Jenny all at once, but by the time the story’s finished (and as long as she’s not a purposely-mysterious character or someone who was met within the last fifty pages) Jenny should be a close acquaintance to us.

• You’ve known me since birth

So after that example you’re understanding what I meant here, right? I think I explained it pretty well, and we’re on the same page, so let’s continue with our story.

Yes, the ‘You’ve known me since birth’ character is what I’d say to be the complete opposite of the ‘Poof! Here’s my 10-page biography’ character. If this one is the narrator’s best friend, you’ll be lucky to know their name. It’s very likely that you won’t know they’re the narrator’s best friend. It’s a confusing character because the readers are the only ones who don’t know. Every other character knows this guy (let’s call him Adam) Adam, so no one feels any inclination to shed some light on him, and it takes a very long time to learn whether or not he’s the school janitor or the president of the drama club (or both?). 

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