Whether you write short stories or novels, fantasy fiction or literary fiction, you have to deal with characters. Even experimental fiction needs some sort of characters. Is there an optimal way of introducing your characters to your audience?
This might feel like a deceptively simple thing. Surely, one might think, introducing characters can’t be that hard? Well, writing is as hard as you make it, in a way, but that’s beyond the point. Rather, our point in this post is to discover whether there is an optimal way of presenting your characters to your readers.
Obviously, the statement is rhetorical.
Of course there are more than one ways of introducing your characters to your audience, which automatically makes some of those ways “better” – and we’ll soon have to define that – and some “not so great”. Which means, as a writer you have a strong incentive to reflect on how you introduce your characters in your fiction.
That’s what I’m here for!
In this post I’ll show you – with examples – the different ways we can use to introduce the characters of our story. I’ll explain why some ways are “better” than others (and what that really means), though we’ll also take a look at some problem points; gray areas, if you like. Sneak preview: These have to do with the ever-lasting struggle to balance between genre and literary expression, between marketing and art.
