pleasant. At Freddy’s Chicken Shack up the road a wedding
party was in progress and the revelers were singing along with
the radio form Puerto Alvarado, marking the reggae beat with
their own steel drums and crockery. (p. 3)z This introduction relies almost entirely on the character’s
circumstances and a little bit of action rather than a description or
direct access to his thoughts. We get no physical description of Father
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and that he’s been drinking.
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but, with great economy and expert handling of detail, shows us that
he lives at a mission near the sea in a Third World country. We get a
compelling portrait of a lonely, drunken priest—cut off from any
intellectual stimulation and far from home—that simultaneously uses
the setting to show us the character and the character’s point of view to
show us the setting.
Approaches to Creating Characters
z (DFKRIWKHVHH[DPSOHVLVFRQVWUXFWHGZLWKVSHFL¿FHYRFDWLYHGHWDLOV
and more important, each introduction tells us at least one thing about
the character that turns out to be
important later on. This leads us
to the question: How much does
the writer have to know about
a character before he or she
starts writing?
z As we’ve said, you don’t need
to write a story or a novel in the
same order as it will be read. You
can craft the meatier parts of the
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and write the opening in such a
way as to foreshadow what you’ve
already written.
Character introductions rarely rely
solely on one technique but often
combine several: introduction by
report, by physical description, and
by showing the character in action.© creativecoopmedia/iStock/Thinkstock.