Advice for introducing main character?

[Prefx]

Hello all,

I might just be a little paranoid, but I'm not sure if I have written enough in my first few chapters to introduce the main character before bring upon the troubles he must go on with through the book (and possibly the next). I am aware that you can welcome the reader to your character through different time tables depending on the certain methods an author uses, but I want to make the reader feel like they've got somewhat of a connection with my main character before he starts to see his world crumble.

Do you think 5,000-8,000 words might be long enough? Again, I understand that it depends on my story, but as readers I'm sure you realize its rare to develop a care for a character in the first few pages. For me, the first thing I need to do in a good book is to get to know the main character. In some ways, understand how he reacts without the evil King DoodooPants trying to kill him and the elves that dare to assist.

 

[Marky Lazer]

It all depends on how you introduce him.

If you write, for example, about your main character gets his parents slaughtered by an evil wizard (in flashback) and let him swear revenge, you already have a connection with the hero, and already sympathize with him.

(I agree this example is cliché to the bone, but it helped me prove my idea).

 

[Brian G Turner]

Marky's right - it's not the length of time, it's how you do it.

Taking a character and quickly subjecting them to pain - mental especially - can be a very good way to force reader empathy of a main character. And that's what you need to make a reader association, which is a prime goal as an author.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Right, simply by watching his world crumble your reader will start to empathize.

However, it will help if you give a vivid and memorable (though brief) picture of what his world was like before it all goes wrong, so readers will know and value what it is he is losing/fighting to save or regain.

If you find that you can do that on page one, then good; if you need 5000 words, then do it that way.

If you feel you need a spectacular beginning or instant reader empathy, you can start with him in the midst of his troubles (climbing the steps of the scaffold, or hunted by hounds across the countryside, for instance) and then flashback to a time just before his difficulties began.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm thinking that "Ender's Game" is a particularly good example of how to do it swift and quickly - though in "Dune" Frank Herbert does extend the point long eough to create a theatre of character tensions.

Point is, it's easy to be drawn in to sympathise with an under-dog - and that presents a useful literary device - pitting a protagonist against larger tensions that cannot be immediately resolved, which can immediately describe the main point of the story, but better still, force the reader to *care* about the character.

 

[Paradox 99]

I asked a similar question in a thread here: http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/7932-help-with-setting-up-the-protagonist.html

I was given some great advice - you might find something helpful there too.

 

[Prefx]

Thanks, Paradox. I've decided to extend my second chapter so the reader gets a more personal feel for the main character and the 'community'.

 

[Culhwch]

This is an interesting topic, cause I've never really thought about it too much before. I start a story, and sort of let things unfold. The piece I'm working on at the moment, in an epic fantasy mould, I have four or five sets of characters, each with a main veiwpoint character (two, in one instance). For two I have started well in the 'ordinary world', while for another two I've thrown them straight into the action, more or less. I suppose it's dictated somewhat by geography and the plot. Now I'm not sure if such a juxtaposition would be too jarring. Any thoughts?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Ultimately, it's whatever seems to work with the story.

Although I mentioned about empathising with a protagonist through adversity, this probably isn't going to work so well if you have to introduce a string of characters very quickly.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Yes, it really depends on the story. And letting the story unfold naturally is always a good idea. It's when you begin to have doubts about the sequence of events and whether the way things are going really works that any of these other considerations come into play.

I believe that all the rules and all the good advice in the world are simply there to help identify and fix already apparent problems -- not to create problems where none existed before.