Introducing characters to your audience

Each character in an author’s work has a unique personality, and this is what usually attracts readers. Keeping them along for the ride will rely on strong characterisation, but the initial hook should be strong enough to entice an audience of fans, eager to learn more and cheer for their favourites as they progress through the plot – and beyond.

Vivid descriptions and engaging dialogue are good ways of introducing characters to an audience, but to really make them memorable, there are a variety of techniques you may want to employ. Backstory, introductions, contrast and personality are great ways to make an unforgettable first impression on readers!

Introducing characters to your audience

Just like real life, a good first impression will set up the readers to love your character – if done well. It doesn’t matter whether or not your characters are fighting for good, or even likeable: but they have to be varied enough for the audience to remain interested in them. This could affect how attached your audience is to finishing the story, as the character is a huge part of their enjoyment.

Every character introduction is a chance to forge that special connection between reader and characters that resonates and keeps them enraptured. A protagonist’s compelling, tragic backstory could drive the narrative, but if you slowly drip-feed their past to the reader throughout the novel, it could be a satisfying puzzle for them to complete.

Although it’s become a bit of a cliché for a villain to be brooding and mysterious, some expectations may be beneficial to meet – the reader knows exactly what they’re in for, so in some cases sticking to these conventions leaves you more room to explore other avenues. Oppositely, you could subvert preconceived notions to have your reader hanging on every word.

Character backstory

A good character is believable – so give them a history, worldview, belief systems and meaty formative experiences to base them off. Really, a good character reads like they could be a friend, so make them personable to evoke empathy from your reader.

It doesn’t matter if your character is even particularly relatable, as long as they’re interesting enough to follow on their journey. Keep any information you divulge relevant to both the character and the story they inhabit – anything to add flair, as an interesting character trait or progress the story only to avoid cluttering the text. Skillful writers can weave this information into the writing and hint at future plot points early on – ever heard of Chekhov’s gun?

First contact with characters

Depending on the choice of narration, it may be an interesting choice to introduce your audience to your main character second-hand. Having another character (and another point of view) immediately hones in on noticeable elements and can be a more accurate picture of their relationships with other characters. 

Or, you could introduce your character alongside a monumental change, letting the reader know they’ve got to strap in for more of the same as the story unfurls. This way, the audience has to adapt to proceedings alongside all of the characters, putting them all in the same boat.

Alternatively, you could introduce a character straight from childhood, and show how their motivations and lifestyle changes as they grow older. There are also thousands of other ways to introduce a character, which multiply tenfold when you focus on non-human characters, so make sure to experiment!

Character descriptions

Vivid description is a more traditional way of introducing characters to an audience, and as well as giving a good insight into their appearance, it can also provide details about personality, especially in the type of accessories and clothes they wear. It’s usually recommended to cover appearance at one point, so getting it out of the way early allows your audience to get a good visualisation to cling onto.

When introducing a character, it’s important to give the reader believable but interesting information. Focus on more bizarre things to make them memorable (for example are they wearing a fruity perfume? Is there an immortal chin hair darker than their eyebrow colour?) and even use the descriptors to hint at other things about them. If they have a shirt with improperly fastened buttons, they were in a hurry this morning or ran out of patience – and then you’ve hinted at their temperament, too!

Giving characters a clear purpose and goals is also important so the reader cares about what happens and roots for them to succeed. This can be of huge importance to them, so they endlessly prattle on about it, or maybe they like to keep their cards close to their chest, so this is something they work towards in silence. Personality and traits are often more interesting to an audience than physical descriptors, as they can dream those up themselves.

Spicing up characterisation

The last thing you want to do is suffer from Mary Sue syndrome – where your central character makes no mistakes, has a sudden affinity for any task they set their mind to, and is annoyingly liked by every other character. These characters are often drifting through life with little difficulty, making them less interesting to follow.

Give your characters flaws and unlikeable traits to keep them human! This will also provide a good internal struggle – especially if this causes conflict, whether it’s internal or with the world/people around them. Memorable mannerisms and a fully-fledged personality featuring likes, dislikes, favourite foods and other quirks make them worthy of more than a few seconds of attention, and may even become firm audience favourites (which could mean fan fiction – the highest form of praise).

Friends and enemies

Allies and friends are good devices for the character to ‘bounce off’ – and can even point out key information or other details that may only be accessible through interactions. There will likely be some similarities, differences, and everything in between, to emphasise the good parts of their character or include features the protagonist may be missing.

With that being said, exciting antagonists also share similarities with the protagonist, like being closely-matched in skill or ability to make fights difficult. Antagonists are a great way to feed on the protagonist’s fears or negative traits, bring them out of their comfort zone or make them react in an unexpected, primal way.

Nice to meet you!

All in all, there are a bajillion ways to introduce characters in your writing – and there is no correct answer when it comes to this – these were just some standard examples of ways to introduce characters. Some may argue it’s best to introduce your characters as soon as possible so the audience can get acclimated to them right away, and others may write stories without characters at all!