How to Place Your Characters

Introductions

Traci Kenworth

So you’ve come up with the great idea and it’s burning a hole through your gut, just aching to be written. How do you know where to begin? Should it be with Grandpa Sneitzler? The maid? The boy down on the dairy farm? Who to pick? In some books, particularly fantasy or horror, a prologue comes into play which features different characters than your regular cast. This is tricky to pull off, winning sympathy for your story people who most likely will end up on the sharp end of a blade at the end. Prologues are almost a no-no in today’s fiction—unless you’ve got a few books or more under your belt and some celebrity.

Instead, you open the tale with your chosen m/c. Unless, of course, you’re doing omnipresent, in which case you can pick any character you choose. Omni can be confusing and hard to connect the reader to but it can be done. I recommend using your writing tools and studying craft books and other novels written this way in order to pull it off. So, that said, most books are written as First, Second, or Third Person. The Second being that you incorporate your reader into the story. As in “You ate breakfast at Lady Janes where a seedy-looking fellow slipped in the backdoor, gun drawn.”

Second is another difficult form to pull off. The reader knows they’re not really part of the story and so that connection you want can fail. But there are books it works in. Some famous mysteries showcase this. Again, I advise that you study craft books and other novels written in this manner, to perfect how you handle it. Third Person is the he/she said mode. Most books are written this way. Because the reader is used to this territory, the connection is fast, immediate. Thus, “He walked into the shadows, hearing the click of a horse’s hooves as he did so. Several steps later, he pivoted, gun in hand.”

First person is the viewpoint I’m most familiar with and one I’ve come to love. This, too, is a bit of a stretch to pull off, but I like to think of it as a type of “diary-writing.” As in: “I felt the steamy breath of the horse on the back of my neck, its hooves keeping perfect timing with my footsteps. When I pivoted, gun in hand, its beady red eyes shone out of the darkness and its mouth split back into a grin. I had a half-second to spin out of its way as it reared, riderlesss, its teeth clicked open and a god-awful stench assaulted me.”

Sorry, got carried away there. But hopefully, you see what I mean. Now, onto how to place your characters in scenes. You need your mainframe character (your hero or heroine) and you simply branch out from there in importance of who does what/interacts the most with what’s happening. Thus, the m/c being our gunmen, the horse (yes, even an animal can be a character) is the next reactor to the plotline. I.E.:

“I lost my hat in the skirmish as the horse stomped down on it repeatedly, narrowly missing my head in the process. The animal turned to me at last as I crouched there and opened its mouth. A gassy substance escaped it and everything living in its path froze. I saw a boy pass within inches of the alleyway, glance in, and hurry on his way again. My mouth was open in a silent scream. The horse approached me, reached out, and seized one of my fingers. It sliced jaggedly through with its teeth and crunched away at it as I struggled to wake from the paralyzing spell it wove.”

See? The main character. The secondary. And, as an afterthought, the boy. Introduced in order of importance to the scene. Weave your characters in with care and you’ll do well.