A. It keeps the reader reading for more rather than boring them wiht a long strand of setting details.

B. You know all your characters inside out. The reader has just met them--you don't want the reader lost. Give them a bit to get to know the main characters before throwing a bunch more at them.

If you like stories that start with a description of the setting, then move to a character or a group of characters, try writing that kind of story.

If you like stories that start with a barroom brawl, then try starting your story with some kind of violent action.

Look at how the writers you like to read start their stories.

Get out some colored pens or pencils and use a different color for each character and a different color for the setting. Then go through a story and mark it up according to where the writer talks about the setting and where each character is mentioned.

You will quickly see how it's done in the stories you enjoy reading.

As I've mentioned somewhere on here before, I'm reading "The Art of the Tale", an anthology of shorts from around the world. I've dedicated myself to reading the thing cover to cover, to disect the stories, see what I like and don't like, what I think works and doesn't (and why the one's I don't like are included, where their merit still lies). Your colored pencil idea has given me a new way to go about reading the book!

Thanks!

JP

An excellent example of a book with lots of characters in, that introduces them successfully, is George R.R. Martin's 'A Game of Thrones'. He starts off tight in on one family, and then has them visited by other characters. Then he switches POV to one of the characters that has visited.

GOT has a huge cast, but they are introduced so carefully that the reader (or this reader) gets into the 'too many names!' position.

A related issue is 'fantasy names'. I have (and I believe I'm not unique) a filing system that works well when the characters are called names like 'Steve' and 'John', but tends to file unfamiliar names in vague boxes. So 'Lyrkkka' gets filed as "strange name starts L has k's in". If a character is introduced twenty pages later called 'Likek', I start to struggle.

This also happened when I tried to read 'War and Peace'. By the ened of the second chapter all I knew was there were lots of Russians in the book, as they had all been filed as 'Russian name'.

I guess if your names are complicated and strange you have to introduce them a bit more thoroughly... Umm...not that I'm criticising War and Peace...Just trying to illustrate..oh, I give up!

<end of incoherent post>

WileyKat

In my own writing I have gotten over the introduction of too many charactors at once bug. I used to think you had to intro all of them in the first few chapters. Yikes what a mess.

Have you seen the new books that are compition for the *** for Dummies books? They are called KiSS--keep it simple stupied. I mean no insult to anyone posting here---but I try to keep that in mind whenever my plots and characters want to run away with the story.

No, you weren't incoherent at all. You made a very good point.

It is an eye opener for me because at this moment I am in need of that reminder. In the 1st, oh, say, 300 words, I've thrown in 3 characters with the main character - briefly. I will go back and read with this in mind to see how I can solidify the introduction of these 3 extras. The do play an important part in the story, but have I flooded the reader with insifficently drawn characters that they will be lost/confusing?

Something to think about.

Have you ever turned on the tv and it shows the middle of a fight when everyone on screen is slugging away at everyone else? You don't have any idea what this show is, or who the characters are, or what the fight's about, and so on.

Why should you care?

Would straightforward action really hook you all by itself?

Of course, a slug fest isn't the only kind of action a story can start with, but I would like to submit that action that shows the viewer (or reader) stuff about the characters is much more likely to hook the reader (or viewer) than anonymous fists pounding anonymous faces.

Compare such an action scene to the one in TOMBSTONE where Johnny Ringo (played by Michael Biehn) and Doc Holiday (played by Val Kilmer) stand in the saloon and sling insults at each other in Latin.

They are just standing there talking, but the tension level is not only rising, the humor is sharp, and the interest is also high.

Start with characters who are threatening each other, instead of pounding each other, and you will have not only characterization (and reader/viewer interest), but you will have tension increasing instead of just being expressed.

And I think you'll have a better hook.

However, we do not organize characters in alphabetical order. It would be a waste of time to have all good characters start with A-M and all evil characters start with N-Z, for example.

You might experiment with vowels and consonants.

Unfortunately, these tricks break down inconveniently for science fiction writers. For better or worse (I say worse) tevision/movie SF has given us the paradigm of millions characters that fall under a classification all having a name that starts with the same letter. Vulcan women and Star Wars 'droids are classic examples. Science fiction writers who think this a great way to make characters seem more unworldly will trick themselves into confusing their readers.

Try this, make a list of your characters, say something about each one---gender, and the driving character motivation(what makes them what they are) then choose names that reflect that.

Even if you have a race that calls all women Sils`something---you can have Sils`jinp, Silis`Wyma ect. The reader will only see the Silis` as a dialog tag of sorts, ahhh this character is female--and won't confuse them as long as you keep the last parts different. Same with male characters. Or maybe you have two different races living in the same city or on the same world and this is how the names go so that the reader instantly knows which side of the table they are on.

Names should also say something about a character. A male character that is named Willy will not be taken as seriously as a character named Maverick. The reader no matter how aggressive and strong you write Willy will see him as somewhat childish(maybe) Where as Maverick looks strong from the first time the reader sees his name. Names ending in strong consonants come across stronger than those ending in vowels or the s sound.

sometimes i start out with the feel of the character in mind and write down the entire alphabet in front of me. then i start crossing out letters. you'd think that i would end up with all my characters having names starting with the letters i'm the most partial to, but i'm surprised how often it doesn't work out that way.

sometimes i start out with the name and shape the character around it until it feels like there could be no other possible name for that character.

sometimes i've had to rename characters in the middle of a story. that can get tedious.

as for introducing them...i was going through some of my work from a while ago, when i was ten or eleven. in the first section of those stories, the characters were all introduced like 'Rowena, with fair hair and blue eyes, walked up to Bob, who had red hair and black eyes', that sort of thing. makes me smile now. funny how, when i'm writing something it's always the best i can do at the time...and then when i read it a year later i've learned so much and developed so much that those past stories seem childish. but i suppose there have been one or two that i still stand by, and of course there's always one or two that i keep writing and changing and editing and adding to over lots of years.

introducing characters, for me, is a bit of a balancing act. some of them i never physically describe, but i always have an image/feeling of them in my mind and that often comes through. my sister recently read a short excerpt of mine and commented that the strange names were a little confusing. the problem there was that i'd introduced the characters too fast, something i have to keep checking my work for.