Use...the...character's...name.
Am I making sense?
I'm sorry, but that is how the world is. After all, there is only one way to introduce characters that is any good -- and Artistole is the one who teaches it.
and to survivor: in my short story for the christmas rewrite challenge i introduced my POV character and his brother both in the same line, the eighth, POV character first, brother the very next word. is this disobedient to your rather strict sounding rules?
in Searth's prologue, i introduce the POV character in the eleventh line, and never do bother naming his friend, or my narrator, my narrator for the inner story that is... hehe.
how's that for breaking the rules?
i'm sorry, but i just cannot see where naming is so important as to be done FIRST LINE! readers can be patient, i certainly am, just so i get the name for my main character by the second page, i consider it a success
quote:
What if you wanted to begin by viewing the whole scene from say a bird's eye view and then move into a character's point of view. Sort of like zooming on a camera.
I did exactly this in a WIP (City of Silver) and it confused the h3ll out of everybody.
Maybe you can do it better.
If you have basic questions about writing, there are a number of excellent articles on writing at the SFWA.org site. When to withhold the character's name is one of those questions. I just posted the link on another thread, or you can read some of the articles and find the answer for yourself.
As for introducing the POV character's name and his brother's name without any intervening words, I would have to say that probably breaks a few rules of grammer at least. Even if you meant something other than what you actually ended up saying (probably because you don't pay enough attention to grammer), anyone that "just cannot see where naming is so important" needs to read a lot of articles written by accomplished writers who have taken the time to lend their guidance to relatively less accomplished writers.
Go, read, learn.
quote:
"Hand me that rock, Karl." Gunter said with outstretched hand.
Or something like:
quote:
...looked over at Gunter."Karl, what are you looking at now?"
Just being curious. It doesn't really matter. If you waited till the eighth line to give anyone's name, then I probably either nitted you on it or I ignored your post.
It seems what most people are referring to here is third person, where you definitely want to name the POV character in the first sentence. That way, your audience has a chance to connect immediately with that character.
But I see no reason to name the POV character, even within the first few pages, if you're writing in first person.
Just my opinion.
quote:
What if you wanted to begin by viewing the whole scene from say a bird's eye view and then move into a character's point of view. Sort of like zooming on a camera.
That's fine, but you would likely want to be well above the scene, basically describing scenery at first. A more omniscient couple of paragraphs. Then you would zoom in on the POV character and take it from his POV from that point. BUT, you would still need to introduce him--and there isn't much better way to introduce a character and make the reader feel connected to him than to give the reader his name--as soon as you zoom in to his POV.
A very simplistic example:
The sky was blue but the wind biting cold. Snow clung to the far-off mountains, threatening the same for the valley before long.
JB pulled his cloak more tightly around his shoulders and ... blah,blah,blah.
I think that as long as what you are introducing is interesting enough it should work.
Any character should be introduced by name early on. Even in first person you can use "I, John Doe, walked down the street." this is acceptable since the reader has an interest in who they are reading about. In 3rd person just start with the name where you would have placed a he/she pronoun. If there is a definite reason for holding off on naming the character, you would just have to experiment. See what readers think of the delay. Mystery in the beginning isn't bad, but the reader needs to be comfortable with the purpose behind it. You don't want the reader to feel you are keeping it from them because you can.
For a narrator who is not a participent in the story, the rules are somewhat different, more like the rules for being a stand-up comedian. You don't have to introduce yourself, you just have to convince the audience that you can make the story interesting, no matter what it's actually about. If you use a narrator, then you are judged almost entirely on your voice and the standard is very high.
...and that would be what? I'm on the edge of my seat, and am too lazy to go find out for myself.
I also get really annoyed with bird's eye veiw fly-overs. It's kind of a cheap way to Introduce a setting. It's always more interesting to travel wiht a character you know as he interacts with his surroundings than it is to fly over and look at it from above. I want to know who I'm dealing with, and what's going on and WHY I should care within a paragraph. After that, I'm gone.
Ni!
Let's hold off on the sweeping generalizations, shall we? Always is a pretty strong word. Let's say "often."
Whichever way you write in a more interesting way is more interesting. Go with whichever way suits your particular story when YOU write it.