Things such as that turn me off. I tried to read a Tad Williams book and he had a gazillion charcters and you knew they were gonna meet up, but it took forever.

Goodkind's Pillars of Creation introduced two new character to the Sword of Truth series who were rather boring, and you knew one of them was lying and the other was misguided from the word go. On page six hundred and soemthing you finally get back to the characters the other six books are about. I hated, hated, hated that book.

I've read works where the MC doesn't come in at all in the first 100 pages and I grew to like the character who was killed off. I threw the book into the fireplace (not literally, of course!), an abomination as such does not deserve to be owned by me.

First of all, you must have mentioned A character in those first 30 pages. Who? Is that character important, even if not THE main character?

We creat eimpressions about novels as we go along. The first name mentioned, until another name is mentioned, is assumed to be the main character. If, in the next sentence, you mention another character and then spend two pages on him without going back to the first, we shift our impressions to handle that.

I can think of a LOT of scenarios in which the main characters is not mentioned right away. Many suspense novels begin with a dramatic POV from the killer/bad guy. Some epic fantasies may begin in the POV of a faraway king or the parent of a baby who will become important and be the main character. Some of these setups are powerful and useful.

I have a science fantasy trilogy that I go back to from time to time in which the main character is technically in chapter 1 but since she's a baby you probably don't catch it right away. Her father, the POV character in chapter 1, is a secondary main character and she gets into it fully in chapter 2.

I don't know what would make the previous posters say this is a close-book issue. For one thing, no one is likely to know, when you introduce this new character on page 30, that he/she is the main character. By the time we do realize this, we will hopefully be so wrapped up in the story that we forgive and forget.

With modern 3PLO, don't forget, too, that there are often multiple viewpoint characters that are all important. It does help, when you introduce the main character, if one of the previous viewopint characters runs into him/her but it is one of those guidelines that can be broken if it is worth the price to you.

The price, BTW, is what we need to talk about here. The price is that when your MC is introduced, no one will know that is the MC and they will probably have a preconceived notion that someone ELSE is the main character.

Come to think of it, I just started a novel today that did this. Let's see here..."Rhapsody, Child of Blood" by Elizabeth Haydon. It jarred me a bit when we switched to someone else and dropped the guy that began the story, but already two chapters later I'm caught up in the new action and don't really care that much (although that original guy had better come back into it at some point).

Now I really am rambling so I'll desist.

At the end of book two, or the start of book 3, I can't remember which, he died. Prophecy unfulfilled. (or maybe it was book one.)

And then you learn that the MENTOR was really the one the prophecy was about. Kind of a cool little tiwst, huh?

Yeah . . . I hated it. I would have preferred knowing who the REAL MC was from the start. I finished the series off out of curiosity, but the rest of it felt too easy from that point, and I now had to learn to like a character that the former MC had never really gotten along with. It was an interesting read, and I've never had the desire to re-read the series.

So . . . what's the moral of the story? Don't mislead your audience about who the MC is. If the MC must die, let that be the end of the story. If they aren't in the story from the beginning, I'd better know why.

For example. You start the story with a messenger hell-bent on delivering a message to the MC. He arrives at the city to find the MC's fortress under siege. The only way in is through the secret tunnel. when the MC's guard catches him and nearly kills him, the MC intervenes, and we find out the messenger is a life-long buddy of the MC. You've set the stage for the story now, it could take 30 pages, but you've gotten us up to speed. Now, at the earliest possible convenience, switch to the MC's point of view and continue the story from there.

That's a story beginning that could work. Or, it could totally suck. Just depends on how you write it.

Heck, even Lord of the Rings started out with Bilbo instead of Frodo as the MC...how long was it before we discovered Frodo was the important one?

There were a few redeeming scenes.

I think the series was the 'Last of the Renshai', though I hope that little spoiler doesn't mess the story up for you if you decide to read it. I don't remember the author, or if the spelling is right on that, BTW. Another unrelated book by the same author was called . . . I think . . . 'The Legend of Nightfall'. That one was amusing.

Not a bad author, but obviously since I can't remember the name, not one that stood out in my head.

Let me know what you think of it if you decide to read it.

It is fine. It is more than fine. It would be annoying if you started with him. Let's see: paragraph one:

It was a bright, sunny day. John worked on the farm doing what he did every day. Nothing was going on.

Actually, I've read books that start much like this and I find that I won't read them, especially if John is waking up and then goes through his normal day.

Worse, after he goes through his wonderful morning and some stranger comes to warn him of danger, we're going to have to have a FLASHBACK or long, boring story to get the reader up to speed on what has already ahppened.

And actually, you could argue that it should start when the bad guys pop out of the woods and get the MC, which is true enough, but even then he's going to have to be brought up to speed through either a flashback or long monologue-style story.

No, you started the action precisely where you should...when the MC gets involved which, at first, must be described through the POV of someone else.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited August 17, 2006).]

I don't see any problem with not having the MC show up until page thirty. A lot of my favorite novels do this, and actually, the MC may not show up until over a hundred pages have passed. That's a bit extreme, but it does happen. The important thing is for the minor character to hold the story up until that point where it changes.

Have I left anything out?

What people say/think about others can be a gold mine of character development. For example, in my WIP there is a villain who is very important to the story but doesn't actually appear until the very end of part 1, From very early on, however, the 2 MCs are chasing him, following his clues, talking/thinking about him, etc. By the time he appears, he is already a well-established character - albeit seen through the eyes of our heros.

Another good reason not to start with the MC's POV is that the reader isn't ready to be in the MC's head yet. OSC did this at the beginning of Ender's Shadow. My MC's thoughts are too heavy and complicated to start off with, so my WIP starts in the POV of her best friend, and since their relationship is vital to the MC's overall story, it works.