When a teacher steps into a new classroom, they learn the names of two types of students first: the troublemakers and the top of the class. Anyone who has ever taught knows why this is true. The troublemakers are disruptive, and you’re forced to learn their names early just to keep them in line.
“Alright, quiet now, Ricky.”
“Sit down, Tiffany.”
“Don’t throw that, Jay.”
This, of course, is playing into their game, but this is one match you’re not going to win. On the flip side, however, you also learn the names of the top of the class early on, because when you’re teaching and trying to elicit answers to gauge how much the class understands, it’s the students who are quickest on the uptake in the given subject that end up raising their hand first.
“Ok class, how do you correct this sentence: ‘He walk to school.’ Yes, Bella?”
“‘He walks to school.’”
“Right, subject-verb agreement. ‘He walks to school.’ Good job, Bella!”
Perhaps it’s not fair to the well-behaved students, or the ones who aren’t as good at that particular subject. You’ll eventually learn those other kids’ names as the month goes on, but that’s, ultimately, a life lesson: those who are most engaging stick in our heads foremost.
So it goes with writing.
Characters in prose can’t be the students whose names you’ll eventually remember as time goes on, because, as writers, you’re constantly trying to keep readers engaged. I think every writer should have this taped over their computer: ‘The world is full of distractions. Keep your readers engaged in every sentence, every page, every chapter.’
It’s best to accomplish this with your characters because it often takes a couple of chapters of a novel for readers to get caught up in the plot. However, characters are generally introduced immediately. There aren’t many books where, in the opening pages, a character hasn’t appeared: a main character, a supporting character, a minor character, but a character nevertheless. In order to give these individuals populating the early page a personality that will hook readers, keep these techniques in mind.
- Make your characters’ quirks exciting. If you must have them go to an ordinary store on a mudane errand in the beginning of your novel, so be it. But have them decide they’re going to go out in their pants that they spilled mustard on earlier at lunch, and in their shirt with a gaping hole in the underarm, because they figure they’re just running in and out really fast so who’s going to care?
- Keep your characters weird. If they must work at an average job for an average company in the first chapter, okay. But have them wake up on time, leave home early, get to work early, then drive around the office looking for the closest parking space, going round and round the block until they’re actually a minute late to work.
- Show your characters’ neurotic sides. If they’re just sitting home in the first chapter doing nothing much, fine, but they can still treat their pet like a baby, spoiling it rotten, talking incessantly to it, and paying it more attention than anything else to an eyebrow-raising degree.
As writers, don’t focus on the bland of character personalities. That, of course, would be boring, and to some degree everyone is exciting, weird, and neurotic. So make sure to capture this in your characterization. Give your readers a reason to take note of their behavior, because just like the troublemaker, and the top student, two extremes in every class whose names are first remembered, everyone is memorable in some way, even when going about the mundanities of their daily lives.
