Editing The Writing Workshop 4-30-18 (section)

===== 1. Ease Into It, And Always Start With What’s Important =====
When I was in college and first started talking about my writing with my friends, one friend—who I’ve known since pre-school—asked me to do two things for her.

Specifically, she asked me not to do two things.

One: No sappy chapter titles.

Two: Don’t introduce your characters by having them stand in front of a mirror and describe every feature they see (like that first example).

They were pretty fair requests, considering the conversation happened around 2008 or 2009, and you don’t have to Google for too long to figure out which YA series was popular around that time.

Give the reader the most important information about the character first: name, gender, age, and how they relate to the world you’ve developed.

Also, don’t wait three chapters to introduce the protagonist. Introduce them as quickly as possible. Then you give your readers the rest in little pieces, bite by bite, as the novel progresses.

But TFR, what if my character has significant features that will impact them thought the story? Please, give them that.

Does your character have a hair color outside the norm (i.e. fake red, blue, rainbow, etc.)? Give us that. Does your character have an obvious chase of heterochromia (aka when one eye color is different from the other? Give us that, but don’t be too blatant about it (tip: have it come up in conversation, or have someone else bring it up by teasing the protagonist, or asking how that’s physically possible). Does your character have some sort of physical ailment or missing limb, well, then your readers are going to need to know that.

But your whole vision of the character doesn’t matter. What you see when you think of your character isn’t what your readers are going to see, and that’s okay. Your readers are here for the story, not the description of the number of freckles he or she has on her cheeks, or the exact shape of their eyes.