Chapter 12
Introducing the Protagonist
“Years ago I was in Botswana, staying with friends in a small town called Mochudi. A woman in the town wished to give my friends a chicken to celebrate Botswana National Day. I watched as this woman—traditionally built, like Mma Ramotswe—chased the chicken round the yard and eventually caught it. She made a clucking noise as she ran. The chicken looked miserable. She looked very cheerful. At that moment I thought that I might write a book about a cheerful woman of traditional build.”
—Alexander McCall Smith
BRINGING THE CHARACTER ONSTAGE
In mystery fiction, as in life, first impressions matter. Make the most of your sleuth’s first appearance on the page with the following elements.
Description
Raymond Chandler introduces Philip Marlowe with description and sets the bar high in The Big Sleep, published in 1939:
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
Aside from being beautifully written, this introduction is packed with information about Marlowe. As a first-person narrator, Marlowe talks directly to the reader. He tells us he’s a private dick and a clotheshorse in his powder-blue suit, fancy hankie, and socks with clocks—Bogie’s portrayal of the character notwithstanding. You can almost smell the aftershave. We know he likes his liquor hard—otherwise why mention being sober? Then he offers the in-your-face line “… and I didn’t care who knew it.”
He adds, “I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be.” Here’s a guy with a chip on his shoulder, an outsider, a self-deprecating smart-ass. “I was calling on four million dollars.” And finally we have a hint of what he’s up to.
Dialogue
Another way to introduce a character is with dialogue. Here’s Robert B. Parker using dialogue to introduce his main character, Spenser, in Bad Business:
“Do you do divorce work?” the woman said.
“I do,” I said.
“Are you any good?”
“I am,” I said.
“I don’t want likelihood,” she said. “Or guesswork. I need evidence that will stand up in court.”
“That’s not up to me,” I said. “That’s up to the evidence.”
She sat quietly in my client chair and thought about that.
“You’re telling me you won’t manufacture it,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You won’t have to,” she said. “The sonovabitch can’t keep his dick in his pants for a full day.”
“Must make dining out a little awkward,” I said.
She ignored me. I was used to it. Mostly I amused myself.
No description. No setting. With a deadpan style, Parker jumps directly into a verbal sparring match between Spenser and a woman who wants to hire him to snoop on her soon-to-be ex. From the dialogue alone, we get a strong taste of Spenser’s wry sense of humor, we know he’s a detective, and we easily infer that he can take or leave this particular assignment.
Action
A third way to introduce a protagonist is to show him in action. That’s how Michael Connelly introduces police detective Harry Bosch a few pages into his award-winning debut novel, The Black Echo:
Harry Bosch could hear the helicopter up there, somewhere, above the darkness, circling up in the light. Why didn’t it land? Why didn’t it bring help? Harry was moving through a smoky, dark tunnel and his batteries were dying. The beam of the flashlight grew weaker every yard he covered. He needed help. He needed to move faster. He needed to reach the end of the tunnel before the light was gone and he was alone in the black. He heard the chopper make one more pass. Why didn’t it land? Where was the help he needed? When the drone of the blades fluttered away again, he felt the terror build and he moved faster, crawling on scraped and bloody knees, one hand holding the dim light up, the other pawing the ground to keep his balance. He did not look back for the enemy he knew was behind him in the black mist. Unseen, but there. And closing in.
When the phone rang in the kitchen, Bosch immediately woke.
This is an action sequence that turns out to be a dream. It shows us that Harry Bosch fought in the military, and we get hints of his darkest fears and of a tragedy from his past.
Description, dialogue, action—any of these can be used effectively, alone or in combination, to introduce your protagonist. Your goal is to create a sense of immediacy, to show the reader the character’s physical presence and personality. The character should pop off the page. Then, while the reader is paying attention to the fireworks, you can slip in basic information and a hint of what formative event drives him.
GIVING THE READER THE BASICS
There’s much debate among writers concerning how much the reader needs to be told right away about a main character. Lawrence Block never describes Bernie Rhodenbarr, his series protagonist, and readers don’t complain. Sarah Caudwell wrote a series of suspense novels featuring Professor Hilary Tamar of Oxford and never told the reader if Professor Tamar was a man or a woman.
Nevertheless, within the first few pages of a character’s introduction, most mystery authors let the reader know these basic bits of information:
- name
- gender
- approximate age
- job
- physical appearance
It’s important to give the reader a hint, at least, of your character’s physical presence right away. In the absence of a description, readers will quickly form their own competing images.
The challenge is to slip in the facts without giving the reader a boring curriculum vitae to read. If you’re writing a character who acts as a narrator, speaking directly to the reader, telling the basics is no problem at all. Sue Grafton handily gets away with this information dump in “G” Is for Gumshoe:
For the record, my name is Kinsey Millhone. I’m a private investigator, licensed by the State of California, (now) thirty-three years old, 118 pounds of female in a five-foot-six frame. My hair is dark, thick and straight. I’d been accustomed to wearing it short, but I’d been letting it grow out just to see what it would look like. My usual practice is to crop my own mop every six weeks or so with a pair of nail scissors. This I do because I’m too cheap to pay twenty-eight bucks in a beauty salon. I have hazel eyes, a nose that’s been busted twice, but still manages to function pretty well I think. If I were asked to rate my looks on a scale of one to ten, I wouldn’t. I have to say, however, that I seldom wear makeup, so whatever I look like first thing in the morning at least remains consistent as the day wears on.
Like a character in a movie who suddenly turns and addresses the audience, Kinsey speaks directly to the reader. In one dense paragraph, we get all the basics about her, plus a shot of her feisty, nonconformist personality.
Here’s another example from The Magician’s Tale by William Bayer (a.k.a. David Hunt). Though the passage is also written in the first person, the character, photographer Kay Farrow, describes herself as part of the storytelling rather than speaking directly to the reader.
The sun is about to set. I check myself in the mirror—glowing eyes, dark brows, small triangular face, medium-length hair parted on the side. I brush down some wisps so they fall across my forehead, then dress to go out—black T-shirt, jeans, black leather jacket, sneakers, Contax camera around my neck.
I wear black to blend in. My hope is that by dressing dark and with my face half concealed by my hair, I can slink along the streets, barely seen, covertly stealing images.
I pause at my living room window. Dusk is magic time, the sky still faintly lit. Streetlamps are on and lights glow from windows, making the city look mysterious and serene. The view’s so spectacular it’s hard to tear myself away: North Beach, Telegraph Hill, the Bay Bridge sharply defined, all still, silent, glowing behind the glass.
Hunt has this character look into a mirror and tell us about her own appearance. Plenty of books on writing tell you this is a clichéd technique, but it turns up all the time in successful novels, and the passage above is an example of how it can be done well.
From the telling details Hunt reveals, the reader infers a great deal. This character is young (black T-shirt, jeans …), a resident of San Francisco (North Beach …), a photographer (Contax camera around my neck). The character feels somewhat androgynous, but the mention of medium-length hair suggests she’s a woman. Beyond that, we know she’s highly visual, curious, and secretive. A page later, she’s prowling an unsavory neighborhood, and a street kid calls out to her: “You blind, girl? What’s with the shades, Bug?” Her response tells us that she suffers from complete color-blindness. Soon she meets a man who addresses her as “Kay,” which tells us her name. Within the first four pages, Hunt covers all the basics, introducing his protagonist and blending the information seamlessly into an ongoing narrative.
Linda Barnes takes another approach to introduce Carlotta Carlyle in The Big Dig:
He was studying my face like he’d never seen green eyes, a pointy chin, or flaming hair before. Made me wonder whether I looked drawn or pale. I widened my smile, hoping the extra wattage would substitute for a blusher.
Notice that Barnes has another character look at Carlotta Carlyle, and Carlotta tells us what she thinks he sees.
You may want to convey a lot of information about your main character to your reader. Restrain yourself. There’s no rush. Make the introduction memorable but not overwhelming. Carefully select details. Reveal your character’s backstory as you go along, and in support of ongoing drama.
Now You Try: Give the Reader the Basics
- Refer to your blueprint. Make a list of twenty things about your protagonist’s past, personality, or appearance that you want the reader to know right away.
- Cross out the fifteen that can wait until later in the novel.
- Write (or rewrite) the first scene your protagonist appears in, conveying the remaining five basic things about your character without writing an information dump.
On Your Own: Introduce the Protagonist
- Look at the openings of a half dozen of your favorite mysteries. Analyze how the author introduces the protagonist:
- Does the author use description? Dialogue? Action? A combination?
- How (and when) does the author convey the character’s name, gender, job, age, and physical appearance?
- What character traits does the author initially reveal, and how?
- How much of the character’s background does the reader learn at the beginning?
- Try different approaches to introducing your protagonist: first-person narration, description, dialogue, action. See which one works best.