How 🚫 not 🚫 to introduce your protagonist #writingabook #writingadvice #howtowriteabook

Hi writers, I'm C. I'm a developmental editor of fiction and here are three problems I often see when writers are describing and introducing their protagonist in the first scene. The first is the biographical backstory info dump. So that first scene tells me everything I need to know about the character's life and history, and it's

just too much. If the reader's just meeting the character, they're not going to want to listen to that reminiscing deep dive into the full measure of that character's history. That's something that you want to reveal slowly over time. That kind of reminiscing and backstory dump also tends to be very cerebral which means that we spend a lot

of time in narration and not in action which slows the forward momentum of the story because conflict isn't appearing on page in real time. The second problem is kind of the opposite and it's when the character appears on page and maybe they are having some conflict in real time but that character seems to spring

up fully formed with no backstory attachments whatsoever. though there's little to no mention of relationships, friends, family members, prior events, things that happened yesterday. Little to no attachment to people or places or objects or things in that story universe. Yeah, sure. They're like amnesia tropes where this might be the case, but that's not what I'm talking

about here. Even a little reference to what their mom told them last week or something their boss said earlier that day will prevent us from feeling like that character didn't exist before page one with a full complete life like any person has. And finally, an overabundance of physical description. This, I'm sure, is one that you've heard