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Vivid Character Introductions, by Bruce L. Cook
It's vital to create vivid character descriptions at the beginning of your story. My wife is an avid reader, and she routinely sets a book aside if she can't "see" the characters in the first chapters. She especially appreciates Jan Karon's skilled character descriptions.
As another example, consider John Steinbeck's works. In his "The Red Pony," the second sentence of the story describes Billy Buck this way:
"He was a broad, bandy-legged little man with a walrus moustache, with square hands, puffed and muscled on the palms. His eyes were a contemplative watery gray and the hair which protruded from under his Stetson hat was spiky and weathered."
For myself, seeing this sort of description just reminds me how much I have to learn about writing. When I neglect vital character descriptions, my story falls short at the start.
The beauty of this lies in its importance to readers. For, if the reader can't remember the character when he or she next appears in a subsequent chapter, the reader is lost and might not carry on.
As writers, we see our characters and identity with them. We need to help make this happen for readers as well.
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Quoted from John Steinbeck, The Red Pony (New York: The Viking Press, 1992).
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Publishing New Writers,
Juyly, 2026 (vol. 27, no. 6)
Publisher:
Dr. Bruce L. Cook
1407 Getzelman Drive
Elgin, IL 60123
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