Craft Chat Craft Challenge?

[Aethalope]

Anyone up for a craft challenge from @Pamela Jo?

"How can we introduce new characters without interrupting the narrative flow?"

Indeed a tough task. So, what strategies does everyone use? Do you think it’s easier in first person or third person? Do you focus on appearance or behaviour? And here's one that gets me every time: Do you establish the character's role and/or function first, or do you let it emerge through the interaction?

(My answers to those would be first person, behaviour, and let it emerge but badly.)

If you fancy exploring this in more depth, here's a prompt:

Choose a character who is so minor they have only one interaction with your protagonist. Write 150-200 words (a guide, not a rule) describing this interaction.

New stuff? A scene from your WIP? Whatever fits? Show us what you’ve got! Not for critique, just for the mutual exploration of different approaches to the same task. Maybe we can even inspire some blog posts

 

[Sedayne]

Okay, this is the opening of Confessions of a Teenage Undertaker (a short story prequel of Songs for Beginners). The protag introduces himself, then his minor character brother and the brother's unnamed ex-girlfriend.

My name is Mike Davies, and I see the dead.​

To be more accurate, I see dead bodies in the funeral parlour of the family business. Our Kev once used that line on a girl who was into all that gloomy stuff. You know the type – dresses in black and hangs around St Deiniol’s churchyard late at night hoping to see a ghost. God knows what Kev saw in her, but the chat-up worked. They’d been going out for a couple of weeks before he sneaked her into the embalming room one night where she promptly vomited and fled, telling him she never wanted to see him again.​

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

Two for the price of one: my protagonist and her sister have just seen the boatperson arrive and scratch a crescent moon into the grave's soil. This is the first interaction with either of them. The minor character, the fleeting pass through, is the dead noble.

An arm bursts through the grave. Emer and I shuffle backwards. I clutch her shoulders to steady myself, to protect her, to give me the courage to breathe.

A human hand grips the boatperson’s. A man sits up, soil trickling from him, the quake on his grave toppling to its side. He’s a rich noble by the look of his elaborately ruffled shirt-sleeves and gold braiding on his velvet, navy-coloured coat. He picks up the silver coin and offers it to the boatperson.

I stare at his money: my anchor; the only thing stopping me turning and running.

The boatperson accepts the payment. They pull the man to standing and draw him to the boat.

I squeeze Emer’s hand. Force myself to my feet. Come on, courage. I open my pouch. Lift out two of our silver coins.

‘Excuse me.’

The dead man spins to face us. His bottom jaw drops; his eyebrows rise. The boatperson’s pale eyes turn towards us, no eyebrows to read, no eyelids to widen or narrow, but one thing’s certain: they can both see us.

I inhale, blow out an uncalming breath. ‘We need your help,’ I manage to pant, ‘We have to travel to Inis Aingeal. My grandmother said you can take us there.’

‘Why?’ The boatperson’s voice is low-pitched – probably male?

‘Are you dead too?’ the noble asks. He grips the rim of the boat and climbs in.

 

[Bloo]

I do mine with a head hop. We are in the bartender's head only for the first part of the scene, then move onto the Jake's. We never see the barkeep again.

Under a clean shave and fine suit, the Lowe Bar’s sole patron looked no less pathetic.

“Pour me another Maker's,” Jake’s words were slurred by now, “double, on the rocks.”

“That’ll be the fourth one you put down. You’re not driving, are you?”

“Hell no. I live only on Mendel Ave. I walked here and I'm going to stumble home.”

“Bullshit. I carded you, remember? Your license says Lakeside. That’s like five miles away.”

“Uh… it still has the old address. I just moved here.” Jake reached into his rear left pocket - then his right and found it. “Here’s the key card for Driscoll Apartments. They’re on Mendel.”

The barkeep needed only a glance to confirm the guy lived where he said. What he couldn’t figure was why. The customer was dressed like a lawyer and sporting a Shinola watch. That didn't jive with his new digs. Mendel wasn't a complete shithole, but it sure as hell weren’t Lakeside. Real-estate values can drop quite a bit over five miles.

“Okay bud…but it’s last-call for you. I don’t want you stumbling in front of a bus.” He dropped some ice into a fresh glass. Maybe his wife threw him out and she’s the lawyer. He made it a long pour. “I’m here tomorrow if you want to talk about it.”

“Sure... maybe I’ll see you then.”

The bartender hoped so. Broken men in expensive suits usually produce good tips.

Not even sure if I'm going to keep this. Jake has evolved a bit since I wrote it, so I might kill this darling.

 

[Aethalope]

The protagonist, who needs to meet someone, has a habit of creating personas on the fly to suit the situation (it doesn't end well):

“Yes?” says the guard.​

Ah. It seems I have made an error of judgement. She is a smallish, roundish woman who could be my twin. I had been planning to deploy the helpless middle-aged female routine, but she’ll see right through me. Time for a quick pivot! I give her my haughtiest stare and say crisply, “I’m here to warn Mr. Ootu that his wife has found out.”​

My twin’s gaze narrows, and the corners of her lips twitch upward as she recognizes me as a harbinger of welcome drama.​

“Mr. Ootu?” She gives a throaty chuckle, then points her chin at the staircase behind me. “You can find him on the rooftop garden. Mind the hole on the second floor.”
“Thank you.”
As I turn, she adds, “There’s plenty of flowerpots up there. Use as many of the clay ones as you like, but you’ll have to pay if you brain him with the ceramics.”​

 

[Pamela Jo]

Two for the price of one: my protagonist and her sister have just seen the boatperson arrive and scratch a crescent moon into the grave's soil. This is the first interaction with either of them. The minor character, the fleeting pass through, is the dead noble.

An arm bursts through the grave. Emer and I shuffle backwards. I clutch her shoulders to steady myself, to protect her, to give me the courage to breathe.

A human hand grips the boatperson’s. A man sits up, soil trickling from him, the quake on his grave toppling to its side. He’s a rich noble by the look of his elaborately ruffled shirt-sleeves and gold braiding on his velvet, navy-coloured coat. He picks up the silver coin and offers it to the boatperson.

I stare at his money: my anchor; the only thing stopping me turning and running.

The boatperson accepts the payment. They pull the man to standing and draw him to the boat.

I squeeze Emer’s hand. Force myself to my feet. Come on, courage. I open my pouch. Lift out two of our silver coins.

‘Excuse me.’

The dead man spins to face us. His bottom jaw drops; his eyebrows rise. The boatperson’s pale eyes turn towards us, no eyebrows to read, no eyelids to widen or narrow, but one thing’s certain: they can both see us.

I inhale, blow out an uncalming breath. ‘We need your help,’ I manage to pant, ‘We have to travel to Inis Aingeal. My grandmother said you can take us there.’

‘Why?’ The boatperson’s voice is low-pitched – probably male?

‘Are you dead too?’ the noble asks. He grips the rim of the boat and climbs in.

This sounds to me that it is part of your Fey YA book. I love this. It's GORGEOUS!

 

[Pamela Jo]

This skill is one I envy to the greenest of green hues. So I have been consciously studying it hoping someday it will eel natural and easy. This is describing, Cliona, a character we meet only a few times but has a catalyst affect on the plot.


After two sets, I begged Atticus to let me sit down. It was when he was off fetching drinks I saw Aloysius. He was leaning against a tree, watching the band with a smitten smile. I knew that smile.
And at that instant I knew who he was in love with.
Cliona, the girl who was technically engaged to two different men already. “Oh Ally,” I whispered to myself.
A cold glass nudged my fingers. I took it with a thirsty gulp.
“So now you know.” Atticus bent to whisper in my ear.
“How could anyone not know?” I said. “Look at that gormless grin. It’s like ‘I’m a fool for love.’ is stamped on his forehead.”
The band swept into ‘Step it up Mary’. Cliona danced for the first bars. With her first leap, Cliona’s golden hair, already half unpinned, tumbled down the rest of the way. Her slim legs flashed like silver trout in fast water. Toes pointed, eyes closed, sweet about the sole. It was like she had no weight at all.
“Everyone in the room just fell in love with her,” I sighed. “How could poor Ally resist?”
Atticus paused, his coupe of wine half to his lips. Catching my eye he said, “Not everyone.”

 

[Aethalope]

Joseph Conrad does great characters. Here is one of his descriptions (of a German captain) that I still remember reading for the first time:

The Patna was a local steamer as old as the hills, lean like a greyhound, and eaten up with rust worse than a condemned water-tank. She was owned by a Chinaman, chartered by an Arab, and commanded by a sort of renegade New South Wales German, very anxious to curse publicly his native country, but who, apparently on the strength of Bismarck’s victorious policy, brutalised all those he was not afraid of, and wore a ‘blood-and-iron’ air,’ combined with a purple nose and a red moustache. After she had been painted outside and whitewashed inside, eight hundred pilgrims (more or less) were driven on board of her as she lay with steam up alongside a wooden jetty.​

​

Yeah, okay. It's kind of memorable, but a bit bland. But then comes the bit where the magic happens, where Conrad beguiles you by beautifully describing eight hundred people before dropping the devastating dismissal:

​

They streamed aboard over three gangways, they streamed in urged by faith and the hope of paradise, they streamed in with a continuous tramp and shuffle of bare feet, without a word, a murmur, or a look back; and when clear of confining rails spread on all sides over the deck, flowed forward and aft, overflowed down the yawning hatchways, filled the inner recesses of the ship—like water filling a cistern, like water flowing into crevices and crannies, like water rising silently even with the rim. Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire. They came from solitary huts in the wilderness, from populous campongs, from villages by the sea. At the call of an idea they had left their forests, their clearings, the protection of their rulers, their prosperity, their poverty, the surroundings of their youth and the graves of their fathers. They came covered with dust, with sweat, with grime, with rags—the strong men at the head of family parties, the lean old men pressing forward without hope of return; young boys with fearless eyes glancing curiously, shy little girls with tumbled long hair; the timid women muffled up and clasping to their breasts, wrapped in loose ends of soiled head-cloths, their sleeping babies, the unconscious pilgrims of an exacting belief.​

‘Look at dese cattle,’ said the German skipper to his new chief mate.​

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

This sounds to me that it is part of your Fey YA book. I love this. It's GORGEOUS!

Yes it is

 

[Hannah Faoileán]

This skill is one I envy to the greenest of green hues. So I have been consciously studying it hoping someday it will eel natural and easy. This is describing, Cliona, a character we meet only a few times but has a catalyst affect on the plot.


After two sets, I begged Atticus to let me sit down. It was when he was off fetching drinks I saw Aloysius. He was leaning against a tree, watching the band with a smitten smile. I knew that smile.
And at that instant I knew who he was in love with.
Cliona, the girl who was technically engaged to two different men already. “Oh Ally,” I whispered to myself.
A cold glass nudged my fingers. I took it with a thirsty gulp.
“So now you know.” Atticus bent to whisper in my ear.
“How could anyone not know?” I said. “Look at that gormless grin. It’s like ‘I’m a fool for love.’ is stamped on his forehead.”
The band swept into ‘Step it up Mary’. Cliona danced for the first bars. With her first leap, Cliona’s golden hair, already half unpinned, tumbled down the rest of the way. Her slim legs flashed like silver trout in fast water. Toes pointed, eyes closed, sweet about the sole. It was like she had no weight at all.
“Everyone in the room just fell in love with her,” I sighed. “How could poor Ally resist?”
Atticus paused, his coupe of wine half to his lips. Catching my eye he said, “Not everyone.”

I think you're doing just fine. I'm in the scene with your protagonist.