One of the most common things I see in manuscripts is authors introducing their characters. It sounds perfectly reasonable. After all, if readers are going to spend 300 pages with someone, shouldn’t they know who that person is?
Actually…No. Readers don’t want introductions. They want discoveries.
Think about meeting someone in real life. You don’t shake hands and immediately learn that they’re witty, compassionate, impatient, divorced, a cat lover, and secretly afraid of heights. You discover those things over time—through conversations, observations, and shared experiences.
Characters should work exactly the same way. Instead of writing:
Evelyn was an organized, practical woman with a dry sense of humor.
Show me Evelyn. Maybe she’s wrestling with a stubborn padlock at six-thirty in the morning, muttering under her breath. Maybe the first thing she says to a stranger is: “You always lurk at gates before seven in the morning?”
I don’t need you to tell me she has a dry sense of humor. I just met her.
Or imagine your protagonist notices a sign that reads:
NO STEALING TOMATOES
Seriously, Dave.
In five words, I’ve learned that Dave has a history. Someone in the garden has a sense of humor. The community has inside jokes. The place feels lived in. None of that required a paragraph of explanation.
Readers love making connections. Every time you explain something they could have figured out on their own, you steal a tiny moment of satisfaction from them.
This doesn’t just apply to personality. It’s true of relationships, too. You don’t have to tell me two characters have known each other for twenty years. Let me see the shorthand in their conversation. Let me notice the comfortable teasing, the unfinished sentences, the way one silently hands the other a cup of coffee without asking.
Trust me to put the pieces together.
In fact, that’s one of the great joys of reading fiction. As editors, we’re often looking for places where the author explains what the scene has already shown. Those explanations usually aren’t wrong. They’re just unnecessary. And unnecessary words slow the story down.
So the next time you’re tempted to introduce a character by listing their qualities, stop and ask yourself a simple question:
How could I let the reader discover this instead?
Your readers will thank you for it. Even if they never realize why.
— Mark