Introduce Your Characters...But Not Too Many

I've written seven paragraphs of my novel revision! Hey, this isn't a sprint! In case you haven't been following along, this is my Fresh Start™. 

Rather than simply grabbing the original manuscript and making changes to it, I'm starting over. As written, it was a hot mess. That was not only the result of being a novice writer, but the failure of my tried and true method of, "let's see where the story goes". 

Well, now I know how it goes, so I just need to write it better.

For a non-fantasy, my story has a decent-sized cast of main players. The family alone consists of six, each with their own stories to tell...or not tell. Technically, those stories are told or not told through the main character. It's not as if I have six main characters. Just to clarify.

In the original first chapter, five of those family members were gathered for a kitchen scene, which in hindsight was poor storytelling. Too many personalities to juggle and to give hints about, yet nothing much even happening. There was some underlying tension, but this wasn't the best setting for it. Because no reader would even know at that point what the story was about (!)

Now in my seven new paragraphs, we know the mother's core personality (passive and in denial), we know that staying married to Dad for forty years wasn't exactly butterflies and rainbows, we know that the MC is a nurse who goes out of her way to avoid spending holidays with the family, and we know that little sister is a problem child. This info was conveyed via one short telephone conversation and one surreptitious observation.

That's it. Seven paragraphs, not a whole chapter. And three of those paragraphs were simply one-sentence exchanges of dialogue.

Now, if that kitchen scene does happen (which I'm not yet sure about), the reader will be grounded in the story. They'll want to know (I hope) why Dad is a bad husband and father, what chaos baby sister's presence will create, what MC's and Dad's interactions will expose.

And I haven't even yet introduced the brother and his high maintenance wife.

A good women's fiction story needs to both breathe and keep the plot moving. It's a fine line. Women's fiction writers delve into the psychology of their characters, which is where the breathing comes in. The main character is inside her own head a lot, which manifests itself in silent ruminating and questioning.

As a novice writer, I didn't recognize when my writing was boring. I blithely assumed that people would keep reading along. I assumed they'd wait for the payoff. And I must have thought that readers wanted to know everything about every character, or...they'd be lost.

Now, rather than writing a complete character profile of each player at the start, I know to just "get on with it". Characters have plenty of time to reveal themselves. So, yes, introduce your characters, but a little goes a long way. Hint at events to come instead or at least to a mystery that'll hook the reader.

If you've got five or ten players, talking about all of them at the beginning will confuse and annoy readers.

An author wants to avoid being annoying.