User blog:Zathronas/Author's Advice: Introduction

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Hello and welcome to author's advice. Today I start a series of four blogs explaining with greater details the four basic story structure.

Introduction is very important in a story because it enables the readers to understand your world. Without the introduction you would have a bunch of strangers doing things that makes no sense. To get your readers attached to your characters you need to have them be relatable and the first way to do this is in introduction.

Depending on what your writing, your introductions can continue throughout your whole story. But what should be in an introduction? Several things

CHARACTERS

In my last two blogs I've explained introductions as giving your characters their motivation and background but there's more to it than that. They have to be relatable in the type your putting them in. Remember the type I wrote? Protagonist, Antagonist, Main Support, Secondary Support. Let's use the RWBY characters again as an example. Let's start with the main Protagonist, How did they make them relatable?

Ruby is a small child with a sad past, you root for her because you want to see her with a better future and realize her dream. As you can see, her background (as little as we know of it right now) help cement her as a character you can relate to.

Weiss is defined by her loneliness, she has difficulties making friends because she has a rough attitude. You root for her to change and make friends.

Blake is running from her past. She's the brooding type with a secret past. You root for her because you want her to solve her past and reveal her secrets.

Yang is fun... yep, she's different from the rest because you don't root for her because of her past (at least, not what we know at this moment) She's fun, funny, tough and gentle and she's the cool kid. Her attitude makes you root for her.

If I would guess at the most popular of the four I would say Yang. because she is defined by her attitude instead of her past.

As you can see, your character's story is important. I've talked about creating an outline, this should be the first thing on it. Your characters past and how it defined their attitude. Having that keeps your character constant throughout your story and keeps you from having them do something out of character. Would seeing Weiss suddenly start giving flowers to everyone and singing combaya look normal to you?

RULES

When your creating a whole new world, the introduction is where you explain the rules of that world. You need to define what is different from our world. In RWBY the main difference are: Remnant, kingdoms, darkness, grimm, Aura's, Semblance, Dust, Crystal, Huntsman, Huntresses and faunus. We knew all of those thing existed by the third episode. Either in narration or dialogue. Since the written medium doesn't have the luxury of visuals, you have to describe your world.

SETTINGS

Finally you need to create your settings. You have to put everyone in place before you created a complication. RWBY has to be in school, has to have met JNPR, Ozpin and Glynda. Characters has to have learned some things they'll need to know and by transfer we need to know before the complication (like the fact that Blake is a faunus and used to be with the white fang). This is where Monty and company are in the story.

When you've established your world, characters and settings. You can then change things in the complication which I'll talk in my next blog.