hello welcome to this week's writing q a video I'm cam Wyland and I run the writing website helping writers become authors and this week's question is from Normie that is something like that um question is when would it generally be too late to introduce a relevant side character I have one that currently has introduced a while after the midpoint and it seems like an afterthought oh yeah I forgot they were supposed to be a part of this surprise here they are if they are actually important they should fit in earlier and if their introduction can
wait so long then they probably aren't as relevant as first thought and can be cut right so there are exceptions to every rule of course but generally speaking the best the most foundationally sound way to introduce characters is to try to get anybody who's important and by important we're talking particularly about people who are going to be there throughout the plot and who are going to be important in the third Act and the climax so any character that would fit that bill it's generally best if you can try to introduce them in the first act
so I like to think of first act as like one of the main roles of the first act as being about setup and part of that setup is foreshadowing basically but it's introducing all of the relevant and important cast members it's either introducing important settings or foreshadowing them because very often you won't enter the main setting of the main conflict until the second act but it's laying at groundwork so that by the time you get into the second act the pieces are in play and then you can just you know work them out and let
the puzzle unfold as you go when readers aren't caught off guard thinking like where did that come from that seems like you know kind of deus ex machina ish even if it's in the middle of the story it's just like too convenient sort of or like you say as if you know the writer sort of forgot that they needed this character and they're introducing it late now there's exceptions to this obviously we see all kinds of stories in which characters come in later in the story so you do kind of have to feel it out
um and determine you know first and foremost just the logistics can you logically introduce this character at an earlier point because sometimes you know your protagonist just won't meet certain characters until later in the story and this is particularly true if you're telling a story that's more of a journey or a quest which can be more episodic in nature in there for their their meeting more symbolic characters at weigh stations along the story kind of an odyssey type story if you will so that's something to keep in mind um the type of story you're telling
is always going to be important as well as the role that this new character plays in the story very often if a character that's introduced late in the story feels coincidental it's because it is it would in what it feels like is that the author needed a character to do something at this point in the story needed them for information purposes you needed just you know a warm body you show up and do something in order for the plot to continue which basically is a plot device and one that's not functioning particularly well it's not
seamless within the story the way you want them to be so really the question here is is this does this feel coincidental does it feel mechanical is it um taking away from the suspension of disbelief that you want to be creating by creating this this seamless experience of a story that makes sense and everything's you know part of the same thematic ebb and flow that that's created from the very beginning of the story so short answer is if you can introduce any and all important characters in The First Act that's the best place to do
it if you can't introduce them then think about ways that you can foreshadow them for instance you know characters may not meet the antagonist ever in the story or they may not meet them until the climax but the character can be foreshadowed in many different ways um Lord of the Rings comes to mind obviously they don't really ever meet Sauron but because of the lore around the ring and because of Gandalf's familiarity with that even though we don't aren't introduced to Sauron in the beginning of that story his presence is very much a part of
the story and therefore it doesn't feel tacked on by the time he's actually you know sort of a member of the cast as The Story Goes On so think about it in that way as well and ultimately follow your gut if feels like a coincidence you know if you feel like you're copping out like yeah I should probably go back and introduce this character earlier and or I'm just using this character in a really convenient way and I need to rework it so that maybe I don't need him at all and I can use an
already existing character to take this role then that's usually going to be your best bet and if you'd like me to answer your question next week leave it in the comments down below don't forget to subscribe to the channel or like the video to let YouTube know that you enjoyed it and help boost it in the algorithm and be sure to stop by my site helping writers become authors.com I post lengthy articles about writing technique and Theory every Monday accompanied by a podcast version as well if you prefer to listen and I will see you
next week
