On First Impressions or A Grand Entrance

You only get one chance to leave a first impression, so when introducing a new character, make it one to behold.

Dress your characters in a certain way, camouflage them, let them have a pompous entry with fanfares, let them appear out of thin air, flip the script and paint the hero black or have them stumble into the picture. 
 
When I was still teaching German as a foreign language, I was organizing extracurricular seminars for our students. Our project manager had asked me, if I would give it a try and so I did. Part of organizing the seminars was going from classroom to classroom, asking the students, if they wanted to take part in the extracurricular activities and sign them up.

One late morning, after I had entered another classroom and greeted the students with a smile, a man with a Russian accent said calmly, “You are police.” I looked at him and he looked me straight in the eyes. “You came into the room, you observed and saw everything with one glance and you have memorized every detail. You are police.” I kept looking at him, he kept looking right back at me. “I am trained to do that. I am a goaltender.” He kept looking. I took out my phone and showed him a few of my floorball pictures. “Like hockey.” We nodded at each other. 

Sometimes people are not who they seem to be. This man? Well, that is not a man at all, but my mother dressed up as one during carnival.

Looks can be deceiving. My mother used to tell us about the costumes she had put together for the various fancy dress parties and carnival parades, she had attended in her time. She often dressed up as a man. During a parade she was asked by someone who was working at the car dealership her parents - our grandparents - owned, if he were allowed to take a picture of her. She gave him permission to do so. 

After having the picture developed, he showed it around at the car dealership, telling stories about the man he had met during the parade. What a guy that had been. 

It is quite interesting, how someone's appearance, their energy, their tone of voice and their body language can affect others and their impression of the person in question. 

​One of the most entertaining novels I have ever read, is Laurence Sterne’s “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman”. Sterne self-published his novel in 1759. After it became a success, he was paid well for the publishing rights of the second edition.
 

"White Chameleon", white pastels, Kristin Raphaela Otti (2023)

​
Tristram makes quite the entrance into the world and being the trickster he is, he has quite a lot to say about the way, his parents arranged that. You get your first impression of him through the way, he talks about others.
 
Last summer I went to Germany for a short visit but happened to stay for longer, after having become in love with a project and offering help. As I had not come in to do any business at all, I did not wear any business attire but a casual shirt and shorts instead. 
 
During the first days of my stay, I got to meet quite a few new people. One of the women left a lasting impression. 

I often get mistaken for a man and I am perfectly fine with it.

She began our first conversation by describing the energy in the flat. She described it as heavy and asked, if it had been there prior to her arrival. I looked at her and stated calmly that it had not been there. To that she replied that it surely had to be the host’s, who – she claimed – did not like her. I simply said, “No. It came with you. It is yours.” 
 
She looked at me and started to put the host down behind her back, devaluing her by calling her bad at her profession. I stated that the opposite was true and our host was good at what she was doing professionally. She then claimed that she was the wife of another guest, but I knew that not to be true either. 
 
Someone trying to create a misbalanced setting in the room by tilting the atmosphere, gossiping about another person in their absence, devaluing them in their own house all while being a guest of the person in question and trying to create a hierarchy by relationship status would make a reader pause. 

Sometimes introducing your character by having their dramatic entrance gone wrong completely in a comical way, adds humour to the story: 

While I was studying in Sweden, I started playing floorball and wanted to enter my first match by jumping over the boards in an elegant way. Just like a gazelle.
 
It was the very moment I fell in love with the game. 
 
Kristin Raphaela Otti