Alright, here's one you can't unsee.

You guys ready for this? 

At first you'll probably want to shoot me for it but WAIT!

Take a moment and THINK.  Just give it a few moments to sink in.

Pop open one of the books and read any part with this character and imagine it in this actor's voice.  It works better than you might think.

You ready?

Sean Connery as Morgan.

I know!  I know!  First thought:  "WTF?"  But if you reel it back in for a second, Morgan's old.  Morgan's seriously getting on in years, even in storm front.  On top of that, he's a tall western european who runs around with (what I imagine to be) a bastard sword.  Give Sean the ponytail.  Import Morgan's personality onto him.  Read any part with Morgan and put it into Sean's voice.  If you still don't like it, then you can call me crazy.

Alright, and while we're at it.  I have to say, I'm curious.  Why is Ryan Reynolds so far behind?  I mean, he's not a perfect Dresden, but he's behind Hugh Jackman.  The only DF part I can even remotely imagine Hugh Jackman playing is Kincaid.  And I don't even see him being a good fit for that.  Not that he's not a great actor, but... well... he's just got a very niche personality.  You have to match the role to Hugh Jackman, not match Hugh Jackman to the role.  He hasn't got flexibility, like say... Johnny Depp.  Johnny Depp can play a little of everything, with the right direction.  I mean, this is guy who went from Jack Sparrow to Willy Wonka, back to Jack Sparrow and then on to being the mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland.  Anyway, I'm getting off track.

For those of you who look at Ryan Reynolds on that list and think "... Why?"  This is why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqyv2m2YBm0

I've been handling this in a bit of an odd (or maybe a good) way.

When folks first meet, they are primarily referred to by race, or by their profession, etc. in the mind of the current POV character.

It's only after a character gets to know another character that they actually begin referring to that person by their given name.

*shrug*

seems right to me

Yeah, I love it so much when authors do that.  I chuckled everytime I heard Dresden refer to "Liverspots" in Dead Beat.  And that's just the one that came off the top of my head.  I can't even remember all the awesome nicknames Harry assigned to people throughout the series.

I have yet to meet a male reader who could stand Polgara.

Honestly, I struggled to get through the entire story.  I found just about the entire cast to be obnoxious, with Polgara simply leading the charge.  They expect Garion to save the world, but then they grab him by the ear like a naughty boy (even though he's by far the most behaved young character in the whole damned series) and haul him across the land doing everything for him and telling him to shut up.  The vast majority of them just abused him for the hell of it and if he tried to respond in ANY way that wasn't silence, (I seem to remember a couple moments where he even got punished for subservience) they'd berate him for his immaturity.  It reminded me of my family. -_- 

There was nothing Garion could do to prove himself to them, and they found it beneath themselves to even talk to him about what they had planned for his future.  I honestly cannot comprehend why he didn't just walk off into the forest one night while they were all asleep and go build a life of his own.  I know that's what I did when I was put in his situation, and now only 2 years later, I have stock options.  I own a car.  I have a job.  A rather well paid job considering I only have a high school diploma. ($15/hr)  I have my own place to live.  I'm doing pretty damned well for myself, and Garion had twice the sheer willpower and motivation I do.  It boggles the mind to think what sort of life he could have made for himself, especially when you consider the fact that by following them blindly like a deaf, dumb, and mute slave, he still ended up becoming a king.

And on that note, I hated how Polgara and Belgarath constantly got off to telling Garion how immature he was.  All he wanted was basically human rights, and everytime he tried saying something about it, they'd administer a swift and sudden guilt trip to him before he could even finish the sentence.  Whereas they not only had human rights, but the fate of the universe in their hands and enough power to make anyone shit themselves if they blinked twice.  Yet, what do they do with it?  They go save the world, yeah, but they do it in their own completely disrespectful, uppity, high-horsed, narcassistic, abusive ways.  All the while using Garion as their punching bag everytime they feel a little frustrated about how it's not working out.  Dear god, these are SUPPOSED to be the mentor characters.  They're supposed to teach Garion the ways of the world.  All they give him is a direct and stunningly clear view into the wide world of Stockholme Syndrome.  I mean, every once in a while Belgarath would redeem himself marginally by showing some mild kindness to Garion, but then you turn the next page and he's back to diddling his own peenie and ignoring everyone who wants to know what his plans are.  If a character's going to be secretive and mysterious, he has to save the day in the end.  Not just save it, but do it in a way that makes everyone's jaws hit the floor so hard they leave skidmarks.  Like Dresden, or Sherlock Holmes.  And let me tell you, Belgarath was no Sherlock.

I mean, I guess it's a note in the authors favor that I could truly HATE these characters so much.  It means they're realistic.  You can't hate a cardboard cutout.  But if I wanted to double my blood pressure and practice my anger management methods, I'd just show up for Thanksgiving Dinner.  I deal with that enough in my real life to read a book full of it. 

... And yet, I finished the whole series.  >.>  I'm not sure if that says more about me or the author...  Definitely not gettin' started on that sequel series, though.  I'll tell you that much.

On "show, don't tell", if it's not important, give it a quick description and move on.  If it's vitally important, or the POV character happens to be paying very close attention for some reason, go ahead and stuff all the nuances you can into the description.

and it was wisely pointed out:

The failure mode of that is giving away what's going to be important later on and what isn't way too obviously early in the book.

I agree, that's an easy pitfall, which is one reason I think it works better as a style than as a tool, if you can get what I mean.

There are piles and piles of information that people are going to get from descriptions, they're not going to pay attention to all of it.  Probably very little.  So it's good to get those details out there, especially if they are allusions or foreshadowing.  The trick is that you have to display them in the way that the character's going to notice them.  Because the character's going to shrug them off now and later on that piece of the puzzle is gonna click into place in his head and you'll get that golden "oh shit" moment where time slows down and he catches what's wrong.  You need to make the detail sound neglible now and be important later. 

Take, for example, the mindfog in Summer Knight.  At the time, Dresden just kind of acknowledged the fact that it was illegal sorcery, and started trying to deal with the situation.  But those 2 words in themselves play a very important role in figuring out who his opponent is.  He was facing a wizard, and one not sanctioned by the white council.  Sure, faeries can do magic, but they tend to have very different methods and means by which they operate, so if it was faerie magic, he probably would have called it just that: Faerie Magic.  He specifically said "illegal" though, which points to a form of magic which is moderated by a body of law.  The white council is the only body of law that governs the use of magics.  (The accords don't count.  They help to round things out, but the accords are more of a treaty than a form of government itself)  Given what he had to draw on so far from that book, the only wizard unsanctioned by the white council in the area was Elaine.  So, we could technically have parsed out from that point in the book that Elaine was playing both sides of the field, and this does come into play later, when Dresden realizes he's been betrayed by her.  He remembers the mindfog.

This is a very difficult technique to perfect.  You want to get those details out there.  You want the reader to acknowledge them.  You want the character to acknowledge them.  And you want them both to shrug it off for now.  I suppose you could technically try making those details more obvious, but then your character has to be an idiot to not notice them, and the reader's not an idiot.  He's gonna be sitting there screaming inside his head, "WHY ARE YOU IGNORING THAT YOU FOUND YOUR DEAD BUDDY'S DOGTAGS IN YOUR GIRLFRIEND'S PURSE!?!?!?!  ARE YOU STUPID!?"  So I suppose on this particular subject, we ought take Jim's advice: The reader's not an idiot.  Get the information out there and let the reader find it.  Your readers are always going to be smarter than you expect.  They'll notice.  (I don't remember where I saw him say that, but I am VERY sure I saw him say it... somewhere)

It's not possible to write a bestseller by setting out to write a by-the-numbers bestseller. That much is solid.

You stand much more chance of taking off if you write the stories that work for you than defining the stories you tell solely by what's marketable.

I didn't say try to write a bestseller by trying to write a bestseller. >.>  And your second sentence just made my point for me, so, thanks for that.

I find that by default, I come up with a concept and build the story around it.  Then when I need characters, I'll figure out what exactly I need them to do, then assign them a passion and a motivation that will put them in the right place at the right time.  I'll take that passion and that motivation and build additional character traits around it.  Then I drop my character into the world I've got set up, and let them run around.  Generally from there they tend to do the rest of the character development for me.

As for story, I'll start setting up a timeline.  Once I have a pivotal bad guy or 2, and a pivotal good guy or 2, I start imagining confrontations between them that involve serious consequences.  When I have a good idea of what I want these confrontations to be, I'll drop them on the timeline as "checkpoints."  Ironically enough, this is an excellent method for wading through the Big Swampy Middle.  My only problem is that usually I can't figure out how I want the climax to go.  Guess I need to work on that "story question" jim was talkin' about.

the reason i am doing an 'introduction' is because i have a very interesting back story for the character that if i don't at least give a fragment of in the beginning my readers may be lost on why my character is the way he is. Primarily it explains where he got a rather nasty burn scare that covers the left side of his neck and down over his upper arm and chest. this scare plays a big role in the first book and if i just straight into the meat of my work people will wonder where he got this scare and why its so important to him.
I HATE introductions (as a reader), use them all over the place as a writer.

Well, there are a couple ways you could do this without an introduction. (I'm not criticizing or saying you should avoid an introduction, just brainstorming here)  But you could have thoughts going through his head that are relevant to the scar during moments in which the scar is important. 
Ex: Imagine he's sitting at a campfire, debating a crucial decision.  It's going to be difficult, and there will be a lot of hardship ahead.  In the end, he decides he's going to do it, and he's going to put his whole heart into it.  He's going to do it because he can't let an innocent person go unprotected *looks down at scar*  Never again...

That way you get to tell the reader that he's got this scar, that it's on his mind, and that the current situation is similar to the situation in which he got his scar.  Then maybe as you go on he could have nightmares or flashbacks where you reveal bits and pieces of how he got this scar without giving away the whole tale.  It creates suspense, and it reveals backstory on the scar while keeping your main plot moving along nicely.

Also, I'd love too look over a copy.  I'll do my best to provide constructive feedback.

An excellent way to avoid having a character with an overused personality is to avoid thinking of your characters as good or evil at all.  Black and White is easy, that's why the world is painted in shades of grey. 

Example:  You want to tell a story about a baseball player's rise to fame, and you start with his childhood.  Now, thinking in terms of black and white (or good and evil) the default picture to assume would be that this kid wants to grow up and become a famous baseball player.  Now he needs a challenge, and a rival.  The first thing to come to mind would, of course, be some bully who's trying to convince him he sucks at baseball and push him around.  Not a terrible story, but let's try again in a couple shades of grey.

The boy is being taught to play baseball by his dad.  He's not quite sure what he thinks of the idea, after all, those dancing shows were pretty awesome.  But then when he pictures dad cheering for him up there in the stands, he gets this warm, fuzzy feeling in his stomach.  So he decides he'll give it a try.  First pitch he hits the ball out of bounds and a dog comes running up, grabs the ball, and darts off.  This kid has to go chasing the dog down.  He runs through the city park, wading through a stream and knocking over a couple picnic tables in the process.  He comes out in the city and manages to corner it in a back alley.  He wrestles with the dog, who's clearly having the time of its life, and manages to get the ball back.

Now we have a protagonist and antagonist who are already starting to build rich, interesting personalities without needing to be defined as good or evil.  They're far from being black and white.  In fact, just by throwing them in the scene together and getting the two introduced, we've already got them set up to encounter a myriad of realistic circumstances.  Maybe they hear a gunshot or a mugging and get scared.  The dog jumps up and stays by the boy's side, making sure he'll be alright.  Now we've turned an antagonist into a protagonist with the snap of our fingers, and it was easy.  Why?  Because characters that aren't painted black or white are dynamic.  They can switch sides at any time.  Their motivations have no grounding in good or bad.

The dresden files in itself is actually an excellent example of this concept.  Harry's foremost motivations are A: to employ his magic on a daily basis, because it's his passion and his main source of income, and B: to protect people, rather than hurt them.  Marcone's primary motivation is control.  Everything else is really just a means to an end, though Marcone's choice of means are rather unique in themselves.  He earns money so that can create more companies.  He creates more companies so he can exert greater control over a wider range of people.  He "punishes" those who kill his employees so that he can operate his business without fluctuation.  He does so because when he loses control of the situation, possible outcomes arise that he finds distasteful, such as the shooting of Helen's daughter.  Often, Marcone finds himself in a situation where allying himself with Dresden is beneficial to his interests, since Dresden's goals would result in a more controlled environment involving one less adversary.  Marcone is clearly and undoubtedly a bad guy.  His criminal empire hurts people on a daily basis just to turn a dime, but rarely can he be seen as an antagonist to Dresden, which is why he's such a great character for Dresden to encounter.  He's not particularly an antagonist, but he constantly maintains the potential to become one.