They can be introduced to us, the readers, in a variety of ways - straight, direct, as in 'Let the Reader be introduced to Lady Carbery', in a conversation... the moment a character appears, however s/he appears we start to know them, see them, hear them, dress them, we start to do half the work for the writer. Never underestimate how much of a co-creator your reader is.

I do like it when characters are introduced by other characters - being talked about or watched. Have a look at another way - if you can find a copy of Muriel Spark`s THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE .. look at the 3rd paragraph of Chapter One. Miss Brodie is introduced - after a dozen lines we know exactly what kind of woman Miss Brodie is, long before we meet her. Look at how it`s done.  It works.

But if you write in the first person introducing both the character of the narrator and other characters is rather different. This isn`t really a new TTD so much as part of TTD2 but find a few novels written in the first person and see how it is made to work.

Some suggestions tomorrow... If people really really can`t get hold of the Muriel Spark, I`ll copy it out.