Writing the Novel: The Running Man

I’m starting tonight’s installment of Dreaming the Dead with a scene in which my hero leads a killer away from a crowded area to prevent a massacre, and tries to shake the killer from his trail before pursuing the heroine—who at the moment is an obstacle standing between him and what he most wants.

I want three things from this scene:

To establish a baseline for the hero—who he is and where he is in his life
To develop a background for the first of the villains, but to do so through actions, not backstory
To suggest the beginning layers of the attraction/conflict between hero and heroine.

It’s ambitious for one scene. I’m interested to see if I can pull it off without turning the whole thing into hamburger.