She was tall and thin, with slender arms and long brown
hair.
He loomed like a bear; his dark eyes glittered like ice.
The man’s dark cowl hid his every feature, except for a very
long, pointy nose that reminded her of a hawk.
The woman raised her eyebrows and shook a pudgy finger at
the rascals.
What in the world
am I doing here?
Well, I’m describing people. Four different people, each
with a different description. With the exception of the middle two, these are
all obviously different people.
Are these good descriptions?
Not really.
There are hundreds
(maybe thousands) of tall and thin girls in the world, thousands of people have slender arms (like… if you don’t work out,
your arms are probably slender), and millions
of people have brown hair.
Thus, the first person I described could be any random girl
you picked out of a crowd.
The second description tells me nothing about the man you
speak of, besides that he’s tall-ish and has dark eyes. That fits… the majority
of men in the universe.
Our third description isn’t so horrid; at least it gives us
a defining feature: a nose. We know about this person's nose, and enough to guess
that this person doesn’t want to be recognized and is therefore suspicious.
Lastly, we have a lady with pudgy fingers. That… really
means nothing to us, because all we can see is a vague female person and a
pudgy finger wagging in midair. Very helpful.
Poor character descriptions are a common fault in books. Authors
tend to wander toward the extremes: either they describe everything or nothing.
The reader might get every detail: exact height, weight, hair color, eye color,
skin tone, lip and nose sizes, eyebrows, eye tilt, eyelash length, clothing
styles and brands (and prices of those brands in comparison to others), and the
length of fingers. If not every detail, the author gives nothing but vague
ideas: this character has a face and body. They are a gender and have the
features of their gender such as the stereotypical hair length and muscle
proportion.
Which would you rather?
Myself, I’d pass on both. The one sounds like a criminal
records file (please, I don’t need to know your character’s weight to the
nearest ounce and height to the nearest millimeter) and the other sounds like a
blob of almost-sentient goo.
Unless you’re literally writing a criminal records file or
literally writing about a blob of almost-sentient goo, the extrema of character
description are dangerous places to be.
How does one describe a character?
Well, that depends on the character. The more important the
character, the more the reader needs to know. If the character is a servant who
disappears after their debut scene, no need to give us more than a sentence. If
the character is vital to plot and story, we’re going to need a bit more
description.
Some pointers:
-Avoid clichés
In writing a fantasy, don’t jump to the cliché differences
in characters like different-colored eyes. Don’t lunge for the skinny farm
boy and the fashion model love interest. Handsome knights who turn villainous
are as cliché as ugly hags who turn out to be witches in disguise.
In writing contemporary fiction, don’t grasp at the straws
of “skinny, pale girl who is insecure about her looks even though every male
character finds her attractive”, nor the “buff, muscular macho man who is super
sensitive about how his hair looks”. Those straws are just that: fragile pieces
of grass that will break upon closer inspection
-Survey the facts
Truth is, more people have brown eyes than blue or green
(thank you, genetics) and more people have black hair then red (again, thank
you, genetics).
In certain countries, you’ll find more dark-skinned people
than olive-skinned (thank you, culture and the landscape of ethnicities).
This is not to say you can’t have a character with green
eyes and blond hair. But it is to say
you can’t have ten of them in the same novel without a very, very, very
good reason.
On Friday I talked about this, but I wanted to poke it a bit
more. Unless your story takes place in a time where no ethnicities mingle (as I
mentioned in that post), there are few chances that your main character won’t
interact with others of differing ethnicities.
But don’t just expand your horizons to characters of
differing skin colors and races, what about physical build? Not all guys are
buff, not all girls are rail-thin. Body shapes come in all sizes, not just the
four found in movies, nowadays (buff guy, nerdy skinny guy, super-thin-model
girl, not-so-thin-but-still-model girl).
-Be vivid and concise.
This is more important than all the others.
When you describe, don’t be content with the common words.
Use strong, vivid descriptions. It’s okay to skim over things in the rough
drafts, but it takes time to perfect a description.
Don’t be content until it’s a description worth being
content with.
The description of a character should do more than just tell
us what they look like. It should do more than just inform us of their
presence.
Characters come alive through how we see them. We combine
their physical traits and their personality to form a human being. How down
those two things – physiology and personality – combine to create a real,
sentient life that interacts with the world as a realistic person with thoughts
and feelings and looks and attributes?
Descriptions bring your story to life. Not just the setting
and the plot, but the characters. Without a vivid, concise description, your
reader can’t create an image of your story in their mind.
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