Be honest, how ‘beautiful’ is your protagonist?

[Finchbearer]

I want to just say discuss and watch said discussion take place but I suppose I need to give some context;

When I started thinking up characters for my first few stories, in my mind they were physically attractive whilst also benefiting from youth and inexperience and so I felt like the story was almost set up in a way where I could go ahead and write the coming of age story with a potential love interest, akin to a blank page…but since writing something slightly different with characters that in my mind are not known for their beauty, or at least that is not in any way mentioned or focused on, it’s made me consider the role of having a beautiful protagonist for the stories we tell.

I also frequently see it in fantasy settings where the ‘good looking people’ get to go around doing cool things, and I’m not talking just the female characters.

However I wanted to open up the discussion about the role of beauty in fantasy writing and how it changes the narrative for the better or worse, and how important is it. How can we serve the story with a character that is not explicitly described as beautiful, or conversely how does a beautiful character serve a story without becoming a boring trope such as the manic pixie dream girl?

How many of you out there can admit to writing beautiful characters, and how many of you write not so beautiful ones?

 

[pmmg]

Well...I do like to think of my characters as attractive....but not unusually so.

Many of my characters are not attractive and/or do not think of themselves as such. I would say most of them fall along average in beauty lines, but...I do think average people are attractive.

Of my MC's, some are monstrous in appearance, some are disfigured, and just about every one has a scar of some type. My MC is badly burned in a way that is not visible depending on how they dress, but it does make them conscious about how they appear.

If have recently added my first character that is widely regarded as beautiful by others, and they are able to use their beauty to open doors and get favors. In story play, while the character is not dumb, they do play at it as a way to gain influence. I think they would make a good spy.

While I do favor thinking of my characters as attractive by most standards, its does not afford them much. The world is still dangerous and beauty will not save them. My protagonist, while I am sure is pretty enough, does not think they are, and would never think something like....I am pretty, I can probably get my way. They would far more likely think, I wont be thought of as pretty, so I have to do this with other means.

As the author, I do spend a little bit of my thought energy thinking on how the people must really look. Its not like they bathe everyday, and many are in rough places, so perfect hair would not follow. Men, who in my mind do not have beards, probably have beards cause...how would they shave them? And going into a battle is messy work. I imagine them often as not looking too nice, and probably not smelling too nice either. I just don't write it that way.

 

[Fyri]

XD In one of my drafts, my MC had... "flowing midnight black hair" or something as she walked down a hallway on page 1. I keep swearing Selenia isn't just who I wanted to be as a teenager, but I did really want long, black hair and magic back then, soooo.

But, ooooh, you bring up an interesting topic!

Beauty plays a lot of roles in fiction, largely based on how we perceive (or how the writer subconsciously thinks we should perceive) people in real life. And this also varies slightly, depending on ethicity of character to audience culture.

I like to challenge what beauty is. Some people hate their freckles and think themselves ugly for them. I find them beautiful and wish to write them in a way that provides a different narrative. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or beeholder). Same with ugly.

Side note to this: It's interesting how people will resist seeing what they aren’t used to. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote her main character as definitely Black in her EarthSea series and cover artists and film refused to portray that image. The Hunger Games also had the problem of no one realizing Rue was Black until the movie, even though it is explicit on the page.

Without overdoing it and hammering it into the page, can we have a confident, well-liked protagonist who is also considered ugly? (Of course, we can. Writers can do anything.)

As the author, I do spend a little bit of my thought energy thinking on how the people must really look. Its not like they bathe everyday, and many are in rough places, so perfect hair would not follow. Men, who in my mind do not have beards, probably have beards cause...how would they shave them? And going into a battle is messy work. I imagine them often as not looking too nice, and probably not smelling too nice either. I just don't write it that way.

Same! I keep wanting to include my side character, who is somewhat emotionally attached to her appearance, complaining about not having access to a real or hair products...and soap. Also, her clothes are dirty and her white boots are less and less white. It just hasn't fit into the story scenes yet.

And beards. Yes. Let's not talk about what those should look like by now. This is fantasy. Shhhhhhh

Though, I do have a workaround, but it would also be distracting from the scenes to mention. Only so much exposition/worldbuilding is tolerable.

 

[skip.knox]

I'm reluctant to describe my characters except where a description serves some additional purpose. Here's an example

"A soldier entered, trying not to look irritated and not doing a very good job of it. He looked exactly how Julian expected him to look: grizzled, a weather-worn face, strong arms, a barrel for a chest, aging but not yet gone soft. Certainly a veteran of several campaigns, he was standard-issue army. Father, Julian thought, would have loved him on sight."

I'm not sure ol' Marcus Salvius gets much more description for the rest of the book. You'll note the point is to have Julian react to the man's appearance, which meant a description was needed. As to beauty, I guess Julian's father probably approved while the son was scornful.

But beauty is deeply embedded in most every culture. Beauty runs alongside goodness and safety and sometimes even wisdom. The conventions can be contravened, but that's the standard. If you have your characters walk through a beautiful forest, the reader isn't expecting the trees to start killing people. If a beautiful sunset is described, the usual expectation is of a peaceful passage in the story.

Flipping that to make ugly wise and make a threat of the beautiful is almost as standard. We seem particularly to like the well-spoken villain, especially when they pretend to kindness. But there's plenty of room between the extremes. Two of my favorites are from The Rainmaker and from War and Peace.

In the former, we see Lizzie Curry reaching for adventure (which is its own kind of beauty), but she's held back because she believes herself to be "plain". It's heartbreaking to watch her unable to get beyond that.

In the latter, I'll always remember (I know this is true because I've remembered it for almost sixty years now) when Andrey is nearly killed at Austerlitz. With all the pain and blood and chaos around him, he falls and looks up at the blue sky and beholds beauty. It's a stunning contrast and a good illustration of how as writers it's not enough merely to say something is beautiful or even to describe beauty well. The real impact comes from feeling what the character feels in the moment.

With all that said, I don't think much about making my characters beautiful or ugly. I do look for opportunities to show how the MC reacts to how others look or behave, and how they react to the MC. Sometimes that involves them making a judgment that this or that one is good-looking or not.

 

[Finchbearer]

And beards. Yes. Let's not talk about what those should look like by now. This is fantasy.

I believe in Viking warrior culture they were very hair proud, and would probably have groomed themselves to perfection before a bloody battle. Or it is what I’d like to imagine anyway.

 

[Orc Knight]

I'll admit to both, though a lot heavier on the beautiful people scale back in my late teens when I first stepped into drawing my stories (not all that well, mind) to actually putting it to page. Beauties and badasses both. It has since gone in many different directions. As pointed out by Fyri, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (and the most beautiful thing to a beholder is itself in the mirror) and as my own tastes have changed, so it is reflected in my writing.

For example, having gone back to one of my earlier stories, the FMC was simply only a LI and a beautiful, if slightly tan skinned young woman who could be crass and not above shoving people out of windows in the dead of winter. Has since became the MC (Turned out more interesting then my original character) and is usually just described as being annoyed by being shorter then many people around her, wearing a straw hat with a shark tooth hanging on a string on it, tattooed, scarred and very dark skinned with possibly brown eyes that are more then likely actually black. Given what is going to happen over the course of the story, likely going to get more scars. So far most of the description I give her.

And within the world, there are plenty of variations within the societies concerning what is beautiful.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Urban Fantasy with a lot of fae and fae/mixes and not too many ugly sticks. Our alpha reader calls our character model page on Pinterest "sexy hell."

This is one of our main protagonists, Winter Mulcahy. Shh! We don't share these much at all.

 

[Fyri]

And beards. Yes. Let's not talk about what those should look like by now. This is fantasy.

I believe in Viking warrior culture they were very hair proud, and would probably have groomed themselves to perfection before a bloody battle. Or it is what I’d like to imagine anyway.

Vikings taught me that braids are functional as well as cool looking.

Also! I just remembered, one of my male characters is meant to be quite attractive, despite the dirt and grim of wilderness. But I can’t say much about that because my MC is 14 and he is 34 and I had enough people confusing their mentor/student bond as "I thought she wanted to date him." My other main character is goofy and dorky and makes a character in later books very angry because character 2 believes himself to be way more attractive, but all the girls like to hang out with the silly boy instead.

 

[Finchbearer]

But beauty is deeply embedded in most every culture. Beauty runs alongside goodness and safety and sometimes even wisdom

I think that this is true, but recently I’ve been reading Legends and Lattes, where a female orc decides to open a coffee shop alongside a hob(goblin) and a succubus (yes really) and they are just really fun characters to read about. There’s zero focus on physical beauty and maybe somehow there’s more room to show off their personalities. It just works.

Maybe there is a slightly changing tide is fantasy writing trends in that sense.

For the c some of the characters I recently started writing they are not known for being good looking and it has been more freeing in terms of exploring their personalities.

 

[Ban]

I tend to front-load my character descriptions and add little else to it over the course of the story. Usually this results in a sentence or two describing their main features, such as the strongmen's height, hair and muscle or a post-human's physical aberrations. I find it best to instill these things in a reader's mind early and then reiterate them, instead of revealing their appearance over time. Now onto the question. Looking only at the finished novella and short stories I have, the closest I've come to calling a character beautiful is when I described one protagonist's dress as striking and her as "lovely to talk to". A quick skim tells me I didn't write a word on her physical appearance.

 

[Orc Knight]

So you've found Legends and Lattes eh?; Good book, still need to read the pre - sequel? Anyways, the next story. If you're up for other orc fantasy romance, there's The Sorceress and Her Orc too.

(Is obviously always on the lookout for orc stories of all sorts)

 

[Finchbearer]

So you've found Legends and Lattes eh?; Good book, still need to read the pre - sequel? Anyways, the next story. If you're up for other orc fantasy romance, there's The Sorceress and Her Orc too.

(Is obviously always on the lookout for orc stories of all sorts)

You? Interested in orc stuff?

I’m loving it so far! Already got Bookshops and Bonedust on the list.

 

[Queshire]

One of my characters is a play on the "icy beauty" trope so I imagine her as rather attractive, though I don't think I go into much detail about her appearance.

In my setting at a certain point mana cultivators start to become as much magic as matter so that same icy beauty eventually develops unsettlingly pale skin that occasionally glints in the light like there's embedded ice crystals and a habit of dissolving into flurries of snowflakes when she moves.

I want to double down on magic affecting appearance in the future. My current idea is to take inspiration from Shadowrun and have some people turn into Elves. Dwarves, Orcs or so on once they awaken their mana.

 

[Finchbearer]

I’ve often found myself reading in depth descriptions of a characters appearance… and I have to honestly ask myself does it even make a difference or does it just have the potential to become a bad habit where the reader is given information they could otherwise just imagine from any number of other factors?

Because really there’s a million ways in which a character can be conveyed in writing, and the rest can be down to the readers interpretation, and I’m also starting to realise how much of a skill and a restriction it can be for a writer to use other ways of bringing forth a rounded image of any character.

 

[Dankolisic]

I have several characters that have their own looks.
"beauty" isn't a universal thing where they live, rather each person looks different depending on where they live. For instance, on the far north in Garlin, a typical "handsome" greenmare has furry pointy ears, and they are big and strong. The ones with less furry ears are considered unworthy to live in harsh conditions.
But if you talk about how beautiful actors who shall maybe one day act in a live adaptation should be, then i can give an answer where I will write down who would I like to act as the characters(if the actors where the same age):
Aeliz (main protagonist) - Nicholas Hamilton
Vehren - Bill Skarsgard
Enevina - Sarah Desjardins
Vukan - Kevin Alves
Revenbor - Charlie Wright
Banut - Will Poulter

 

[Demesnedenoir]

Beauty is useful and is often best when portrayed by the reactions of others. Other characters find one of my MCs beautiful, but when she drops her robes, she experiences nothing but her own insecurities. One is a scar-faced loser who sees himself uglier than he is, but is he otherwise attractive? I don't really say, except he doesn't think so. Another is pretty with red hair, and while she knows she's pretty, she's more caught up in being really short. The red hair also brings about issues in other cultures. One dude the women just want; he's the sort even pretty girls find intimidating. Another guy is good-looking, but, not everybody goes gaga over him. Another guy is short and wiry with a scar across his eye that makes for a twitch, assumed he's kind of average otherwise. And one non-human elf-like dude is attractive in a somewhat alien way to humans, but finds all the humans on this side of funny-looking.

Now, the interesting question would be how readers see them because I don't dwell on most of their looks.

 

[Queshire]

There's also the inverse to consider. It's a convenient tool to use appearance to support characterization, but like.... do we need to hear about Rita Skeeter's mannish hands to know that she's skeevy?

 

[Finchbearer]

There's also the inverse to consider. It's a convenient tool to use appearance to support characterization, but like.... do we need to hear about Rita Skeeter's mannish hands to know that she's skeevy?

those two traits are not mutually exclusive

 

[Finchbearer]

I have several characters that have their own looks.
"beauty" isn't a universal thing where they live, rather each person looks different depending on where they live. For instance, on the far north in Garlin, a typical "handsome" greenmare has furry pointy ears, and they are big and strong. The ones with less furry ears are considered unworthy to live in harsh conditions.
But if you talk about how beautiful actors who shall maybe one day act in a live adaptation should be, then i can give an answer where I will write down who would I like to act as the characters(if the actors where the same age):
Aeliz (main protagonist) - Nicholas Hamilton
Vehren - Bill Skarsgard
Enevina - Sarah Desjardins
Vukan - Kevin Alves
Revenbor - Charlie Wright
Banut - Will Poulter

now that is getting into fantasy casting…which is fun, but also kind of takes the magic away just a little bit for me 🫣 but it can be fun.

 

[Finchbearer]

I tend to front-load my character descriptions and add little else to it over the course of the story. Usually this results in a sentence or two describing their main features, such as the strongmen's height, hair and muscle or a post-human's physical aberrations. I find it best to instill these things in a reader's mind early and then reiterate them, instead of revealing their appearance over time. Now onto the question. Looking only at the finished novella and short stories I have, the closest I've come to calling a character beautiful is when I described one protagonist's dress as striking and her as "lovely to talk to". A quick skim tells me I didn't write a word on her physical appearance.

If we’re reading about strongmen, already a distinct image comes to mind! The other description sounds very wholesome.