Describing my MC

[Velka]

My world is a fantasy setting, but very much based on the Phoenicians; think Lebanon, seafaring people, domination of the Mediterranean Sea.

One of my MCs is a woman who is from a completely made up city-state in a completely made up country, but I want to communicate to my reader that she is not Caucasian. I've done my research, but I've found most of it outlines what not to do when addressing race, instead of what to effectively do.

There have also been arguments that describing skin colour is akin to describing hair or eye colour; only do it when it is necessary to the plot. While I agree that tedious character description achieves nothing, I do strongly feel that it is important that my reader doesn't default to her being Caucasian. She doesn't face discrimination or adversity due to her race in the story (since it is based in her lands), but it is a part of who she is and I think it's important (I know I've said that twice, but it's important to me... damnit, three times). I also want to have her mixed race (that of Athar; brown skin/dark eyes/black hair, and Sidon; lighter skin and characteristic golden eyes) act as a physical metaphor of her ties to the two city-states.

Here's what I've come up with. Please criticize & comment.

"She certainly had the Artharian complexion, deep and bronzed by birth and sun, but her eyes were golden, like those from Sidon."

Does this conjure an image of a woman of Arabic descent? If not, what do you suggest?

 

[Jabrosky]

I like your current approach to description. I never agreed with the claim that it would take us out of the character's point of view if you're using third-person limited. Your camera is still hovering over the character, which would give you a good view of her appearance without zooming out into total omniscience. And yes, I did imagine her as looking Arabic instead of European.

 

[skip.knox]

The description merely made me think "exotic". Golden eyes are not common no matter what the racial type. Bronze skin could be most anything, though definitely not white.

I do think a good approach, which you seem to be taking, is to have others comment on her appearance. This would be most appropriate if she were somewhere where she was not the norm, so it would make sense to have someone comment.

You might also have them say something about some other aspect of her appearance than merely skin color (and eyes). Perhaps something of her clothing, or her accent, or how she wears her hair. That way, the comment isn't so obviously about skin.

 

[CupofJoe]

Tricky... Not to me... I don't know what Atharian or Sidon means... but it does let me know that she is neither one nor the other... and that may be what you want...
Personally I leave out any set description. Unless it is pertinent to the plot or she is unusual [and you say she is not...], then let the reader pick up her looks from separate very small hints if at all. If she is pretty, have someone comment on her pretty golden eyes, or if they are being nasty, how they dislike the shape of her nose [Not wide/narrow/straight/imperial like a true Atharian/Sidon] etc...
Again of it is needed further I'd comment on her mixed race by someone asking her opinion about something that affect one side or the other...
If the world is as you describe then a reader should be able to workout that the characters are not Nordic pale and the place not Northern Europe from how it looks and they move within it...

 

[cupiscent]

A key consideration for any physical description is: what is "normal"? Authors tend to only describe non-white physical features, enforcing a mindset that white is normal. Which can be a bit poisonous, and yes, means that the reader often needs to be told quite firmly that this character - or even this entire "normal" - is not white. So I'll note that ambiguous adjectives like "deep" and "bronzed" can cover a wide range of options. (Witness the arguments over Katniss Everdeen and her "olive" complexion.) Making a strong statement about colour can sometimes be the only way to communicate it. Plus it can be a handy way to get a little nuance - a bitchy white girl might look like she was carved from alabaster, while a paternal darker man might have skin the colour of a sun-warmed, spreading oak tree.

Definitely layer up description - not just of physicality, but of cultural trappings, and the effects all of these have. Skin-related effects like blushing or bruising or sunburn can manifest differently on darker complexions - and of course different cultures have different notions of what is beautiful and therefore what should be emphasised by dress or cosmetics. Adornments are a great way to sneak in physical details - henna tattoos that show up faintly against nut-brown skin, or a delicate golden chain braided into thick black hair and supporting a gem that hangs between strong, black eyebrows. The more you can make the description about what it's like to be Athar (or Sidon, or mixed) rather than just look Athar, the stronger everything will be.

 

[Penpilot]

One thing to remember is you don't have to do it all at once. What I mean by that is that you can slow drip the information, so a clearer and clearer picture is formed. It's simple enough to mention dark skin to establish she's not white. After that, you can dial in the ethnicity through more physical description sprinkled through out the text, and through revelation of culture.

If you combine a culture that's reminiscent of the middle east with someone who's dark skinned, then you'll conjure an image that's close to what you want. And as you dial things in through telling the story, that image will get stronger and stronger.

 

[Folderol]

As a Caucasian who tans easily, I'd leave off the bit about the sun if you want to convey that her skin is dark by birth. If the fact that she lives in a sunny climate is important in that spot, perhaps add a separate phrase about it.

My books have a non-Caucasian female MC as well, and I haven't described anything except her dark hair. Consequently, none of my readers have picked up the fact that she's not white. It doesn't really matter for me, but I'm cheering you on.

 

[Tom]

I have a culture of non-Caucasian people living alongside Caucasians. I describe them as having black hair, dark eyes, and red-brown skin the color of fired clay.

I think your description is pretty good, although, like others have said, if she's of non-white descent the part about her skin being bronzed from the sun doesn't make much sense. It might set your readers up to think that she's a heavily tanned Caucasian--though I myself burn instead of tan, I have plenty of friends who turn bronze in the summer.

 

[Velka]

All your comments have given me a lot to digest, thank you!

It may have been a bit confusing, as I gave that line totally out of context. It was an observation made in the headspace of the other MC who was meeting her for the first time. He is from the third city-state, Gebal, and while all three of them (Sidon, Gebal, and Athar) live in relative peace in the land of Carpathia, there are underlying political and cultural tensions. I felt it was authentic for him to notice how she seemed to belong to the two of them.

I used the phrase "by birth and sun" because she is in a hot, sunny climate (her land borders a desert), and it seemed like a natural thing for the person observing her to think, because it's a lot hotter there than it is where he comes from. I can see how the connection between the sun and bronze/tanning could be made though. Perhaps I'll take the "and sun" part out.

This happens in the second chapter. From my own experience and research, I think it's important to make known any physical descriptions you want the reader to know early in the book. Otherwise they create their own picture and then, bam, on page 134 you comment on someone's red hair and the reader is like, damn, I've pictured her as a blonde this entire time.

I have added other physical description bits earlier in the chapter ("Wisps of black hair that had escaped from her ribbon were plastered to her forehead and neck."; "He couldn’t help but feel he was missing the point when she pinched the crooked bridge of her nose and sighed."). I'm trying to leave it ambiguous to a certain point, but with enough description to make my intent clear. It's a reality that in all writing, especially fantasy, the default is Caucasian and like cupiscent said, the reader needs to be politely bonked on the head with intentional descriptions when describing a POC. When dealing with a made up world, instead of a known real-world place, I lose the luxury of a reader's schema being able to fill in information.

Like many commenters have suggested, I've been using descriptions of the world to create the picture of the land, cultures, and peoples. There's sandstorms, region-specific architecture, clothing, etc. However, those I have the luxury of time to evolve over the course of the story, whereas character description and race is something I have a sense of urgency for.

Again, thank you all!

 

[Jabrosky]

By the way, I always thought the most fascinating thing about the ancient Mediterranean as a setting is how multicultural and multiracial it actually was, a fact that unfortunately many overlook. You had Black African, Semitic and other Middle Eastern, Greco-Roman, and White European peoples all settled along it, like frogs around a pond, and intermingling with one another. This process would have accelerated even faster after the Romans established their vast transcontinental empire. The coming of the Huns from the Mongolian steppes might have even contributed an East Asian presence in the area. It's a great time and place if you're interested in pre-industrial racial diversity.

I realize the OP's focus is on Phoenicia, but I commend them for their choice of setting.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

My question to you would be why do you want to do this? Look, consider the work from the readers' perspective. By and large they want to make up their own image of a character, which will probably be of whatever race they're of. And that should be fine. It even helps sell books. I've heard suggestions that one of the reasons Twilight did so well is that the character of Bella is fairly non-descript allowing every teenaged girl reading the books to imagine themselves as her. If Bella had been say Spanish they would have probably lost a chunk of the audience.

So my advice would be to keep descriptions of your MC as non-specific as possible and related to the points you need to make. Descriptions of other characters are different by the way, because they are largely making a world view for the reader. The difference being that for the MC the reader is often seeing herself through her eyes and thus identifying with her or really picturing herself in her role, for the rest she's just describing the world around her. For example I as a reader can go to some land and see lots of green or blue people and think wow that's strange and wonderful. But if the character I'm imagining myself as is green or blue, somehow I'm going to have a harder time identifying with said character (because I'm actually orange!).

So what are the points you need to make about her? That she's of mixed race? Say it - but non descript. So she's darker skinned than such and such a people (this works because my orange is darker than some others even though I'm still a light orange skinned person so I can still identify as can those with darker orange skin than mine). That she's beautiful or non-descript. Say it. But you don't have to say specifically what makes her so good looking or not unless it advances your plot.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Svrtnsse]

If it's important to you to establish the skin color of the character as something that's different than what you suspect the reader will imagine, then introduce it as soon as possible.

The color of a person's skin is something that's almost impossible not to see when you look at them and as such it's part of the image we create when we first meet the character. The only exceptions would be if it's really dark, or if the character who meets the person is blind.

I'm a big believer in first impressions, and that you shouldn't change them. If I were to introduce a character for which the skin color is important, or just deviating from the norm, I would try to mention it within the same paragraph as the one in which the character is first seen by the reader - or possibly the one following.
If I didn't do that, I wouldn't mention their skin color at all, for the rest of the story. I'd just let the reader make up their own opinion and let them keep it their way.

tbc...

 

[cupiscent]

My question to you would be why do you want to do this? Look, consider the work from the readers' perspective. By and large they want to make up their own image of a character, which will probably be of whatever race they're of.

Sadly, not so. I've seen tests - which sadly I can't unearth now - where children of colour consistently apply positive attributes - heroism, attractiveness, worthiness, intelligence - to white faces, and negative ones to faces of their own colour. The default "normal" is white, which is why active representation of diversity in fiction matters. (I recommend a little reading regarding the We Need Diverse Books campaign, especially their FAQs on statistics and benefits.)

 

[K.S. Crooks]

I love that you provide a description of the character. The part about the sun I like as well. Some people don't realize there are those who become darker as they age due to their exposure to the sun. You could also be referring to her becoming darker because of being in a new place with stronger sunlight.
The one thing I would say is that perhaps add something else about her. Only having colour (skin, eyes) makes it seem like a focal point and not simply characteristics. Which may be what you want. I am in the middle of reading the book Graceling, where the main character and all the people with special abilities have eyes of two different colours. I also echo what Cupiscent said about describing people who are white as well, because that is as much a colour as any other shade. And the use of other features like clothing or jewellery to describe a culture. Good luck with your story.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Another thing you could try, which is probably a bit trickier, is to establish that all characters are dark skinned in the setting of the story. It should then follow on naturally that other characters introduced are as well. You may be able to get more effect out of this by introducing one character who is not dark skinned and then making a point of how he isn't. Then when you're not making the same point about your MC, it will be easier for the reader to assume she's dark skinned too.

Mind you, I haven't tried this in practice, but the theory seems sound.

 

[Mythopoet]

Hi,

My question to you would be why do you want to do this? Look, consider the work from the readers' perspective. By and large they want to make up their own image of a character, which will probably be of whatever race they're of.

Source? That may be what you want, but I prefer to have the author give me a basic description of all important characters. Surprisingly, different readers want different things.

OP: In Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books she comes right out and says, in general, what the skin color of the people of Earthsea is like. And she does it without any sort of assumptions, judgements, associations or baggage attached. She just basically states, to paraphrase "the people of these islands had brown skin and the people of these islands had pale skin", etc. It's a refreshingly direct approach, imo. I think that beating around the bush and shying away from the issue of skin color is what makes it more of an issue than it should be. I prefer a simple, direct and unashamed approach to skin color.

 

[Velka]

After digesting all your comments here's what I've changed it to.

"She certainly had the Atharian complexion, brown and bronzed by birth, but her eyes were golden, like those from Sidon."

I think it's more direct, removes the ambiguity of the 'sun' comment in my original, spells the name of the damn people right (I can't believe I missed that), and I'm a sucker for alliteration.

To touch on a few points commenters have made (in no particular order):
I do comment on all my important characters skin colour, because there is a large amount of diversity, and it is a distinguishing factor between the peoples of the three city-states in the book. I'm now just investing a lot of time into figuring out how to do it artistically and appropriately.
I think establishing race is an important thing. There is, overall, a large lack of diversity in fantasy writing. If a reader cannot immerse themselves into my characters because they may be a different race that's their problem.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Cupiscent,

Yes, sad but true. I've seen some of those studies myself. (I did post grad psych twenty nearly thirty years ago so bear in mind that what I say is a little behind the times.) It's a stinging criticism of race relations in much of the western world. In essence children of some minority groups (and I'm not even sure that black really counts as a minority in parts of the US) have been so traumatised by the images and stories they've seen and events they've witnessed that they've begun to reject their own race at a fundamental level. It's the good guys wear white stereotype applied to ethnicity.

However the data is mixed as I recall. It happens in certain locations but not across the entire world. Fopr example if a black child grows up in a high crime, low socio-economic area where they get to witness traumatic events committed by other members of their race, and perhaps also are exposed to a white teacher / role model, it's quite pronounced. However in more culturally diverse areas where life is less frightening and children are exposed to positive role models of their own ethnicity, the effect is far less noticeable.

And there have been some unexpected variations to this. In some areas where the predominent ethnicity is not white and where there is a strong ethnic identity associated with cultural features / history, children have been more likely to associate white faces with negative connotations. Within America I believe native Americans raised on reservations or in strongly tribal areas have exhibited this bias. Similarly in Canada the effect has been seen among the various tribes (I would use the term eskimo but have been told that this is a snub for them.) In my own country of New Zealand, the effect has been seen among Maori children though not consistently.

There is also a strange twist in the tale. You would expect that children who have learned to associate say black faces with negative stereotypes, would then associate those negative stereotypes with black faces. But the studies - and I am speaking now twenty plus years behind the times - have been consistently mixed. Black faces have popularly been associated with terms like scary etc. But one study I recall reading showed that Innuit children who've seen very few black people also draw black faces when prompted for these sorts of terms. Chinese children don't. They tend to draw others with their own skin colour.

I think what I'm trying to say is that this is a far more confused issue than would generally be accepted. Certainly it's not black and white (pun intended) as the media would have us believe.

And then to add a little fat to the fire, we are talking in this thread about identification of readers to characters with no expressed ethnicity. A somewhat different ball game.

However, as an aside to that, if you do as a writer essentially label your character as being of a certain ethnicity, you then get lumbered with another potential ethical dilemma. Do you then remove the negative stereotypes of that character to be politically correct? Are you as an author responsible for removing prejudice from the world? I don't have an answer for that. But I can say that if you don't label your character's ethnicity then you don't have to face this question.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[psychotick]

Hi Mytho,

Yeah source for that is largely my own head - I freely admit it. But when I read a book and the hero is busy swashbuckling dragons or whatever, in my thoughts he's me. And since I'm white, he's white. I have no reason to believe that other people are really that different - however I could be imaginatively stunted! Maybe for everone else when they imagine the hero beating the crud out of old smokey they also imagine him as me!!!

Cheers, Greg.