Character Descriptions

[CharlieDay]

Hello everybody, I am new to this forum and I am currently working on a dark fantasy adventure novel (about half way complete at this point) and I have been struggling with when and where to put in the descriptions of characters, or even if I should be describing them at all. So here are some of my questions...

-At what point after introducing a new character do you start to describe their appearance? IE- Immediately, within a few pages, or chapters later?

-Do you, at least somewhat, describe every character that is introduced?

-How detailed do you get with character descriptions, and does this vary with character importance? IE- Just a few sentences, or several paragraphs?

-Is it sometimes better not to describe the appearance of a character and leave it up to the readers imagination?

I am asking this because my entire story is a long journey, and the main characters are constantly meeting new characters. I feel like I am following into the trap of describing each new character in the same way as the last by writing a paragraph or so shortly after my main characters meet them describing their appearance and mannerisms.

This is my first story and I have found this to be one of the areas I have been struggling with most so far. Any input at all would be greatly appreciated!!!

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Generally, the amount I describe a character scales linearly with how important that character is. Minor, incidental characters, especially those whose appearance is unimportant (it hardly matters if the random innkeeper who shows up in exactly one sentence is fat or thin), rarely get more than a single adjective, and sometimes not even that.

If your characters run into a hermit in the woods, who they'll hang out with for one chapter and never see again, I'd give him a few adjectives; gnarled, filthy, sprightly, dead-eyed, etc.

More important characters get some description within a paragraph of first introduction, if not immediately. I rarely do a description dump, unless their description is especially weird, or somehow important to the plot. The main character in my novel attends a royal ball in the fifth chapter, during which her dress and accessories get two whole paragraphs (it's the royal ball, after all!), but the rest of the time clothes are limited to a couple of words, even on major characters. Sumptuous details do please some people, but they bore me, and I'm writing a novel I would want to read. ;-)

And the amount of description of characters we've seen diminishes as the book goes on. The main character's hair is "honey-blonde" and that's mentioned a few times, especially early on, but not excessively. We get it, she's blonde. Sometimes the mention is done just to remind the reader about physical details; sometimes it's because another character notices it and it makes sense in terms of what they would be thinking about as we're viewing the story from their POV.

 

[Devor]

I never thought about character descriptions much until I recently read the Count of Monte Cristo, and I noticed that each of the main characters gets a very lengthy description shortly after they're featured, and Dumas at one point apologizes for not providing a proper description of one character when he was first met.

But the descriptions have little to do with their clothes or their hair color or the curvature of the dimples on their cheeks. He describes one person, and I'm going by memory, as someone who frequently hosts balls and galas but spends only 15 minutes there himself, "exactly 45 minutes less than the king" spends at his events. That description, I felt, captured his personality and gave his character's other traits something to latch on to. I didn't need to remember if he wore heavy tunics or the color of his hair, although I'm certain Dumas probably mentioned those details. I just needed to know that he thought his guests to be less worthy of his attention than the king does.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

That's a neat tactic, but it makes me worry readers might find it a little dated. Hm, maybe it depends on the perspective. If you're doing third-person limited (a la Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Wheel of Time), which seems to be the most common fantasy POV these days -- the reader doesn't know anything the current POV character doesn't know -- then descriptions like that can be tricky, since whatever is described has to be something the POV character knows.

I was reading Far from the Madding Crowd a couple of months ago, and there's a scene where the main character goes into a bar, and interspersed with the dialogue are long descriptions of the various characters, using exactly the kind of description you give above -- the problem is that the main character has never met or heard of any of these people before, so it really broke me out of the story to get all this info from the perspective of an omniscient third person. I think maybe that's why third-person limited is so prevalent these days: it helps you identify with the POV characters more, and experience the story as if you were really there.

That said, if the reader is being introduced for the first time to a character that the POV character already knows, then details about their personality are certainly doable, and can be quite entertaining (I love the 15-minute thing). I don't know if I'd do it that way; it feels odd to me to write details about a character that aren't salient to the events at hand.

 

[ShortHair]

My own strategy (and YMMV) is to leave off character descriptions entirely. If you're doing your job correctly, the reader will fill in those blanks for you and feel more invested in your characters. You can infer a lot from occupation, from the reactions of other characters, from interior monologues, and so on. And really, is the shape of someone's nose that important?

A reader once told me he thought the hero of a story looked like Brian Dennehy. When I looked at the story, there was no description at all, but I had had Dennehy in mind while writing it. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not.

 

[Chilari]

I try to get some character description in where it fits well, but I don't obsess over making sure the readers know what the characters look like. Appearance isn't how the readers identify the characters, because they can't see them anyway, they see the characters' names, how they talk, how they act as I describe it. Having said that, my main character does judge other characters based upon their appearance. So she distrusts one character, who is scarred and ugly, dispite his kindness, and trusts another who she finds attractive in preference. So I have to describe those characters, because it's something she notices and something she thinks about a lot. I haven't got to the attractive guy yet in what I'm writing (because I only started writing at midnight this morning), but I have decided I'm going to base his apperance on a very attractive Spanish F1 driver.

 

[CharlieDay]

Thank you for all of the responses everyone! You have all given me different perspectives and ideas that I will keep in mind going forward with my story. I already have many ideas for changing character introductions in chapters I have already written. Thank you!

 

[TWErvin2]

I avoid getting too detailed in my descriptions. Giving basics, often within context to demonstrate age, height, dress/attire, and the like guides the reader while allowing them to form their own image. Being too controlling--trying to make everything exact so that the reader 'sees' the caracter exacctly as intended doesn't work, at least not for me both as a reader and a writer.

Sometimes a name, station in life, profession or job, things like that will also help a reader form an image, just as what other characters think or say about a character does the same. How they respond, for example, might hint at attractiveness.

Just a few of my thoughts on the topic. Every writer has their own style, so there isn't any one right way to do it.

 

[sashamerideth]

I am a fan of weaving descriptions into the narrative, she smoothed out her light blue dress as she knelt on the floor, lacing her delicate fingers in her lap. That sort of thing. (phone autocorrect wanted to give her delicious fingers)

I rarely used specifics and leave a lot to the reader. In the above case her dress color matched her social rank in my story, only reason I used the color there.

 

[Kevlar]

For me it all depends. Not just on the character's importance, but a wide range of things. For instance I'm not going to describe every man and woman that a character meets, but if there's something about the person that catches their attention I will. When meeting people for a short moment you probably don't actively notice their hair colour, but can conjure it in hindsight. Their eye colour, probably not. If I have a male character who sees a woman he views as positively gorgeous I would probably have to describe her. It should serve another purpose though. Perhaps he is distracted when he shouldn't be. Perhaps I describe her and people think she's important, and I throw them off by showing the unassuming woman that the POV character thought was plain in passing as an important character. Why wouldn't she be ugly? Ugly is noticeable. "(Slightly) Pretty" and "plain" are about the only two things that aren't.