Describing Characters

[Chessie]

Hi friends, I would like to ask how you all go about describing your characters in the flow of your story. I have a hard time with this because some advice says not to do it, while others say to do it minimally, and I personally don't like reading heavy descriptions of characters because I'll never remember it all anyway.

But my beta readers seem to think this is something I need to work on. I don't describe how the characters look enough and they're left with questions in their minds. Anyone have good suggestions? And thank you!

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I'm a minimalist. I want to give the reader a few prominent details & let the reader fill in the blanks from their own experiences. I feel this is one of many ways to make the reader and active participant in the story.

So, if I'm describing an old woman's face, what stands out as dominant? Does she have a long, hooked nose? Does she have bushy, unkempt eyebrows? Are the wrinkles running down the sides of her mouth extremely deep? Focus on a couple, no more than three for me usually, and let the reader paint the mundane details.

For POV characters, I use even less at one time. I may mention a physical characteristic but many of the other features can be added by context. For example, if I'm writing a young woman, her deference to that old woman we described before (if written well) will tell us that our POV is younger. There are many sneaky ways to slip in these sorts of details. Be clever. Being sneaky with description can be a great component of storytelling if done right.

 

[Chessie]

Absolutely, and thank you. I can do non-POV characters fine, its the POV that gets me. How does one describe their own self?

 

[GeekDavid]

I just described someone as "A tall powerfully built man with hair the color of sunlight and bright blue eyes with a generous helping of smile lines at the corners," and I think that's good enough for my purposes right now.

Does it matter for the purposes of the story that he is exactly six-foot-whatever? I don't think so.

 

[Svrtnsse]

My theory is that I describe the character's appearance when I introduce them and then don't come back to it unless it's important to the story. The description is detailed enough that the reader gets a general idea, but vague enough to leave room for the imagination.
I believe that a reader will form an image very quickly and that everything that forces them to revise that image will annoy them. The first impression the reader gets will last. I think you can build on that impression without too much issue but you shouldn't try to change it.

For example, if you don't mention the color of a character's hair when they're introduced, don't mention it later as someone will have imagined them with a different color. However, if you don't mention that your character has the hair on their left leg done in a french braid style when you first describe them it's fine to mention it later - especially if you mention them wearing a long dress in the first scene (so the reader can't "see" their legs).

You can also pull attention to a character's appearance if you've mentioned it in the past - it will cement the reader's impression and that's not really a bad thing I think.
My character Jolene is described as having long, curly, blonde hair and that's something I keep coming back to; her blond curls bobbing as she walk, or blowing in the wind etc.

This is the paragraph where Jolene first appears in the story:

He started awake. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen stood right by his char, trying to talk to him. She'd just said something but he had no idea what. All he could think of were large blue eyes, curly blonde hair and round little cheeks that smiled like the sun.

It's very vague, but it's enough to give you an impression of the character. A few lines later I add another detail:

Enar stared after her. With her golden curls bobbing in the wind and her long brown dress swinging back and forth to the movement of her hips she sure was a sight to behold. He wondered if she was single.

The dress hasn't been mentioned before so I feel it's okay to wait a little bit (5 lines of text) to add that bit.
That's all the description there is of her and I don't feel there's more needed. I believe you already have a fairly good image of the woman in question.

 

[Chessie]

But what about describing POV characters? I guess that's what my question is mainly about, sorry for not being clear enough.

 

[GeekDavid]

But what about describing POV characters? I guess that's what my question is mainly about, sorry for not being clear enough.

Well, for the abovementioned tall person, since I am writing it in first-person POV, I noted that the tall person had to look down to meet the POV character's eyes.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Here's how I described Enar (my MC). It's the second paragraph of the book:

Enar was in his early thirties and, by anfylk standards, rather average. Perhaps he was a little rounder than what was perfectly healthy, but so were a lot of people these days. His hair was dark and unruly but respectably short if not recently cut. For the trip he'd dressed comfortably in a sweater, jeans and his favorite gardening boots. A heavy coat hung from a peg on the wall next to the window by his seat.

The story is written in third person so here's me as a narrator telling the reader what the guy looks like. Since he's the POV character I've added some things that aren't readily visible, like his age and the fact that he has a pair of favorite boots for gardening. I also tried to get the description to reflect some of his personality by adding that he's comfortably dressed and that his hair is respectably short but not cut recently.
These are quite minor details, but I believe they may have a small but meaningful impact on the readers perception of the character.

This is the only description of how Enar looks.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

What I think is important about POV characters is how they respond and react, not so much what they look like. I just wrote an introductory chapter for a collaborative work where I'm pretty certain I didn't describe the POV at all. Still, I feel some sense of the character's appearance slipped in. Her name is ethnic, she responds to elders who are described in a certain way, her thought processes are indicative of someone from her station, age group, and culture.

There is a theory that states the more vague you are in describing your POV, the more likely your reader will be to imagine themselves in that role. I don't by that lock, stock, & barrel but the idea has some merit.

Let's examine this from another approach though. Your POV should be involved in some pretty serious business, hopefully grave happenings right from the get go, or at least teetering on the edge. When you're in crisis, do you think about what you look like? I don't. That's an extreme example I know. However, the point remains. The physical description is less telling as a detail than the reaction to events. It's certainly less important or lasting. That's why I prefer the minimalist approach...one detail for my POV (or none) is my approach. This does change from story to story, character to character though.

Lastly, I've read many stories where the image my mind created of a character was so far off from a later description. Guess which one survived the contradiction...the image my mind created won out. That's the basic reason I feel these details are less important than context and reactions.

 

[Penpilot]

But what about describing POV characters? I guess that's what my question is mainly about, sorry for not being clear enough.

I'm a minimalist. I get comments from readers on how they want me to describe more, but I tend to ignore them because IMHO I've given them more than enough to get a general feel for what the character looks like.

But if you want to add more, think about presence. What I mean by that is think about how they interact with the world around them. Compare how a large person moving through the world is different than a smaller person. How do their foot steps sound walking on a wooden floor, etc. Also how does it feel to have certain traits. If they have a beard. Have the POV character scratch it, clean it, deal with it getting in their mouths when they eat, etc. Use these things as a way to get that detail out there in a more indirect way.

What a person wears feels and works different. Using this you can give the reader an impression of what a character is wearing. A long cloak feels different than a short jacket. Armor feels different than wool. Having lots of pockets may require a multi-pocket search for an item. If you mention armor squeaking as a character moves, you can get better mileage for your words than just stating something.

 

[Chessie]

Thank you, all of these comments are very helpful. Penpilot, I tend to be a minimalist too and go for the feel of the character. In the particular scene I sent the beta readers, they mentioned that the POV character felt like a smaller woman, which is the case. They got her appearance down from what she was wearing and a mention about her race (things described about where she came from). I figured that was enough but since all of them implied the same issue, figured I would take a look at it.

 

[ThinkerX]

I use between 'a few words' and 'a few sentences' of description when it comes to characters appearances. This applies even to major characters.

I do have a large number of minor characters, many of them exotic or unusual to the MC's. To set the tone, even these lowly extra's and bit players get a few words worth of description: 'line of skinny loincloth clad laborers' or 'skinny little shrew of a woman in a green and gold dress', for example. To me, this is much better than simply going with 'laborers' or 'woman'.

 

[Jabrosky]

I appreciate vivid prose a great deal, but I believe it works best if you can paint the clearest image with just a few powerful words, or alternatively scatter your descriptions of the same character. I'm not necessarily against info-dumps on principle, but I reserve those for moments when I want to slow the pace down.

For my current WIP's female protagonist, I'm scattering the descriptors. Shall I quote a few examples of my own writing in this thread?

[Queen Nefrusobek's] dark cocoa skin sparkled with perspiration from the Kametian sun roasting overhead.

"If it's any consolation, you look ravishing today, my Queen," Djadao said. "Your lithe curves glisten like polished ebony underneath the Creator's golden light, and it dazzles me to blindness."

Tears crept out of her eyes to drip down her cheeks' beauty scars.

After taking her seat, Nefrusobek put her blue-striped nemes crown over her frizzy hair and straightened her back up, beaming with regal pride. Gold jewelry inlaid with gemstones glittered all over her neck and limbs.

Something clutched onto Nefrusobek's backside and groped it with giant iron fingers.

“I see what they say about the Kametian ladies' endowments is true!” a male voice growled in a thick foreign accent. “Never have I seen such a juicy rump!”

These descriptive lines are all spaced wide apart in my manuscript, yet I believe they suffice to paint a clear portrait of my heroine even if they're not all together in one info-dump.

 

[Guy]

As a writer, I have a very specific image of my MCs in mind. As a reader, I want to know what these people look like. James Fenmore Cooper is an example of taking character description to extremes. He would get into every bead on a native's clothing. That's going a bit far, but I hate it when I'm reading a book and I have absolutely no idea what this person looks like. Even more bothersome is when the writer finally decides to tell me - at the end of the book. Usually, it turns out my image of the character was dead wrong and it completely nullifies the experience of reading the story. No reason you can't spare at least a few sentences. This is particularly true of races the writer made up. It bugs me to this day that nowhere in The Hobbit or the entire LOTR trilogy did Tolkien ever said what an orc looked like.

 

[Svrtnsse]

It bugs me to this day that nowhere in The Hobbit or the entire LOTR trilogy did Tolkien ever said what an orc looked like.

When I was little this is what I thought orcs looked like (sort of):

 

[Penpilot]

I figured that was enough but since all of them implied the same issue, figured I would take a look at it.

When I get this, I have to decide if it's what they want vs. what's needed. Everyone when they read a story wants certain things to happen to their expectations or wants the story to delve in certain areas that interest them. Those don't always correlate with the story you're trying to tell and what you're trying to delve into.

Take for example Peter Jackson's King Kong. In the original black and white, very little time was spent on Skull Island. In the remake, tons of time was spent to the detriment of the movie. Peter Jackson was very interested in the stuff that happened on the Island, but most people weren't as interested as he was.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I tend to go with those characteristics that are defining, that stand out. For a POV character, they may think of themselves a bit differently than they actually look, just like we all do, and this will say a lot about the character themselves. For example, here is my FMC looking at herself through another's eyes. Note, she's actually reading this guy's soul, but still her own opinion is coloring her impression. Characters are very often unreliable, especially about their own characteristics.

Winter knew why he was in doubt, knew as she looked into his wide eyes how he saw her. Tall and skinny to the point of illness, wearing an old-fashioned dress and a bloody lab coat over an oversized sweater that had perhaps seen better days. Pale skin, pale blue eyes, and long hair white as snow pulled up in a Victorian bun, a color and style completely at odds with her twenty-something face. Just a beanpole of a girl, not much older than his own oldest daughter — how could she be the Mulcahy?

I'll admit, I cheated here a bit, but you can do other things. The old "stop and look in a mirror" trick gets used, but beware, that way lies cliché and characters just standing around looking at themselves. (Yeah, I did it, but I had a good reason. Stop looking at me.) Think about yourself. What do you notice? Your hands? The way they begin to look like your parents' hand as you get older? Are your knees crackling yet? Aches and pains are good give-aways for age and experiences. Hair in your face is a good chance to describe cut, color, and texture, as well as emotional impressions about it - not all of us like our hair, or the fact that we are balding or that we wish it would grow faster/more slowly. The list goes on and on to the fit of clothing and so on. Have fun noticing yourself for a day.

 

[wordwalker]

Excellent points here. Description's best if it flows with the rest and contributes to it by making an impression -- the old "facial checklist" approach never struck me as anything but bulky literary tradition.

All the same, if you don't give the reader enough of the basics of someone's looks, they're liable to feel disconnected from the tale. And it's hard if you like a strong POV, like I do. The "mirror trick" is so convenient it's become a screaming cliche.

A checklist I'm considering now:

• colors (hair, eyes, skin): a big part of the basic image, but the only really tough thing to get in for a POV character. I'd say take the plunge and just pick an early, conspicuous moment where some of the other details come up and this can just be tacked onto it to complete the basic picture.
• One place these things might come up: whether he looks like his family, his people, or the folks around him. "So I'm not a blond noble like my friend, but just try to keep me out!"​
• body (height, build, health, age): fairly easy to use, just the right mention of if he's taller/shorter than people or shelves, or a few words about these as part of how he walks. And age and sometimes health can come up many other ways through his background, social status, and so on.
• clothes (and sometimes hair length and style): very easy. Just point out where he did/didn't have enough/too much of something on him today, and what that means: "Of all the days to leave my sword behind! At least with my hair braided I look more like a local and might slip by..." Really an organic part of the moment.

 

[Chessie]

Awesome! Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts. I've gotten some good things from them.

Jabrosky: you describe your characters in a spread. That's how I do it. To me, the story is most important but I find it much easier to describe non-pov characters with one swipe. This is how I've got my main character described in 2 scenes. I think this is enough but somehow my beta readers mentioned that this wasn't enough for them. Suggestions?

She scratched at the circular tattoos on her chin with the back of her hand, jingling the copper bracelets on her arm.

Following paragraph:

She said and leaned her sturdy body forward.

And the next:

She said, tugging at one of her waist-length dark braids.

Her upturned lips quivered.

She slid forward and pounded one of her small fists on Matilda’s desk.

She clenched her teeth and narrowed her light brown eyes

And the next page I describe what she wears:

She slid her fingers underneath the silk scarf around her neck

Another paragraph down:

She said, adjusting her leather blouse and tucking its sides into her wool skirt.

Her sweaty feet itched inside her beaded moccasins.

EDIT: I placed these descriptions into a scene with dialogue because that's how the story started.

 

[saellys]

As a reader, if I don't get a pretty clear description of every character shortly after their introduction, even the POV character in a limited-third-person perspective or first-person perspective story, I come away feeling cheated. In a fantasy world where literally everything else is, by necessity, lavishly described, leaving the appearance of your characters up to the reader is a bit of a copout. If you're describing their enchanted sword or ranger garb or desert hut or horse, why not their facial features, skin tone, hair and eye color, physique, and so on? Show me you really took the time to imagine every part of your world.

As a writer, I have very strong mental images for all my characters. Sometimes I "cast" actors that have the right look, but if I don't come across anyone who fits I can still readily describe all those same aspects, and I make sure to do so in the story (in as organic a way as possible, per wordwalker's excellent suggestions above). I don't want my readers to picture a minor character as gaunt and awkward when they're meant to be pudgy and graceful, or pale as birch bark when they're meant to be dark as mahogany. (The woes of casting Katniss Everdeen are a prime example of how easily readers can assume characters are white by default, even when the description is overt.) The same is true of any part of your world. If you wrote a towering city made of glass, you wouldn't let your readers get the idea it was carved from bone. Why leave your characters nebulous?