Activity

First off, thank you all SO MUCH for sharing your biggest struggles in last week’s topic. It saved my brain a lot of agony as I tried to think of more topics that would actually be useful. 😛

 

Thanks to @Faith-Blum ‘s suggestion, we’re going to be looking at description this week. Specifically how to describe a character’s physical appearance, without sounding forced and pulling the reader out of the story.

This is actually something I struggle with myself, so we’re all learning here.

 

A couple of major pitfalls that writers fall into:

1: The mirror scene
I’ve done this scene myself. That one where the character sees himself in the mirror and then proceeds to think about his curly brown hair and his broad forehead and his grey eyes and his muscular build and NOW ALL THE READERS ARE INSANE.

Okay, maybe not all the readers. xD But a lot of the readers are going to notice this cheat description, and it’s not going to come off well. It’ll push them out of the story right away and you’ll lose their interest very quickly.

 

2: Trying to weave in lots of specific details
Weaving in these descriptions is exactly what we want to do (more on that below), but something that can go wrong with that is trying to weave in the wrong descriptions. If you say “he’s at least 6’7″ and 200 pounds” there’s absolutely no way that the detail will be subtle.

However, if you say “He towered over me” it’s already a more subtle description. Same goes for a first person section. You could say “I craned to see through the bodies, but all I got was elbows and shoulders and ornate hairstyles” and the reader would know that the POV character is shorter than everyone around them.

 

 

So how do we do it right? How do we describe characters without pulling the reader from the story?

The trick is basically: Show enough, but not too much. And show the right details.

 

The best rule of thumb is to describe only details that matter to the character and matter in the moment. However, you can also cheat just a little. When your character scratches his hand through his hair, is he really thinking about “scratching his hand through his black hair”? Nah. But he is aware that his hair is black, so you can almost always get away with sneaking that little descriptor in there. No harm, no foul—and readers have a useful detail to add to their mental image.

— K.M. Weiland

 

Different details about a character have different levels of importance in the reader’s imaginations. Things like basic build and hair colour are both fairly important. Like my example of the short character trying to see past the elbows and shoulders, you should always be weaving in the details with action or purpose toward the plot.

A female POV character could fiddle with her hair. A skinny character could be glad because he can fit into smaller places than his pursuers. Grease could smear over her skin in stark contrast to her normal pale complexion.

 

Whenever possible, every detail you give about a character should be there for reasons other than showing the reader how to imagine the character. It should be there because the physical attribute tells them something about his personality or his emotions or his occupation even.

 

Here’s some little snippets from my WIP of descriptions of another character and also of the POV character. I’m certainly not saying that these are specifically good descriptions, because I have a lot to improve on in this area, but they’re an example of what this could look like in practice.

#1: I managed to twist around far enough to glance back to the dark gap where I’d left Ashal, but his dark skin blended so perfectly with the shadows I couldn’t even tell if he was still there.

 

#2: “Have fun on your date, girl. And that outfit looks drop-dead gorgeous on you.” She giggled behind her hand and slipped out the door.

I glanced down at the plaid dress and tugged a loose strand of hair down over my shoulder. Yeah, okay. If she really thinks so.

 

 

The activity: Write a little scene where your main character interacts with another side character (you could do the ‘character ordering food at cafe/tavern/whatever-fits-your-genre’ prompt, if you want inspiration) and include vibrant details of both your POV character and the side character, but without making it forced. Don’t try to fully describe the characters, just give a little hint.

 

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(NOTE TO NEW GUILD MEMBERS: Yooo. If you haven’t done it yet, you might want to check out the original post where I explain some more details on what this whole ‘anual theme’ deal actually is. Don’t be shy and jump right into the activity! None of us are perfect, so don’t worry about mistakes and rough-draft vibes. We all understand. 😉 )