Amount of Details in Character Description

Definitely, fascinating and fun. Like said in the OP, I write with T.Trian, and we actually asked at one point from our betas whether it was too confusing that the descriptions are filtered through the characters. Girl A is considered cute by two guys but almost ugly and "flabby" by Girl B, an extremely beautiful girl, while Girl C, who's tall and musclebound, considers her skinny and tiny. Apparently it was ok.

Consider writing an anorexic: their body image often becomes so skewed that filtering a description through such a character's eyes could be very different from a healthy person's.

Consider a white supremacist describing a black fashion model -- again the description could be colored by his/her views.

But I think this comes quite instinctively from writers when they start to characterize and ask themselves: "how does this character see the world?" Of course an omniscient narrator can be more neutral about this stuff.

 

Right. But that's the beauty of coming to understand your character...understanding the way they view the world and what they think of it. The male character from who's perspective Chapter 2 is written is an incredibly sexist man. Therefore, he registers that the woman is relatively attractive, notes the color of her hair, and then assigns her to a man and, from that point onward, refers to that woman by the man to whom he's assigned her.

 

I like minimal description. My imagination supplies the rest almost immediately. Any details that the author adds later in time are ignored by my brain, because they conflict with the mental image I've already established. I've been known to skip paragraphs that are nothing but character description if they come too long after introduction of the character.

As a reader, I'd rather get one or two important characteristics as soon as the character is introduced and have the author just leave it at that.

 

I voted for middle ground, though within that category I'm erring towards bare minimum. I don't tend to remember all of the parts of extensive character descriptions when reading; my brain will picture some of the most important details and then fill in with random bits of it's own choosing.
My own writing varies a bit, depending on the situation, with more unusual or flamboyant characters getting a middle ground description and more normal looking characters receiving something closer to bare minimum. Like one or two others have mentioned, I do also find it slightly harder to naturally work in the description of a POV character, unless they happen to like looking at themselves in mirrors. That's an area I need to work on.

 

I'm not sure if I'm detailed or middle ground. For the MC, I go very detailed, peppered over the course of the narrative through little lines like looking in a mirror and saying "wow, my teeth are kinda f***ed up," or "It's not easy to find skinny jeans that fit a six-foot-two girl with super long legs." So far, what the reader knows about her is this:
Body: Height 6'2", too skinny for her own good (from chronic drug abuse), C-Cup breasts, scar over the right breast from a GSW and another scar in her right side from the chest tube, and one tattoo of her old military unit's insignia on the left ankle. Hair: slightly copper colored, shoulder length, often worn in a neat ponytail. Eyes: bright green and slightly upturned like a cat; blood-shot, red rimmed and dark circled underneath. Smile: Full-lipped and slightly crooked, forming somewhat of a permanent smirk. Three silver hoops in the left ear, two in the right, and she wears a set of dog tags along with a silver pendant of a four-leaf clover around her neck. Teeth: Straight, but slightly brown from cigarettes and starting to rot a little from vomiting alot and not brushing her teeth. Fingernails: bitten down to the stumps. She really is, strikingly beautiful, like she could be a catwalk model or something. She just messed herself up really bad because of PTSD, depression, and drug use.

Then as the story goes on and she gets off drugs, etc... I change those descriptions to fit, such as "hey my dark circles are gone!" or even through other characters POV "you're looking healthier these days, did you gain weight?"

For the secondary protag (her partner) I describe her very vaguely in the beginning. "she looks to be Hispanic, Long black hair, tied back in a mid-back ponytail." then move into more detailed as the MC starts crushing on her and notices things like her beautiful smile, or those big brown eyes, etc...

Peripheral characters? Barely anything aside from sex, age, clothing/hair. Unless it's something crucial to the plot.

Aw hell. As detailed as I went in that post, I guess I'd have to cast my vote for detailed.

 

It bothers me when I get a fistful of detail about a character when the story is already in full momentum. Like most everyone else here I only want the bare minimum. My imagination is going to create the ideal character in my head as I perceive them, and everyone is different. It pulls me out of the story when I get conflicting details because the writer threw me a curve ball.

Before computers and press, people wanted vivid details because they didn't see a whole lot outside of their everyday life. Now, with the internet and movies, everyone has seen everything and super detailed writing is becoming antiquated.

 

Yeah, I'm the same way. If you're going to give me a lot of character detail, please do it right up front. I hate when authors trickle in new details about a character's appearance over the course of a work. It never changes the view of the character that is firmly established in my head, it just pulls me out of the story because it conflicts with what I'm already envisioning.

 

That's part of the reason all my book covers are a CGI render or painting of the MC

 

I'd say it depends on the details: I want the important stuff up-front, but smaller details I can still accommodate later on.

PS. wolfenburg, that's an awesome avatar. Is that a shotgun?

 

Exactly. I front loaded the basic stuff about height, build, eyes, hair, face, up front. The peripherals like teeth, jewelery, nails, tattoo's came out later.

 

I don't mind so much if the author trickles in minor details later. I'm just going to ignore them anyway, so as long as they don't pull me out of the story I'm cool with it.

 

LOL thank you T.Trian. Yes it's a Remington 870.

 

OT: Dang, I was wondering if I should've guessed whether it's an 870 (would've been just a blind guess anyway). Nice gun regardless. Okay, back to topic...

 

It depends on who the narrator is in the story. Writing in first person is the easiest I think, because you can put yourself in that person's shoes and the details you write are things that the character themselves would notice. If you're writing in first person, it'd be stupid to start up a paragraph like "I'm 6`1" and 170lbs with X color hair age 22 skin color -blank- and my normal facial expression is like this." Why would any of that cross your characters mind - especially all that once?

Think about how often you go around pondering in great detail various aspects of your appearance... for most people its very rarely.

This is what I did to describe my main character to the readers in my current project:

That's all you get - one detail and it's only a name. When I introduce a male friend, there is no description whatsoever. You can imagine it if you'd like but it is completely unrealistic for a guy telling a story that involves a male friend of his to go on about any details. Unless they do something drastic like get in some kind of freak accident or go bald overnight, I almost never consider the physical appearance of my friends. That's how it is for most guys, so why would it be any different for my main character who is in many ways just a normal guy?

 

Me, as a reader not a writer, I usually don't picture the characters with that much detail in my head, even if the author explicitly gives it to me. I create a picture of who the person is in my head and I stick with it. Even if for some reason I picture them as a different race. For instance, when I read your Solus stories, I always picture Amelie as white even though she is dark skinned. So the lazy person answer I would give is why give all that detail if the reader isn't going to use it in their mental pictures anyway? But I am probably the minority on that part.

I mostly picture what clothes the characters are wearing. If the MC always wears a duster and a hat, I only picture those things. If they always wear a suit, I picture a guy in a suit. Unless the detail is eerie, like pale skin and black eyes. Then I picture those details as well. But I always leave the face blank in my head, always. So anytime a writer says something about a scar going across the character's face, it falls on deaf ears (blind eyes?)

 

I associate extremely detailed characters with bad writing, little to no plot, and cheesy dialogue. I honestly don't care how you see your character, because I am not going to see him/her the same way, no matter how much detail you give me. As soon as I read Mary Beth, I can see her face and hear her voice. Her personality is what I don't have. Show me that. Show me how she acts, how she talks, how she thinks, because I already think of her as Mary Beth with brown hair; you saying she has blonde hair does nothing for me.

 

I never realized I was so in the minority on this. If the author doesn't give me a description, I end up picturing a kind of faceless, hazy blob of a person. I won't picture details if I'm not given details. I guess I must picture something, but if the author gave no description and you asked me to describe what the character looked like in my mind, I'd have nothing except maybe a hair color. If I saw the movie before reading the book, I'll most likely picture the actors unless the descriptions are different enough. Maybe I was spoiled by Anne Rice in middle and high school and became accustomed to her descriptive style (although I still really dislike descriptions of settings).

 

I'm kind of the same. I don't really mind the hazy blob, though. My attention is just directed to other things. Sometimes I find abundant descriptions quite nice if the writer has managed to fit them well and seamlessly into the narrative, especially if they're amusing, but like I mentioned earlier, it's difficult to remember everything, but I do appreciate a few key things. Neither does my mind discern between blue, arctic blue, forget-me-not blue, baby-blue etc. eyes. though I seem to be able to attach pale-blue with my mind's eye, otherwise it's really all the same what it reads there. Blue eyes will most likely be some random shade of blue in my head.

 

I'm like this to. Unless I'm given something, it doesn't have to be much either, just has long hair, or is tall, or seems to be young/old/like someone I know I don't picture them at all really. Given one detail I half fill the others in.

I fail to see how anyone could picture a fully fleshed out character upon reading a character's name or a word or two of dialogue.

 

Don't get me wrong, I've never disliked a book because of the hazy blob, but I still like to have some description. I definitely don't need to know that his eyes are "baby blue like the blanket wrapped around newborn as he peacefully lies..." blah blah blah. As you said, unless it is particularly important or striking or brought up a lot, blue will blue. But take something like, "The farm boy had eyes like the sea before a storm," from The Princess Bride. Then again, that whole paragraph describing him is basically being told through the eyes of another character (even though the novel is 3rd person omniscient), so that goes along with different characters noticing different things. Still, something like that stuck with me a lot more than "blue" would have. So I do agree with everything you said, but description like that works if it's done well.

 

Sadly I haven't read it, but actually that's a description I can imagine 'cause I've used it to describe my hubbie's eyes out loud, to his immense embarrassment

A lot of description, however, doesn't necessarily coincide with bad writing, little to no plot, and cheesy dialogue. Also, some genres seem to employ more description than others (in response to HarleyQ.'s post / general observation)

 

I wanna give a brief description of my characters and then let little pieces out during the story

 

I don't think it is difficult. We're all writers, which means we all have pretty active imaginations. I form a mental image of a character very quickly. It won't be identical to the author's mental image of the character, but there's nothing wrong with that. I prefer it, in fact.

If you're going to give detailed descriptions of the characters, then I prefer it when you've got a very quirky, elaborate style that really makes it work.

For example, when Mervyn Peake describes Clarice and Cora, in addition to using his characteristic descriptive prose, he says things like:

To me, those two sentences create an elaborate image in the mind, and while no two readers are going to get the same image of Clarice and Cora, they're all going to get the same 'gist' of their being.

Same goes for Gertrude, or Flay:

and

To me, if you're going to describe characters, that's the way to make it interesting. Rattling off a series of details about hair and eye color, or other physical characteristics, is boring and doesn't interest me.

 

I use minimal description unless a character's appearance is important to the story in some specific way.

 

Lots, if it's fun, adds to the tone or character - 'Dirk saw Weetzie in his art class. She was a skinny girl with a bleached-blonde flat-top.
Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses, strawberry lipstick, dangling charms and sugar frosted eyeshadow she
was really almost beautiful.' - From Weetzie Bat - Francesca Lia Block.
Although, I draw the line at cheesy historical romance fiction description -
How rare can violet eyes, framed by lush sooty lashes be if every heroine wears them?