How much or little does it hold as far as your characters are concerned? Does the way they look play a role in the way the story unfold?
It can matter if the character is attractive or not, scary, eye catching, bland, etc. But it almost never matters that they have blonde hair and a thin nose. And I think a fair argument can be made that leaving out signifiers of race is not such a terrible thing for a writer to do. It makes the character match the empathies of the reader more easily, staves off certain criticisms and opens the possibilities for adaptation.
Appearance matters a lot when, as a result of your mother's secret and highly illegal genetic engineering experiments, you're the first and only woman born with wings, and trying to prevent people from finding that out ... and the wings don't magically disappear when they're inconvenient -- this isn't a fantasy story. (Oh, and sexy as Hell in a Marilyn-Monroe-as-painted-by-Rubens kind of way. For ... reasons.) Other than that, generally, my character's appearances are shaped by their personalities, experience, and genetics, and therefore their appearances often say something about who they are. For example: "Kat was a petite woman, with a delightfully pretty face and the finest figure money could buy. Her dress was as revealing as the current mode allowed, and showed her off to advantage." Of course, that description says something about the POV character, too.
In the series that I’m writing, some character appearances are very important while others are less so. Because of his physiological anomalies, my current MC would be quite confusing if one were not given a somewhat accurate impression of his appearance.
I want the reader to identify with the character ant therefore I like to leave the description open. State only what is necessary to the plot and leave the rest blank
I think it matters to the reader as much as it matters to the characters. In John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men", other the fact that Larry was skinny and George was huge, I can't even really picture them. What mattered to the characters is their ability to work and interact with the mix of other people. On the flip side, in Stephen King's It, it mattered that Ben was a fat short kid with a dorky haircut and that Henry Bowers had greased black hair and wore a leather jacket.
How the appearance affects the character's life and development is important. The overweight kid who was always bullied, so when he grew up, he became a fitness nut, and a bully himself. In E. E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman series, a particular genetic strain of humans with red hair and gold-flecked tawny eyes had a significant destiny. These are story-bound characteristics. What their fashion sense is, whether they bob their hair or shave their heads to a close stubble, is generally more decoration than helpful. Worse yet, it can date your story. Read some 1950s science fiction, and try not to chuckle too much at their notion of future style. The reader's imagination is a wonderful tool. So what if the reader's mental image of a character is very different from the author's? Unless it's a characteristic the affects the story, let it go.
Hmm, this reminds me: a significant plot point in my WIP revolves on a characters appearance. The character is a man who has been fit and well-groomed most of his life: think Marine Corps DI. Then things go badly for him, and he stops taking care of himself: gets obese, stops shaving. But the MC desperately needs to find this man, and has only a drawing to guide her. A drawing made by someone who's never seen the man overweight and bearded. The MC doesn't find him, and nearly dies as a consequence. The incident is based on my own personal experience, so I know it could happen.
I have drawn my characters, but I'm not too worried if a reader doesn't imagine them exactly how I do. Most of their physical qualities don't mean too much. An example of appearance meaning something in my WIP is that one character is very muscular and he's the typical "all brawn no brains" kind of dude. I mean, I mention the POV has blue glasses a few times and the glasses are my "trademark," but the way I see it is a picture is worth a thousand words and a word is worth a thousand pictures.
I established that my female character was thin and relatively attractive, and that another character was a fat slob, but most of that was viewed through the eyes of others in conversation, internal thoughts, etc. i.e. not "the man was a fat slob, dribbling food down the front of his shirt as he shoveled into his gaping maw." but more like "Look at that fat piece of ****," said Joe. "He can't even get the food into his mouth without getting it all over his shirt." Other than that, I don't focus too much on appearances after the initial description of someone. Mainly because I can't remember stupid small details later on in the story, and all of a sudden his scar is on his left cheek instead of his right, her eyes magically changed from brown to blue, etc. EDIT: Also, as someone said above, the reader is going to form their own vision of what your character looks like anyway, despite our best, most detailed descriptions. It's best just to leave it vague enough that they can find a character in their mind that they can relate to. For example, there was a big hoopla a while back over Hermione's ethnicity in Harry Potter. Rowling never really says whether she's white or not, and her description of Hermione is pretty vague. That led to a big argument over whether Hermione was supposed to be black in the movies. (and Dumbledore gay, for that matter) To Rowling's credit, she basically gave a shrug and said "what do you think?" and left it at that.
For me, it's important how other characters see my characters, not how the reader sees them. So I certainly don't do a laundry list 'description' whenever a new character gets introduced. However, if my POV character (in that scene) has a strong impression of what the new character looks like, then I deliver the 'look' via the POV character. That's usually enough.
I always like my descriptions to do double duty - I can live with the word blonde but it doesn't hold a lot of weight for giving an impression of my character - or rather how the main character feels about the blondeness of the character and why they taking notice of it, so that's what I want to do -- shape the details to clarify an impression. And I like to stay away from superlatives. Right now in my WIP looks are very important because the mc has hired what he thought was a homely young boy to star in his series but he turns into a beautiful icon. The contrast is important and I use it to metaphor other differences in their relationship that the MC has a stubbornly generic outlook and at times is overlooking the obvious. I'm trying to expand it and not just do the whole ugly-duckling swan thing.
My story starts a few years after a war between two nations with distinctly different visual tastes, styles, and physical appearance (if you created a precisely average person for each nation, they would look very different). There’s still a lot of nationalism and hatred, so the appearances matter. And the appearance of the characters from the other two national groups matter, for various reasons more loosely tied to the war. And...well, there are a whole lot of plot-related reasons for appearance to matter.
It matters in my WIP because the characters' appearances affect the way the other characters relate to them.
I like to cover some of the basic details (e.g. hair, eye and/or skin colour, height, approx. age), some memorable traits, but doing a detailed description I find tedious, difficult and not very helpful.
A book I found useful (though not everyone may) was "What We See When We Read" by Peter Mendelsund, an artist and wide reader who looks at the active part the reader plays in creating their own image of what characters (settings etc) look like, picking up on clues from the writing but dressing them with their own experience and memories. Right at the start, he poses a question: What does Anna Karenina look like? and shows us a police composite based solely on the information within Tolstoy's novel, which I think most people would actually look squint-eyed at because every reader has their own mental pictures of characters built from the many many memories in their own life. I like a few clues - I find it hard to empathise and get involved with a blank mannequin as much as to feel the reality of a blank canvas - and especially when it's a very visual writer (Dickens is a good example, part of his enduring appeal is how vivid and visual he makes characters, settings... everything). But for me a great part of character description is doing it in a way which enhances character (without being too crudely obvious - Georgette Heyer was great at this) or the actually reading experience (Wodehouse, Chandler - their gift for imagery and simile may not make as searingly clear a picture as Dickens but by god it is entertaining in itself.). I once read a description in a story of a man with a heavy paunch (great word, that) and "the eyes of a landed shark". That may not have said anything about colour, shape etc but it made an immediate character impression (eeeeeviiil....) and has stayed with me since...
Does it matter to the viewpoint? When? Why did the viewpoint care to notice it, then? To what extend does the viewpoint notice, and why? Did someone else notice, and thus the viewpoint is forced to observe that notice? Why did that other person notice and make that clear to the viewpoint? God forbid it's an As You Know Bob moment. Is all that just for fun, or does it happen contextually to the plot for reasons made apparent through the actors?
It depends on the story I'm writing. Some stories it's a huge role and other stories not so much. More often than not, it's often one key attribute of the character's description that holds the most weight. For example, my character has a lot of scars. At first, readers are given the impression that the scars are a show of how strong and tough the character is. But as the story progresses, the scars serve to show how out of her element the character is.
It has to matter to the story. However, I have noticed lately reading a few fantasy novels where the female MC has the male interest who is always: chiseled features, built, six pack abs, tall... Really? Nice eye candy but it would be nice to have a normal male interest maybe even a little geeky/nerd type. At least has other attributes that might not be visible. Give me something to imagine!
I like describing characters' appearances. Obviously I don't linger to long over it, but I often have all the basics covered (hair, eye colour, etc.) I can think of one WIP where appearance gets the most mention, although I'm not sure why. Height gets mentioned a lot: the MC is the tallest girl in her class, so teachers ask her to fetch things down from shelves, she looks down at other girls rather than up, etc. Her height is important to her because she's never known her father and she's desperate for information about him, but the one thing she can guess about her father is that he's tall, because she's taller than her mother, but otherwise she resembles her very closely. One of my WIPs is written in the style of a diary, so the diarist obviously doesn't think about her appearance too much. She mentions at the beginning that her mother is (or the MC thinks she is) the most beautiful woman in the country, but her father's very ordinary-looking, and she and her sisters are all somewhere in between. My other WIP is written in omniscient third, so I'm not limited by the thoughts of a certain character, so I mention appearance a lot more as a way of distinguishing the characters. In that story, a set of sisters all have the same colour hair and eyes, so they can easily be identified. I also think appearance can help build an impression of the characters. For example, one character is very small and is described as being "pale and pinched-looking", and I think that creates an impression of vulnerability. Another character has sallow skin and lank hair, and this is significant to her life as she knows her mother always dreamed of having a beautiful daughter, so this creates tension. My fanfiction is set in a fantasy world, where appearance is more important. Someone's eye colour can indicate which nation they are from, and since the show revolves around a war, this can have huge connotations. A lot of other fanfictions get this wrong and this can confuse the reader. One nation also has darker skin than the others.
Personally, I have never been all that bothered by physical appearance. Obviously, it is included to some extent, but I prefer to keep it fairly simple and let the reader build the image in their mind. Even my own notes on each character are relatively vague. I offer some information, but let the reader fill in the gaps in their own mind. Here is a short example from my Project Z rewrite - this is about as 'descriptive' as I tend to get. -- I wasn’t a big talker as it was, and neither was the small goth girl seated next to me. She wasn’t over the top with it, but her black shoulder-length ponytail and dark makeup gave away her fashion preferences. Nevertheless, she passed for relatively normal in this school apparently, her best friend being the ever-popular Amy O'Neill.
In my world, the only really distinctive trait is having black hair means you're from a particular city. Beyond that, I use description so you can picture the character accurately, but not enough so you can't add in your own little nuance if you see something in them that I don't necessarily mention. I don't describe voices either for this reason, I want the reader to have a degree of input in the story and not just go along with something they can't change that they might get really sick of toward the end. Unless it's absolutely necessary that is, in which case you get the full description, kitchen sink and all!
