Yeah, forget descriptions for your main characters. I agree it can come across as adolescent in a kind of, "Okay, this is my main character and this is what he looks like..." kind of way. Your readers will make up their own picture from the way they talk, the things they say... even from their background and position in life. Save descriptions for newly introduced characters, and even them keep them brief.
I love descriptions but I think the details and the position of them are the most important. Sometimes I don't describe my character's looks at all and sometimes I let little nuggets appear. And if there's something unusual about the way they dress -- I love, love, love clothing descriptions. Sometimes those descriptions are relevant - In my WIP it's important to know that the mc is short and that his mother dyes his hair platinum. He's also eccentric so his outfits are a little bizarre. In my other WIP the character's are in a run down prison and descriptions lean more towards - fresh meat - still handsome and healthy while old cons are pasty and ravaged by their poor diet.
I love descriptions but I think the details and the position of them are the most important. Sometimes I don't describe my character's looks at all and sometimes I let little nuggets appear. And if there's something unusual about the way they dress -- I love, love, love clothing descriptions. Sometimes those descriptions are relevant - In my WIP it's important to know that the mc is short and that his mother dyes his hair platinum. He's also eccentric so his outfits are a little bizarre. In my other WIP the character's are in a run down prison and descriptions lean more towards - fresh meat - still handsome and healthy while old cons are pasty and ravaged by their poor diet.
I give enough for them to be imagined by the reader. Though at times the finer details come out about the characters as other's see them, but it still leaves plenty to the imagination unless it is too important to leave out. Examples like eye color, species, gender, etc., are all important and noteworthy (though species only applies when dealing with Alien races, which comes with skin color/texture and noteworthy features like extra limbs, organs, tail, etc. Because simply tossing out names of exotic sentient creatures is not going to be well received, or imagined by the reader. IE: Dune; all the inhabitants of the universe that play major roles are human, so little is left to make up in the readers mind outside of small physical/psychic traits that would otherwise not be as noteworthy.) Conversely an Uldivarion which averages around 2.43m (~8ft) tall, dark blue skin, 4 long arms (two upper/two lower), four slender digits on each hand, inverted teardrop shaped head with taught skin on skeletal features with large deep black eyes. See you would have had no clue without a base to work with if I had simple just said the aliens were Uldivarion and left it at that, because then you would have no idea of what they look like. So descriptions are and aren't important, you just have to decide which will best suit your needs. For humans minor things are all you really need, and for more complex concept creatures there needs to be at the very least a minimalistic description of base features to set them apart from the humans. Otherwise you are 'Duned' to fail. (See I made a pun and substituted 'doomed' with 'Duned'. Ok cheesy self inflicted humor done.)
I once read a story where I was completely unsure of the age of the characters. I thought they were young adults and only several pages in was it revealed (vaguely) that they were children. I lost all respect for the story and writer at that point. So don't do that. I give enough description so the reader will have at least a outline of what the person is: sex, age and general 'shape'. It is important in my one current work that the reader understands the MC is a tall, imposing figure. In most of my other stories height isn't really mentioned as I don't think it is important to the story. Stories with excessive physical descriptions bog me down and are really useless; I wind up creating my own vision of a character anyway.
Really depends on the story. I've read that (I've never read the books) Bella is never described in Twilight, leaving the target audience (young women) free to project themselves into the character no matter what they look like. However, Jack Reacher is described as huge, I think he said that his hands were the size of supermarket chickens or somesuch. His size is very important to his character, which is why I didn't like Tom Cruise in the role. Andy Weir, on the other hand, gave absolutely zero description of his characters' looks. You can assume that they are in very good physical condition because they're astronauts, and some of them have names that are associated with certain ethnicities, but he said: So, depends on your book and your character. As for my work, yeah, there's always a mental image, but I don't often describe my characters to the reader beyond the bare bones.
The only parts of a character that really matter are the bits that help describe their qualities that are relevant to the plot and how other characters react to them. Well-groomed and good looking, scruffy and smelly, fat and well dressed, bony in rags, athletic and fit, voluptuous but trying to hide it because of sexism, that sort of thing. But you don't need to try to paint a fully accurate picture about cheek size and bone structure unless that too is relevant to the story.
Disclaimer: If my points have been addressed and I'm just regurgitating opinions, well... it's because I didn't want to read all the posts. Time thing, ya know? It depends on the story. If all of your characters are aliens and are asexual, there's no need to list a gender. If your using the standard ole' human race, then you need to show gender. Albeit by stating (he/she) or giving enough information that your reader can figure it out. Unless a character has an abnormal trait (extremely tall -- giants or extremely small -- dwarfs), there's no real need to mention it unless you want to. You also can describe one character in detail while not describing any of the rest. For instance your villain can get a detailed description to give the reader a more sinister image of him. This adds weight to the character at the time of introduction. All depends on your style, no golden rule.
No you don't. In fact, there are books where it is never disclosed whether the main character is male or female, and could be either.
Ha ha! Well, I certainly didn't notice. So you sneaked it in there painlessly. And it stuck, for sure!
Those are very tricky cases. Obviously if you are describing aliens you can't assume everybody will know what they look like, or that what they look like doesn't matter. The problem for the reader comes if you try to dump this information in a large wad, right at the start. Better to give one or two traits, then use the traits, and add to them as the story takes shape. Pretend, for a moment, that you're standing on an empty bit of ground, a space ship lands in front of you, and a bunch of aliens come out of it and start towards you. What will you actually notice about them AT THAT MOMENT? You probably won't notice everything about them at all. Instead, you'll get a first impression and then take on more as you interact with them. Perhaps you'll focus on their tall, cloaked forms, and maybe the way they move, and you'll be wondering what their intentions are. Then they get closer, their hoods fall back, and you see that they all have one eye that glows like a fire opal when they make clicking sounds, although they seem to have no mouths. Now you're backing away, because you're not sure of their intentions at all, and the clicking sounds intensify, but they stop moving. Slowly, one of them unfolds a limb and extends it towards you. There is no hand on the end of the limb, only a crab-like pincher, but for some reason you feel reassured. You step closer to them and extend your own arm until the tip of your finger touches the pincher. It feels surprisingly warm, almost as if it was a human hand. The clicking sounds made by the group evolve into what sounds like purring, and, one by one, the others all extend limbs and hold them out to you, to be touched as well. I think that approach works better than saying the aliens were tall and cloaked, and each has one eye that glows. They have limbs that have warm pinchers on the end. They make clicking sounds and purring sounds and seem friendly.
It's a point though. For the players at home, this is my opening paragraph that seemed to have successfully provided specific character descriptions such as height, weight, eye and hair colour, in the opening of the work, that was absorbed without much notice: The aim, of coarse, is to establish the kind of person she is and her current situation while also hinting at the past. Most of the details, while seeming irrelevant, subtly reveal some part of her character and story.
Plus, of course, it's not a list, in the sense that you gave each detail immediate relevance. Knowing how small and frail she is makes what's happening to her even more monstrous. And you started with what was happening to her, not a list of her physical characteristics. What you did was give them context. And that's what makes them work so well. I still get shivers reading that—her self-awareness is what powers the story.
That's right. I think the important point we all agree on is that details need relevance. They can't really be ornaments or writer drool.
I read part of a book this week where the author kept comparing characters to celebrities as a way of suggesting what they look like. The POV character would describe another as "Looking like a young Tom Cruise" or whatever. It was really intrusive because it was so obviously the author's interception, not the character's genuine thought, if that makes sense? It wasn't the reason I stopped reading the book but it was one of its many issues...
@Sack-a-Doo! !!! I'm shocked you said that. It's not true. I'm hardly going to idealized myself into a blonde or readhead or a man. I think it's entirely up to the author how much they want to describe but it needs to be enough for the reader to grab hold off mentally. If an author is going to be very descriptive then it needs to be done well and not in a chunk of text. It needs to be weaved into the story for purpose. Whether it is hinting strength, femininity or personal grooming etc. And an author can give me as many hints as they want as long as it is done in a way that feels organic to the story and doesn't read like a character profile. I think people need to see readers as voyeurs. That's me, the voyeur not the person idealizing anything. You can let me peek through a key hole, you can let me have a window seat. I'm quite happy to be up close and personal and know everything intimately. It just needs to fit the story. [Removed Linny Rant at Izzy] Sorry @izzybot if you caught it...otherwise...
I'm just curious. Do you strongly 'see' your characters when you think of them, or not? I always see mine very clearly, so it's hard for descriptions of them not to sneak in when I recreate the scene with words. I've often wondered if everybody envisions scenes the way I do, though.
I know you didn't ask me, but I only see vague blurs. Nowadays I go a quick Google images search and find pictures of my characters to help me envisage scenes better. Left to its own devices, my brain can't conjure up faces.
@LinnyV regarding @izzybot 's quote about the long hair. I think she was talking about creating a character who felt that way. She was not saying (as an author) that all women feel insecure about their femininity and wear their hair accordingly! I think you might have picked her up wrongly on that one.
