I'm shocked that you're shocked!!! Seriously, though, I'm talking about the average reader, not you in particular. Just from your response, I get the feeling you're a bit of an outlier.
Huh? What? I have no idea what you are talking about @jannert... Are you implying I flew off the handle over hair?! hehe I had actually come to this conclusion as I was talking to hubby about men with beards over dinner. lol But thank you for pointing it out to me anyway.
Outlier? Is that a polite way to say I am weird?! lol Still, I stand by the fact that readers are voyeurs of the story world so cleverly weaved descriptors are always appreciated. Just in case you turn out as kinky as @jannert with her several steamy love scenes, I'm not talking about the other sort voyeurs! You regulars are always shocking me lately...
@jannert Well it is the POV character, and they know what the aliens look like. Also it is kinda their job to learn/know as many details as possible about other races/species, it just comes with their job. (But there is a number of professions that would have to have that kind of knowledge, because that information is important to them.) Ultimately from a perspective that has never seen an E.T. before would probably be dumbfounded to see another intelligent being(s) for the first time. And might have a hard time wrapping their mind around the physical aspects of the beings, let alone the strange language and expressions. The concept I was originally going after is one that familiar things do not need as much time spent on them to define them, as opposed to the unfamiliar.
I agree about the familiar/unfamiliar notion. Describing a car to somebody who has never seen a car before would be different from telling your 60-year-old American reader that the POV character drove a red 1982 Ford Fiesta. However, my point was that you probably shouldn't lob too much unfamiliar stuff at a reader in a big long list if you want them to actually form a picture in their minds. It's too much information. Just choose the most relevant details for the scene you're writing, and give them in a way that makes them stand out. Then add a few other bits later on. That goes for the POV character who is perfectly used to the aliens. What aspect of these aliens is he dealing with when we first meet them? From his viewpoint, what is he focused on, or what does he expect them to do. Do they fascinate him, irritate him, scare him, amuse him? Then add in more details with their reaction to him, or whatever. It helps the reader to form a more solid picture of what's happening.
How dare you call me 'regular,' sir! But, no, I never think of myself or any other writer as being part of the readership. So I was talking about average readers (if there is any such thing) not the likes of you and me.
I forgot to address this in my earlier post. Yes. That is to say, you're a writer. You can't help but be weird... just like the rest of us.
The answer is yes. But it's not a very useful question. I'd suggest asking: When is character description necessary? Without character description we all presume a default. It's usually a white male. That matters. It matters that some people try not to presume a white male. It matters when our presumptions are proven right or wrong given the clues crafty (cocky) writers like to leave in place of any actual character description. I worked on a manuscript a while back. The protagonist had a name that sounded phonetically identical to Barack. I presumed the character was black even anticipating, even knowing deep in my gut that sooner or later there would be something to prove me wrong. And there was. 6 chapters later. What you feel is unnecessary to say about your characters matters just as much as what you feel is necessary. It always matters. So the better question to ask is when is character description necessary?
I want to have cleverly weaved descriptions. Sometimes I seem to do this by accident. I'm not quite sure how to go about it intentionally. How do you do this? How did you learn or teach yourself to do this? I also want to do this: I think it can be challenging to know which detail to include and what to leave out. Sometimes I'm like, "Shit! I have no character description. Let me go to page one and add a paragraph." Why do I do this? Why do I think this will work? I guess how a character looks isn't ever too important to my stories. But I think I need to find a way to include some details in an effortless and very natural sounding way. And this goes back to cleverly weaving it in. The biggest reason I find to add physical descriptions is to help make my characters seem unique or at least different from each other. POV is an interesting part of this. I seem to have an easier time writing character descriptions when they are filtered through a first person narrator. Using omni it's a little harder for me. It's doesn't have the voice of first person or the filter of any character.
Yeah, I agree - I don't see myself as the characters - certainly not physically, and generally not emotionally/mentally. They're them, and I'm spying on them. Not being them.
Me too - I think it's one of the reasons I tend to dislike 1st person POV. My preference is to be an observer, not a participant.
I think just covering the basics is enough. When I read the Wrinkle in Time series I imagined one of the main characters as blonde only to find a novel cover depicting them otherwise and I was fairly disappointed, so maybe describing only distinguishable traits is good enough.
Covers are often (usually?) designed by people who haven't even read the book. The author may have pictured the character as blonde too.
And that is one of my pet hates as a romance reader, when they get the covers wrong. It niggles me throughout the story, as if I've been deceived...by somebody. They've tainted my mental depiction which I was perfectly happy with and put something else there, which I know is wrong but now it has muddied the image. I don't assume it is the author's fault either but I always wonder why they would allow it considering that they are well published. Or did they really miss it, which would be disappointing since as a fan I invest in their characters and know all the minor details. Shouldn't they more so? It's always something I've wondered about. If they can't get it right, it would be better they don't put a person on the cover and instead place an item of relevance.
First off, I am sorry I called you regular! I meant that you are a WF-Regular. That's makes you "Special". But that's the thing, when I come onto a writing forum I am always wearing my reader's hat. To be honest, I still consider myself a READER first and a writer second. I only started writing because I got tired of waiting for my favourite authors to write their bloody 2 books a year for my favourite series. The frustration got too much, so I needed the distraction of writing my own stories to make the wait shorter. It kind of works... Quite often when I read posts here I'll mentally go Meh! Rubbish! You writers are overwrought over NOTHING! Writer snob! Another writer snob! I guess that makes me a reader snob... Not to be argumentative (@Selbbin you don't count! You're also another WF-Regular), but I believe the best way to approach writing is to see yourself as the mythical 'average' reader because it is YOU. I don't know if I make sense, but sometimes I do worry as I travel along this writing journey, that I might lost touch of the romance reader in me. I consider myself your typical romance reader. And definitely no, I NEVER imagine myself as the heroine or wish for a story book hero. To me, these couples are friends. Some people may call the heroes 'Book boyfriends' but to me that means, they are fictional men who should stay within a book! Otherwise women would kill them because they are so unrealistically aggravating. Just like how some heroines would be dead because they qualify for the Darwin Award. hehe Don't get me wrong, I love my genre but you have to recognise the humour that is being sold because we're looking for happy chemicals. Well yes, I would agree that in wanting to write like the rest of you, that makes me weirder. I was already high the scale of weird in that I don't make sense, even to myself.
So I'm the voyeur and you're the spy. I'm trying to figure out if it's a good or bad thing that it sounds like my book would have more naked people!
Hey @deadrats, so I'm going to try to answer your question even though I don't think I'm qualified. I'm not sure how I teach myself, I just write by feel and what I instinctively like. What I think is, I want my audience to learn about character through their senses and I do that by showing them as we move along when the opportunity arises because the story has an opening. Note, when I say showing, I am not talking about just a picture. I am talking about a mix of contrast, smell, texture and emotions. This could mean I might do a bulk of it right at the start. It just depends on what is happening and how I am opening my story. It needs to fit in without being jarring. This is the kind of showing I do love. Maybe you should see it as you having a torch? You are spotlighting key features as they become relevant in the unfolding scene. An example of what NOT to do... (I'm being silly here): Ratboy was a scrawny child-like creature with beady eyes , scabby features and bad teeth. He was always hunched over and hobbling about on his twisted legs and tripping over his giant feet. His skin was dark from an ever-present layer of soot because he spent so much time tending to the fires. If only his pin-like arms could carry greater loads of wood to feed the flames, then he might have more free time to have a bath. Here is a lot of telling. Which to me is problematic when applied to character descriptions. I think showing rather than telling is something that should be applied when it comes to character descriptions. As a scene unfolds, I would weave all the above details into the story at different points where appropriate. It could be right at the start, but it would need to be showing that flows easily. I do this because it would feel natural for me to read it like that. I don't like it when someone has just stuffed a character profile down my throat, like it's part of the process, something to be checked off. Because they think moving along in the story, I would have a clear picture of what their characters look like. I wouldn't remember! I am all about subtly reinforcing characteristics over time so the reader has built a mental profile that is retained. They have gotten to know my character over the course of the book. I cannot expect them to remember what was said in chapter 1! Anyway, this is just something I do and not something I learned. I would be suspicious of my advice because it doesn't come with any grounding. I suspect my writing is influenced by what I love to read, but I'm not even sure about that since I don't like to analyze while reading. I hope I haven't confused you! NOTE: I'm actually not a fan of the showing and not telling rule. I love infodumps of past events that may be relevant but that I do not care to read a chapter about. I also don't mind infodumps in dialogue. Again, this is me the lazy reader. I don't want to be shown everything! Just get to the point and show me the important stuff. Part of that important stuff is character descriptions, which should be shown and not told.
I loved your 'silly' example, but do think it's overloaded with too much listed information, especially if it's the start of your story. I read through it a few times, and realised what stood out for me was his physical deformity, and how it prevented him from doing his work very efficiently. Some of the other details just went past me. I'd say less is more, and you can fill in the extra details later on. This paragraph was all about him attempting to tend fires, so his scabby features, teeth and eyes really aren't needed to give us the picture and to make us feel pity for his situation, which I expect is what you were trying to do. If you pared it down a bit, the impression would be stronger, and the details that get listed here can be made more relevant a bit later on. Why not something like this: Ratboy was a scrawny child-like creature, always hunched over and hobbling about on his twisted legs and tripping over his giant feet. If only his pin-like arms could carry greater loads of wood to feed the flames, he might have more free time to take a bath, to scrub off the ever-present layer of soot that darkened his skin. That gives us a very strong impression of his physical shape, his general condition and even how he moves. Then you can move into what his beady eyes take in, and maybe how he cringes a yellow-toothed grin at anybody who speaks to him. Details make a stronger impression if you take just a little bit more time to show what these details actually do for the story, rather than just listing them.
@jannert !!!! That example is what NOT to do!!!! I was rereading my post just now and realised it could be read wrong.
Ah. Actually it's quite good, just a bit too stuffed with detail for that short bit. But the detail you've included is certainly story-worthy and not the least bit dull.
@jannert - Thanks. hehe But my point is that I would try to avoid the above where possible because I like to weave description as things happen. The scene would go something like this for me if I write it... Ratboy's beady eyes glared in frustration at the raging Fire. It was hungry again. More wood. Always more wood! Sweat rolled down his face further exacerbating the perpetual scabby skin condition he suffered. The itching made him irritable. "One day when I figure out how to escape my imprisonment, I'm going to toss a bucket of water on you!" he growled at the Fire. The flames roared back and stretched towards him in menace. A plume of black smoke hit Ratboy's face in retribution. He coughed. Cursing, he grabbed a cloth to wipe his face. The white cotton quickly turned black from the soot that layered his body. It was a futile battle to stay clean and he wished for a bath. But the Fire must be fed or the fairyfolk in the forest would punish him for letting the flames die out. Ratboy turned his hunched form and slowly hobbled on twisted legs out the door. Folding his little body tighter against the howling wind, he watched his giant feet to make sure he didn't trip over himself on the icy path that lead to the shed. Once he reached the wood stack, he looked up dissatisfied. The pile was twice his size and he could not reach the top. Previously, he'd been taking from the lower sections until it looked like Swiss cheese. If he was not careful, the wood logs could tumble down and crush him. Bloody elves and their trickery. After carefully selecting a single wood log for that was all his stick-like arms could carry on each trip, he made his way back to the cottage. Ratboy's pot belly grumbled as ran his tongue along his uneven line of teeth that were jagged and filled with gaps. At this rate, it would be well past midnight before he finished his chores and have dinner. LOL @deadrats - that's what I mean by weaving descriptions in.
Garsh... okay, apology accepted. I can relate to that, although most of my favourite authors are dead, so I've got a longer wait. As for the living ones, I don't know what Ken Follett's up to with all this 'century' stuff; I'm still waiting for him to get back to the spy/action/semi-science fiction stuff. Cool. Your strategy sounds... sound (the only word I can think of at six-thirty in the morning). Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. I do something similar where I imagine I'm telling the story to a specific person I know. ATM, I'm telling a story to the guy who headed up our Tyro group (which I don't think even exists as an organization any longer) back in the late 1960s. I found him on Facebook a few years ago (where we exchange mundane stuff every day) but I haven't told him he's my 'reader.' In fact, I don't even know if he reads other than FB stuff, but I don't think that really matters. I've been called up on the carpet before on this forum for stating generalities, but never in such a compelling and entertaining way. I bow to your argument... at least in your case. And I guess that makes us the psychological programmers of cerebral chemical concoctions. Tricky business, that. It's one profession where putting one's heart in goes a long way toward success. Yeah, well... we'll see. 'Making sense' isn't always the right place to start anyway. Some stories start with a feeling and those buggers rarely live by the rules of logic.
