You're wrong if you say wrong things... if you started saying right things, you could be right! Like you could say: It's important to me to describe my characters. (pretty hard for me to argue with that, right?) or... I prefer books that have the characters described on the first page, even if the description feels shoehorned in. (I can say that I prefer books that don't do that, but I can't say your personal preferences are wrong). But if you say you think something's important when I think it's not important, then... I disagree with you. That's all.
1/ I don't think that character descriptions are "always important". If you're writing an unreliable narrator, it may be more important to leave the uncertainty in the reader's mind. As I said in my last post, his actions will determine whether he fulfils his perceptions, or whether he's deluded. There, you do have an argument for including his beliefs, even if he's not Sir Galahad re-incarnate, like he believes, but a modern-day Stalin. BUT 2/ is where we diverge markedly. How he looks may be affected by his beliefs, but I don't believe his beliefs are affected by how he looks. And you began your posts on this thread by telling us to shoehorn in a description of what they look like. A description of what they look like? Maybe. In first person? No. Shoehorning? Never.
Not at all. Every reader is different. Some appreciate the description to give them a vision and others don't. At least to me? I appreciate a good description up front. And believe me I am taking into consideration doing it right now. I mean, little to no description I woul feel like my imagination is lost. Because I can't put a voice to the character I can't imagine him raising his eyebrow, I can't identify who he is. So to me matters A LOT.
Add me to the long hair, don't care list when it comes to character descriptions... either with writing them or reading them. Whenever I read a book that makes a point of describing each new characters' physical appearance upon introduction my authorial intrusion radar goes off. Usually it doesn't stop there. I get the feeling that there will be more fingers poking in my imagination. Ditto for clothes. I don't care what color shirt Robert Jordan wore in For Whom the Bell Tolls or what color eyes his love interest had (though Hemingway may have described both, I don't remember). I don't mind a little bit if it's super-duper important. Or even casual. If the author has a reason to write the word "hair" and chooses to add blond or brunette, then fine. But if I sense that the author is trying to slip one past my goalie I club them over the head with my stick.
So how about something like this. For characters not pivotal to the plot I describe them in little detail, but only add more when its a character who is either part of the main cast or has important role. So something like this respectively; Main Cast description Handsome young man with raven colored hair and pale skin, you could see the magic imbued in his veins only so faintly, but it was his eyes that were unnerving. They were almost so pale they remind me of the eyes of a corpse, except his eyes had a spark of life. Too much life if you asked me. His scars were his betrayal to his looks, a scar across his bottom lip down to his chin, his left hand was branded by the Order. Still it didn’t change the fact his idealism that was going to be the death of us. and then non main cast member A pensive featured, olive complexion kid with ginger hair. While Gurdur his mother, or something like it, would not be seen on the front lines, older than me. Jeanne her son, her actual son a rosy blonde, strong jawline and lean features. Could have made a good soldier if fate hadn’t intervened with different plans.
There's nothing inherently wrong with your descriptions on a philosophical level. They don't seem overbearing or anything, but depending on the text that surrounds it I might get the intrusion vibe. Or not. Depends on context. I like the vibe of your descriptions, though. Deciphering your fragments, syntax, and missing words is more of an issue for me than the actual content... but that's neither here nor there.
I haven't described my main character in about 99% of everything I've written and no one has ever told me that it hurt the story, or that they'd have enjoyed it more with a description. I can remember two instances where I described the MC - red hair, because she had cut off a lock of it, and "shorter than" to emphasize large strength in a little body. I'm writing a first person present story right now and literally the only description of the MC is that he has long hair, cause some smart ass in a bar refers to him as "long-hair". In fact, it's a scene I may cut altogether and then I'll be left with no descriptions. But I can cut it because doing so doesn't change the plot and doesn't change the character. It doesn't affect who he is. And again, zero people have mentioned a thing about what he looks like. Characters that spend time describing themselves come off shallow to my mind, not the other way around. People feel real because of their observations, their emotions, their actions. I feel like you're real and I have no idea what you look like. I don't need to know your physical attributes to understand, in broad strokes, who you are. Is there anything about your physical form that would tell me anything about how you view the world that wouldn't be better expressed through action?
My character appearance does not change the plot, does not put in risk the whole story. So in a way, I agree with you. I hadn't though about that fact. Because my MC is who he is by the way he acts. Not by how he looks. Thank You.
You have a point. But as a reader I somehow have trouble placing certain behaviors on a character when I can't imagine them. I think my problem is that I somehow always choose books where the author describe the characters. I don't know.
lol, no a single paragraph does not define a character, my point was a character can be self absorbed or even a self obsessed jerk as shadowfax points out. I could have kept my river rock green eyes in the edit if I wanted to... what I feel losttheplot is saying is there has to be something there for the reader's mind to grab onto. Superficial as it may be, even in the small paragraph shadowfax edited we can infer and stereotype/profile quite a bit. we know he's a heart breaker, an athlete, possibly a surfer, has curly hair and this hair is long enough to be pulled on. I could have thrown in a quip like "and oh, how I hate it when the guys call me Swayze", to complete the picture. but it runs the risk of the reader not really connecting, and not knowing who Swayze is. yes true I might not need to know as a reader the color of a character's eyes, but it's a nice to have, helps build the character in my mind. Even deviations from what I pictured can add to a twist in the plot, used for a sense of apprehension. "He was a clean cut Rasta smoking hombre from Jamaica, in a three piece suit, looking like De Niro out of the Good Fellas, with dreadlocks, and a body to match. Our only obstacle, guarding the door to the hottest nightclub in town, his perfect white smile, wasn't fooling anyone. Our fake Ids and bravado, wasn't going to get us very far." If that doesn't throw you for a loop of contradictions and yet still give you a sense of the person. Yes an editor can chop it all up to hell and back and still sort of get it there, but betsy to dollars it loses some of the nuance I want to convey to the reader. It had been less than a month since momma had past. I could remember being little and climbing in her lap and asking "momma what color are my eyes". I loved her response from the first time I heard it " they're river rock green baby, and with those eyes you will be breaking the ladies hearts " ---
Yeah, it's not a deal breaker for me either. Just one of those little symptoms that sometimes metastasizes into something worse. Kind of like a waking up with a little tickle in my throat. It might only be a bit of dehydration. Or the opening salvo of bronchitis. Might be nothing. Might be a serious warning sign. It's all about context. George RR Martin made me want to punch somebody when he spent three paragraphs describing each character at the beginning of each chapter. I don't give a fuck what Littlefinger is wearing. I really don't. And if he changes clothes halfway through the scene I don't need to know that either. Or what a table of food looks like. I know what splendor is. Really... I get it. You're trying to be fancy and think you can take my breath away. Take a walk, George. Bret Easton Ellis did the same thing in American Psycho. Every character had an Armani suit or a Chanel dress of Tiffany cufflinks (which are baaaad-ass, btw) and he would describe each character every time they showed up on the page... and I had no problem with it. It was a "period" piece to an extent, and it illustrated the vapid milieu of Wall Street yuppies navigating the buffoonery of 80s excess. Nobody would have been caught dead in the wrong suit at the wrong restaurant... or value anybody who did. So when Patrick Bateman sizes up every character he meets he only notices the clothes and other superficialities. Most of the time he can't remember their names but they don't matter. They're all apparitions in costumes to him. Same gag as Martin. Entirely different context.
It matters to the reader that they enjoy the story, which probably means something different for each person. For me it means not wading through words which do little to turn the cogs of the underlying mechanisms – the characters, trajectories, plot etc. The question isn't so much whether it matters to see the character's face, rather to what degree the details of this vision should be prescribed by the writer, and to what degree by the reader's imagination. If you don't mention your character's hair, does the reader assume the character has none?... Maybe, maybe not, but does it matter to the story? If 'yes' then perhaps it should be mentioned. If 'no' then perhaps it's not an important detail. If your intention is to convey the significance of the occasion, then as far as the dress goes perhaps it would suffice simply to mention that she has chosen her favourite, though you might provide additional dress-details to convey further information about the kind of person she is, the kind of date she is attending, the kind of person she is meeting etc. The point is that these details would be selected for a particular purpose and so made relevant by it, rather than selected through an arbitrary notion that it matters to the reader to see the dress.
The river rocks outside my house are either slate-grey or poop-brown ETA: my eyes are poop-brown too... momma always told me to work my profile.
He needed a little fashion advice. Blond hair with a maroon shirt was just wrong in my book, and while a high fade haircut could travel with a suit, it couldn't coexist with a pink foulard tie. Wrong. Just wrong. I doubted that he'd take advice from me, though. His suit was hand-tailored--nothing off the rack had provided a perfect fit for shoulders that broad. He clearly had opinions. I never like green eyes--they always had a sinister vibe for me, especially when they were that faded yellow green. But I was willing to consider making an exception.
My MCs describe secondary characters, not themselves. Would you describe your self to the person right next to you? That would be awkward, when they can plainly see you. Third POV, I suppose it could go either way. IDK.
OH, MY GOD! George R. R. Martin pissed me off. I hateeee when a character description goes on, and on, and on...... I mean I get it!!!! Daenerys Targaryen has violet eyes and blond hair. MOVE ON! LOL But still, just three sentences describing a character would suffice.
Yeah, I see what you did there. Critiquing my MC by describing him. That's a good way to add it to the story. I like it. I would've never thought of that.
I've never written anything in the third person, to tell you the truth I'm unsure of how to do that too. But I agree, however, if the female character is looking into a crown and suddenly spots him, she can describe him. "he entered the room, and all eyes landed on him, his dirty blond hair was combed to the side, his strong jaw line clenched while cruising through the sea of people. His yellow-green eyes intensified under the florescent light. He dodged people as he passed them. he stood out from the rest. I don't know something like that
I got what you meant. In my homeland the rocks in the rivers are such a pretty green. Even though it's algae, It's a very bright green.
He's lonely, desperately searching for a human connection. He's incredibly emotionally resilient; after a lifetime of being treated as an offensive, embarassing, waste of space he's still centered--not cringing underfoot, not stewing with anger, not violent, not afraid, not reckless. Despite all that emotional abuse, he's still able to form normal human relationships and accept challenges. He's not particularly funny or amusing or charming, but he takes true joy in connections with other people, and he values those people immensely; I think that's why they like him. He's more vulnerable to dashed hopes than to no hope at all--like I said, he survived the Dursleys just fine, but losing Sirius cost him a lot. His sense of right and wrong are driven by his own judgements, not by the rules; he rebels, but quietly, and he always wants to be re-embraced after that rebellion. I could go on.
You could just say he's a Rasta working as a nightclub guard and that itself provides more intrigue than all the rest of the fluffy description. Rastas don't drink -- I want to know why he's working for an establishment that thrives off alcohol. Therein lies the story. His teeth and clothes are incidental. You don't need a Frankenstein of contradictions to have nuance.
to me it would just be flat no imagery, something I would skim over, not even paying attention to it, I want to see it, smell, it taste it... but like art even a black dot on a white background can have significance.
