I know exactly what my characters look like and what they are wearing. And I almost never share that information with my readers. Every person who has acted as a beta reader has commented on how little I describe physical traits of characters and yet, once they get used to it, they love it. Why? Because good art involves the mind of the person experiencing it. I write strong dialogue and show what kind of people my characters are, and the reader then creates a mental image of the person around those cues. This gives them ownership and gets them invested in the character. Rather than ending up with vague characterizations, everyone says this has the opposite effect. My characters seem very strong and believable. But of course they do. Why? Because my readers are doing most of the work and they are creating characters that their mind will believe and that will suit their taste. Less is more!
I know how my characters look rather well from head to toe; naked and clothed. However, I find that in fiction it's best to leave it to the imagination except when it's important or it can be well used in passing without adding too much emphasis on it. Readers generally imagine whatever they want, or I find that I do anyways no matter what the author wrote.
I rarely make extensive descriptions. I leave it up to the reader to imagine how the character looks like. After all, people do have different standards, especially when it comes to physical traits like beauty. I would rather have other characters or the environment react to the character's appearance as a guide to how the character might look like, eg, when she talks, people turn to her, or he has to duck when he enters a room. Terry Prachett does a really good job at this kind of writing, I think.
My favourite thing about Pratchett is that he doesn't write characters, he writes people. Real, proper people, with all the faults and inadequacies that you find in friends, and then get past. This, for me, means a much deeper connection with the character and hence you care about the story so much more.
When one of my PoV characters meet each other, then one character may think shortly about a few parts of the other's appearance. "He wore a cuirass of gold, with silver inscriptions and eagle pauldrons." and "His rough-lined face frowned in dismay, the glitter of his jade green eyes wettened by grief as his sister lay dead in his arms. Siegfried could do nothing but stare at the two, his words abandoned him and his eyes betrayed him as a tear rolled down his cheek." ^ (this is an example whereas Siegfried (PoV) stares at another character whose a PoV as well. Here you get one of the first descriptions of the second PoV character. ) I do have very good pictures of them in my head as I write their chapters and how they do things, but I just can't formulate it to words.
Side point, if you'd like some advice on how to polish this sentence up a bit, feel free to start a private 'conversation' with me. I don't want to derail this thread. Carry on!
I agree. Personally I do not miss it when books miss out on a character's physical description (because as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I can't visualise them anyway lol). I think this whole "You must describe your characters and give the readers an idea of what they look like" is overrated. Sure, some hints and suggestions are necessary, but it's really not that important and shouldn't take up that much room in my opinion
I'm a very visual person so when I write or read a story, I have a strong idea of how they look. I think this is part of the reason I can't stand movies based on books. Everything seems wrong (author intended or not, when I read a book, it becomes a special part of me). I take my character's appearance very seriously but the thing is, I can't stand blocks of description in the actual narrative and I hate the whole "he looked into a mirror" BS so I try to space out how the character looks within the introductory chapter for each new character. Say Bob comes in chapter five, then I'll try to sprinkle descriptions of him throughout the story without making it look like it was just slapped in there. It can be tough but it's a fun challenge, too!
I don't like describing my characters in detail. I might describe the helpful store clerk that I met today as "A little woman, with a clever face that seemed too young for her graying hair." Then I'd thrash around over whether "clever" communicates what I want, and so on, but I wouldn't add more, I'd just edit that short description. I might also choose my words for her to somehow give the vibe of her rapid, youthful movement, but I wouldn't put that as description.
I've come to the conclusion it's not necessary to describe exactly what a character looks like. Long passages giving you the low-down of every single nose hair or birth mark just get tedious after a while. Some physical pointers can be good, just not too much. I'd rather get the gist of what someone is like overall; see some of their quirks, so to speak.
I end up knowing virtually every detail about my characters, just through writing side pieces and extra scenes that don't end up in the story. Most of these aren't ever mentioned - I usually pick two or three features of the character that I mention within the story that sort of "defines" their character, unless more than that is necessary (which is rarely the case). For example, I could go on a whole description of my character, Imogen - height, weight, skin tone, hair color and length (from the lightest strand shade to the darkest), exact tone of her eyes, body type (the proportions of her hips, chest and weight, as well as the areas with the most well-defined muscle) and her facial features (size of her eyes, thickness of her lips, angle of her jaw). The vast majority of this is not included in the story - she is described, from the eyes of another MC who's sort of "checking her out," as a "voluptuous blonde with steel blue eyes," and at another point someone comments on her being a "classic beauty."
I love planning every detail of my characters even though I know I'll put only the tip of the ice berg into the story. I often base the looks of a character on real people, either from my own life or celebs, it depends. The current MC of my and KaTrian's WIP looks just like a taller version of a certain Finnish swimmer when she was still really buff yet ripped. I usually mention or, rather, show the defining attributes of a character's looks. For instance, the aforementioned MC is fairly striking physically, she stands out in a crowd, being 6' tall and with a very muscular physique, but I prefer to show this stuff e.g. through the way she interacts with her surroundings: how other characters react to her looks, how she's capable of doing thing X that a smaller / weaker woman couldn't etc. One thing I do not do is list attributes; where's the fun in that? In fact, I've noticed you can show a surprising amount of details this way. For instance, most people tend to notice a lot about the person they're fucking, so if there's a sex scene, sometimes the person the POV character is banging gets described in quite a bit of detail, except again mostly through actions (like if I'm in the guy's head, I might mention how he fondles his bed mate's girl pecks or whatever).
I try to show stuff when it feels relevant, but I do know myself how the characters look like down to their shoe size. As for using your imagination... Okay, if I want to use just my imagination, I don't read a book, I write or daydream. If I want to have images created by somebody else pop up in my head, images I complete but don't conjure up from nothing, then I read. And that means the writer has to give me something to work with. In fact, I find it lazy if they just write something like "he looked strange." Right, ok, strange how? Oh, I can complete the picture? Fine, he had a phallic extension going boing-boing on his forehead which, by the way, wasn't located where one would normally expect, but instead it was in the close vicinity of his derrière. I'm also rather surprised that the protagonist, whose pants or kilt or skirt I should be wearing, doesn't pay any attention to this intrusive appendage. Well, that's a bit unrealistic, I think. What's up with this guy? Does this mean your characters don't notice anything about each other? Or in the dialogue they go like: "I love your hair. Just like '98 Rachel!" but not in their thoughts? I think dialogue is a good tool for "description" (unless you're writing a group of mutes) or whatever we want to call it, considering the D-word seems to be something of a taboo among writers. I agree that less is more. But to be honest, I come up with a face of my choosing even when the d*********n is quite detailed.
In one of my novels, in the first few chapters, the main character has trouble climbing out a window without getting winded, puts his green coat around the shoulders of a man who's freezing, calls young men 'son' etc. At no point in the first act do I specifically state his age, but it's implied by his actions. The only physical features mentioned are dark eyes and dark hair. At another point, someone (a rather nasty son of a bitch) says of a new major character being introduced... “It's a great deal for you and for us. She's young and healthy and will be able to work for many years. And she's pretty too, if curves, light skin and golden hair are your thing. Put some decent clothes on her and she'll clean up real nice.” It's the only direct physical description of her in the book. I didn't feel more was needed. Later when she borrows a shirt from a tall woman, the shirt dwarfs her, so we know she's short. Simple and clear.
@TDFuhringer I see, thanks! There're certainly several, "organic" ways to convey the looks of a character to the reader without resorting to a paragraph-long list...
I love knowing quirky details about characters (including that sunglass detail!) because it really brings them alive, doesn't it? In fact, I often think that the unexpected details are more telling than what colour someone's hair is... The fact that they slouch a little when they think nobody's watching, and then straighten up when they're spoken to says so much, I think. [link removed]