On another thread I was reminiscing about a conversation with a non-writer friend about her GCSE story. She asked me to review it, and I said "Too much description." She replied "They need to know what she looks like." My thought was: "Why?" I mean, does it really matter if your image of the character is the same as the writer's? Half the time I form images of the character that don't take description into account anyway. Does it change someone's opinion of a character if they have brown hair rather than blonde? I tend to have a short paragraph describing a main character as they're introduced, then put in little things like "She tucked a black curl behind her ear." How do the rest of you do it? And lastly, this may need a separate thread, but how on God's green Earth does one manage description in the first person? The only ways I can think of are having the character just launch into a description of themselves for no reason, which is just weird, or by having them look in a mirror, which is clichéd.
I'll just copy the Dialogue. Azure: "Red hair, green eyes, I can see the Irish; you look just like your father. Bartlett (1st person POV Char): "I perform ballet for the Chicago Opera." - That brief exchange is the only details I give about what the MC looks like. (Other than the fact you learned the MC is a woman in Chapter 1.)
Edited to add: Oh. I remembered the first person, and then I got confused. Edited. Oh, dear God. It was Mom. I plastered on a smile and opened the door. Mom tilted her head. "New haircut?" The smile wavered. "Yes. I told you, I like it short." "No, dear." She shook her head as she swept past. "It won't do. If you had a chin, that...mass of frizzy blonde might be all right. But with your little round baby face? No. But we can fix the damage. I'm going to make you an appointment with my stylist on Thursday." "No, you're not." I chased her, glancing frantically around the apartment for evidence of...well, anything. Life. All life must be hidden from Mom. "You're right." She turned back. "My mistake. Not Thursday. That's the appointment with the dietician." "I don't need a dietician, Mom." "Of course you do, dear. I know that you're not technically overweight, but people age. Ten excess pounds today leads to diabetes at fifty." "That's insane!" "It would be different if you had the height to carry the weight. Darling, you know the surveys; women five foot six or over are the ones with the good careers. Why aren't you wearing those heels I sent you?"
Because I write romance, I'll usually write a fair amount of description which is mostly the MCs musing about why they find the other super hot.
There've been tons of threads on this - not saying you shouldn't've started this one, but if you want to dig back in the forum a bit you can probably find a lot more answers. IMO: Description doesn't matter unless it does. That sounds dumb, let me take another run at it - in my wip, one of the mcs is 5'4 and quite thin and light. I don't mention their exact height because that would definitely be clunky, but when applicable I mention that they have to look up at things, they're much closer to an eight y/o character's height than other folks are, they're easily picked up, and someone repeatedly calls them 'little' to demean them. I tried to slip it in as often as possible without being annoying so that, however else people imagined this character, they would definitely imagine them small. Because it's important at two climactic points that they just can't fuckin' reach stuff I have a pretty vivid mental image of this character - I usually do for all of my characters - but it's not really important what their hair looks like or anything else. I tossed in a fairly barebones description of them when they were introduced that was mostly because the other pov character was immediately quite taken with them (they didn't have a similar description of that pov character because they couldn't've cared less what he looked like), and at times, like you, I'll throw in something like "pushing her black hair behind one ear" if I don't feel it's intrusive. My rule for that is that it has to be something the pov character would be aware of - they're not going to mention the color of their own eyes, but if their hair is annoying them and they have to brush it back, they're going to be aware of the fact that it's unruly because it's curly. No "she put her glasses on over her blue eyes" or "she pulled a shirt on over her pale skin" (unless she's goth and appreciating how great her black shirt looks against that pale skin, I guess). Personally I think that your friend was wrong. It doesn't really matter what characters look like (unless it does). I know when I'm reading something, I usually end up forming some type of mental image based on the character's name - it'll remind me of another character or someone I know or an actor with that name, and those two will be linked for me. If they're named Harry but then red hair is mentioned, my brain's going to go "oh, Harry Potter with red hair". That's just how it's going to work for me. So descriptions don't matter to me that much. So yeah, my method is similar: brief descriptions on introduction, little tidbits littered throughout, sometimes. I try to not block all of my initial description in at once, though. Two secondary characters in my current wip share their descriptions over the course of about 250w - they're a mother and son but the information given is that he's younger, then that she has an accent, then that he's taller, then that they have the same hair and skin-tone, then that he has a lighter version of her accent. The narrative doesn't stop to deliver all of this at once, it's mixed into a five-line conversation including actions. I think it's pretty painless. Later on the daughter/sister is introduced and the only real description she ever gets that I remember right off is that she looks like the other two, and at one point she pushes hair behind her ear (funnily enough). I'm cheating with family members though!
I snorted. Just to extend on this, description really can be painful to read. I feel like it's overdone too much, and it really doesn't matter who looks like what, unless of course it does. If you introduce every character with a laundry list description you'll lose everyone along the way. Slip little details in and let the reader do the rest.
Hey, I was once a goth kid, I know that life And I definitely used to be one of those writers. Since I have such vivid mental images, I always really wanted to impart those to the reader. But heaven help the reader if I introduced a few characters at once, because I'd be dropping everything to describe the exact length and shade of everyone's hair and exactly what they were wearing - and it was completely pointless and stopped any sense of momentum. But at least everyone would know how pretty that elf boy was, right? But it's also worth nothing that you don't have to go in the complete opposite direction, either. I did that for a while and had a big minimalist phase after my big purple prose phase. Descriptions aren't evil. You should no more listen to someone who tells you to never describe anyone or anything than you should to someone who tells you you have to describe everyone and everything. As with all things: moderation.
Haha I did the exact same thing! 'Black shoulder length hair, piercing green eyes, glisteninglipsnarrowaquilinenoseheworeblackjeansandaleatherjacketblublbulbulublubublbuulblub.' ^Me. It's so freaking hard to find that balance. Are we the same person?
Ah, yes. I didn't have a goth phase, but I did once think that one had to describe each and every one of one's characters. (I blame my primary school teachers for telling me that this was the way to go.) The first paragraph of one novel is completely description and at one point also stops to describe some other important characters, a set of sisters, so they all had the same hair and eye colour, and it was hard to know what to say besides that. (Plus it's set in 1911, so it's not weird that there are eight of them.) Definitely something I've flagged down for re-doing in the second draft.
Isn't it amazing how much trust we put in teachers? I blame them for me doing the exact same thing. That and a whole lot of other bad habits that seem to have stuck in my head.
What else did they teach you? I've talked about the classic "Don't use "said". Ever." in another thread, why are teachers so fixed on that?
I got the never use said, as well. I use said all the time. No big deal, as long as it's not all you use. The first one that comes to mind is don't begin a sentence with 'and' or 'but'. Which always struck me as odd. I'm sure there are tons more 'rules' lurking in my head.
You find lovely descriptions of characters in published novels all the time, so don't be afraid of "indulging" yourself. Like everything, it just has to be done in a way that it fits the whole. I still remember the way David Grossman described his characters in To The End of the Land even though I read it like a year ago because they were vivid but compact descriptions. If you don't like them don't write them. But don't assume readers wouldn't enjoy the images you'll evoke if you do describe your characters. You are the writer, after all. You've seen the face and body of this interesting person you're writing about -- now describe it to me so I can see what you saw.
