What's to come

Hey curious visitor,

In case you're wondering what the heck in going on, I'm here to tell you that I'm working on creating a new site to host some old and new content. It might take a while before things are running smoothly. Thanks for check in, and I hope you end up back here when things are finally up and running!

Having Fun With Character Description

What's more fun than character description, right? In real life, no one gets a say in how they look-- it's all genetics and life circumstances. But when we create characters, we can make them look however we want. And their looks should reflect who they are and how other characters see them. But writing character descriptions is tricky-- you don't want to bore or overwhelm the reader with too much description. You also don't want to leave it too vague, or they'll have a foggy, unclear picture of the people in your story. I'm going to present my thoughts on what works and what doesn't.

First off, here are a few things I hate:

• Drivers license descriptions. Charlie had blonde hair, brown eyes, was 5 foot eleven, and two hundred and ten pounds. That may be a good start, but it's boring to read and doesn't paint a picture.
• Fawning descriptions of stunningly beautiful people. If you need an example, open to any page in Twilight. Oh my God, Edward is like a living Adonis. His skin sparks. His hair gleams. He's so . . . boring. I like flaws, but I'll get into that more later.
• Overly descriptive passages, especially of attractive characters. I think the main problem here is that beauty is subjective, and if you describe a character in too much detail, it's going to turn some readers off. I'm not too into guys who are cut up body builders, and if the writer keeps going on about a guy who's built like Arnold, I start to lose interest in him.
• Cliches. Oh, your character has emerald eyes. Neat. I've never heard that before.
• Unnatural features when a character is not meant to be a sci fi or fantasy creature. No one has violet eyes, but I read that all the time! Stop it!
• Late descriptions. Sometimes an author choses not to describe a character in much detail. Maybe they'd rather the reader fill in the blanks themselves. Fine. But I hate when I've been left alone to visualize someone and then suddenly on page 110 I'm told the person has brown hair when I've been picturing a blond. Now I'm all screwed up. I have to stop reading and decide what to do. Keep my old version of the character or create a new one? Now the character seems slightly foreign to me. It really takes me out of the reading experience. If your going to drop in some description, don't wait too long.
• Characters looking in mirrors. I hate it when within the first two pages the character looks in a mirror and describes what they see. When's the last time YOU did that? I admit, I've written scenes like this because it's sometimes hard to slip in what your protagonist looks like without breaking up the flow of a story, but if you can find a creative way around it, please do!

Here are my tips on writing more colorful descriptions:

• Have another character be the mirror. Much of how we view ourselves comes from how others view us. There are societal standards of beauty and we're all aware of how we match up to them. If your character looks like a Victoria's Secret model, I'm sure she notices men staring at her and maybe she's frequently approached. Or maybe she's attractive in an intimidating way, and finds that people are awkward or unfriendly to her. Or perhaps your teenage, male protagonist is overweight and overlooked. Or maybe he just falls short in the looks department when compared to other guys his own age. Maybe he feels self conscious around his best friend, because the friend is taller and more athletic, or just looks cooler. Any scene where the character's looks affect how others react to him could be a segway into a character description.
• Don't make everyone super hot/beautiful/fit/gorgeous. I know we want our characters to be appealing, but there are other ways to create a character that attracts readers. I've found myself being attracted to characters  aren't good looking. In the Harry Potter series, Severus Snape is repeatedly referred to as being greasy and having a big nose, yet you'll find that many readers drooled over him (even before he was played by the delish Alan Rickman). So don't worry that your characters need to be good looking to be well liked.
• On a similar note, sometimes a quirky person ends up being attractive because of their odd and interesting qualities. Take a look around you in the real world. Some people aren't perfect but their imperfections make them intriguing. Go ahead and give your character a wide nose, a dorky haircut or aggressively freckled arms and legs. They can pull it off.
• If you feel like you've read a particular description before, maybe a million times, don't write it. People in books always have coffee colored eyes. Can you think of something better? Other things are brown. Whole grain muffins are brown. Mud is brown. So is apple cider and malt vinegar. I once read that a character had oatmeal colored eyes and that painted a great picture for me and the description stuck with me and inspired me to think outside the box when it comes to colors. Be aware that your word choice is sometimes going to project a certain mood or atmosphere. If you want your character to come across as mysterious, you might not want to say they have eyes the color of a potato. In that case, color might not be necessary. You might want to use a word like murky, quiet or overcast. Someone's who sad might have eyes like bruised fruit.  You have to push your mind in a different direction. The flip side of this is not every wild description is going to work, but I'd rather read something unique, even if a bit clunky, over something boring.
• Don't always go for the obvious traits. Eye color may seem important, but it's not always a necessary component to a good description. Same goes with height, hair and weight. Sometimes those particular details don't tell you anything about how the person looks. Try to think about other distinguishing characteristics. Body size and shape can be important. Some people are flimsy or fragile looking. Others seem strongly rooted. It can helpful to pick out a distinguishing trait, such as a girl who's all hair with sweeping bangs that cover half of her face. Or maybe she has big teeth that make her look like a sexy bunny (Bridget Bardot, anyone?). Zooming in with your mind can help. Imagine  you're sitting really close to your character-- your faces are inches away from each other. Now what do you notice? The ghosts of freckles on his nose? The way her eyelashes stick together like they're wet? Are his irises segmented like a bisected lemon? Is she wearing too much make up that seems a little caked on? If you look down, can you see the veins across the tops of his hands? Details like that create a more intimate description.
• Look at people. Start noticing what's interesting about them. Try to mentally describe them to yourself-- you'll probably end up with some usable descriptions that are more vivid than what you'd come up with if you were just making up a person off the top of your head. I'm not saying that you should base characters off of real life acquaintances. Rather, you'll want to patch together different characteristics to create a character who's individual.
• Make your character a little damaged. Scars can be sexy and win over sympathy. Or they can make a character unnerving. Repulsive even. It all depends on what kind of reaction you want to get out of your reader.
• If you want to go light on character description, at least give the reader something to go off of. You don't have to write a paragraph waxing poetic on the hero's manly eyebrows, but at least say something about him: that he's colossally tall or looks like undertaker-- something. Anything. I once read a book where the protagonist's female love interest was simply described as being "hot" and having tan legs. That works for me because I can picture hot however I like it.
• Keep track of character descriptions that stand out to you, that paint a really good picture. I remember reading a book about fifteen years ago where the story's protagonist was sticking her legs out of a car window and commented on the fact that she didn't have to shave her legs because the hair on them was so pale and soft. Kinda weird, but I like it. Not shaving your legs seems so confident. Just that little bit of description lets me know a lot about who she is. I also read a fan fiction where the author described the way a characters shoulder blades were visible through the fabric of their shirt as they were hunched over writing, and I thought that was an incredible description. It created a feeling of intimacy and vulnerability and wasn't like anything else I'd ever read.

So what do you think? How do you describe characters? Any tips that you can share with me to add to my arsenal?