Ways of describing new characters?
What are some good ways to describe the looks of a new character presented in a story? I generally mention eye and hair color, physical build and maybe if they have facial hair or not. But to me it seems a bit boring to use the same style of description each time. What are some other various ways of describing new characters without giving too much detail that the reader may lose track of what is going on in the story?
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3 answers
Perhaps it would help if you had an image or a spreadsheet-style description of each character handy. Then you could dribble out bits of description as things are unfolding. For example, when introduced, perhaps all we know is that M is the protagonist's sister. But as things develop, maybe we'll find out she has bangs that need trimming, and she often blows at them; she's tall and awkward; when she's thinking hard about something, she (fill in the blank). And so on.
Also, you can have the protagonist notice something about a character. For example: J noticed, for the umpteenth time, how his sister's ears seemed to become even more pointy and quirky when she was in an uncomfortable social situation.
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- Clothes
- Smell (cologne/perfume, the scents that may be in clothing or hair)
- Body language (swagger, creep, stroll, cringing, stride)
- Attitude (businesslike, flirtatious, bored, scared, tired)
- Voice (tone, volume, accent, husky/smooth, high/low, speech impediment)
- Age
- Race
- Species if it's a SF/F story
If you want practice, turn on the TV at random and pick someone. Describe that person. Flip the channel and do it again. Do it 10 times. Do it twice a day. Make a point of using a different characteristic to lead with for each description.
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The reader is going to form an image of a character or a scene by putting together bits from their own experience. They do this based on the clues you give them, but they use those clues to select from their own repository of images. The key, therefore, is to give them the clues that matter, that will shape the image they form to fit the story you want to tell.
Sometimes this means vital statistics. Often, though, it is more a matter of the telling detail, the small thing that pulls the right sort of image from the reader's stock of imagery. Maybe is is white teeth and a short skirt; maybe it is a tweed jacket and a half empty bottle of gin; maybe it is spurs and a hat pulled low over the forehead; maybe is it plastic glasses and a sweater vest.
None of those details are enough to recreate the character exactly as you see them, but that is almost impossible to do. For most characters they are enough to place them, to tell at a glance what kind of person they are. The rest you fill in with behavior or speech rather than details of appearance.
Sometimes the details of appearance matter much more. I am thinking of the description of Merlin in The Sword in the Stone, which is highly detailed and specific -- far more so than that of any other character. The only other description that comes close is that of King Pellinore as Wart first encounters him in the woods, but that description has more to do with establishing Wart's reaction to the knight than it has to do with the appearance of the knight himself.
Sometimes, too, characters behave or dress in a way that is designed to make people notice something in particular about them. They are creating a bullseye, a trap for the eye, and what they want you to look at tells you more than what they look like, it tells you what they want you to see, and what they want to hide from you. Those are the most telling details for a character, but they can be very different details for different characters. Find what they are trying to show and what they are trying to hide and focus your description on that.
The point is, don't describe for the sake of describing; describe for story effect. Describe just enough to pull the right sort of image from the reader's stock of images, or to portray the protagonist's reaction to a character when they encounter them. Describe for emotional response and for recognition of type. If you do this, your descriptions will not seem repetitive or boring -- unless the characters themselves are repetitive or boring.
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