How to describe the point-of-view character without using mirrors

All of the previous answers are good.

One technique I didn't see mentioned is that the reader can infer some of the POV character's looks when the POV character compares him or herself to other people, such as:

"Wow, that guy has even curlier hair than I do!"

"That guy must be loaded. I've been shopping big and tall shops since I was 16, and I know suits like that don't come cheap."

"Her mouth looks like mine before I got braces."

posted about 13 years ago

CC BY-SA 3.0

neontapir‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0

This isn't really any different than any other important information you want to get across early. Here's a few thoughts:

• A character considering how s/he might look to others is classic and pretty non-intrusive - e.g. "Somehow, people just see my blond hair and my perky smile, and never imagine such a cheerful, innocent-looking person might be a private detective who's awfully good at finding the skeletons in their closet." But this works particularly well for characters who feel that their (current) outward appearance is somehow odd or misleading, so YMMV.
• A character can always simply reflect on whether they look good enough for [[CHOOSE ONE: the meeting, the date, meeting his ultra-snobby friend, delivering a keynote address, impressing random passerby, not completely embarrassing oneself in front of random passerby, OTHER]]. But this could easily portray the character as somewhat vain, self-aware, or self-absorbed. Not always what you want.
• The key point to understand here is that, in order to justify explaining the character's appearance to your readers, you must find some point where the character himself needs to concern himself with his own appearance. Ask yourself: under what circumstances would that be? You can probably come up with circumstances which are very, very specific to your particular character.
• If you cannot find circumstances when your character would actually care about his own appearance, find circumstances under which some other character (somebody important to the story - not a random walk-on or Avon lady!) would care about his appearance. His mom before he leaves the house; his snobby friend dissing his clothes; a job interview where the prospective employer is clearly concerned that his scars imply a violent personality.
• If you cannot find circumstances where anybody would care about the character's specific appearance, or where they would make any significant difference, then it's worth considering if they're really worth describing. A book is not a movie; there's really no harm in letting readers form their own image of how the characters look - unless, for whatever reason, there are details that it's important for you to get across. But those details are probably the ones that are unusual (and hence, will be remarked upon), and/or that have significant effect on the character (and hence, you can find good situations to demonstrate them).

Hope this is helpful :)

posted about 13 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Standback‭

680 reputation 38 269 122 1