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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42125
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42125
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

A character looks at another character, skin colour creates certain associations. A character looks at himself, and associations would be shaped by society, and by what is "normal" in that society. What we refer to as "black", for example covers a huge range of brown shades, that would only be jumbled together as "black" where "white" is the "norm". "Brown" is an even more confusing category, that appears to be a catch-all for all the shades that are neither "black" nor "white". And all those distinctions are only half about actual colour, other half being things like ethnicity.

Now, I need to throw away all those weird cultural associations, and start from scratch. **Both novels I am currently working on are set in the Middle East (or a fantasy version thereof), so the range of Middle-Eastern skin colours is the "norm".**

I am narrating my stories in third-person, one limited, the other - omniscient. Culturally, my "narrator voice" is very much where my characters are.

**Under those constraints, how do I describe my MCs' ("brown") skin colour?** (Other characters can sort of follow from the MC's baseline and the MC's perception.) I have so far used "tanned", but that isn't right at all - it suggests that the character is naturally paler than they currently appear, which is not what I'm trying to describe. "Brown" doesn't really work either, for the reasons explained above, and also because it's not really descriptive - so many shades of brown. And it would be strange, I think, to describe my MCs' appearance in exotic terms, since they're supposed to be pretty much the norm.

(It might be that I'm having a blind spot, because this is what I look like. Since it's mine, it's just "skin" to me.)

[This](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/14143/14704) question is related, but its point of reference is different, and the accepted answer has a "Houston, we have a problem" in the exact colour range that I'm trying to describe. [This one](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/33177/14704) is about describing a "white" character in a "non-white" setting, while mine is about describing the average "non-white" character in the same setting.

EDIT: A valid concern has been raised, as to why I need to mention skin colour at all. Two reasons:

1. Because if the characters were Caucasian, I would not have struggled to describe their skin colour, and I would have mentioned it in passing (one character being tanned from spending a lot of time outside, another having pale, almost translucent skin, etc.) so it's weird to avoid describing a different skin colour just because the frame of reference is not Caucasian. 
2. Because through the MC, I wish to set the norm for the society I'm describing. I also wish for the freedom within that norm: if I mention a character is pale, having spent most of their life indoors, I want this to be the pallor of a princess in Japanese legend, not the pallor of a redhead.

Original score: 21