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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44973
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are more important things than physical perfection. It would depend on the genre. As has been stated, romances have handsome love interests. Also, we have been taught that beauty and virtue are somehow paired. The strong and noble hero must be handsome and the villain is ill-favoured.

In Magic Mountain, the MC becomes completely besotted with a Russian princess and I assumed she was beautiful mostly from his reaction. The author then starts describing her features and I realized that she was no looker. Not even a case of the harmony of imperfections.

The reader often assumes beauty as that is the default in the important characters.

In my WiP my main character can’t be remarkably handsome - good looking yes, but not to the degree people would take note.

Choose whatever works in your story. Are your characters beautiful or ordinary? A mixture? Perhaps they have some handsome traits.

I was describing a character to my cousin - barely got started. I told him her hair colour and he told me ‘sounds hot’. Okay - he filled in a few blanks but that is fine. It is part of the fun of reading - creating an image in our minds eye of the characters.

Original score: 2