Let's get physical

The archives have several threads on this topic, including

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29653

I side with you. Are you sure your friend is a writer?

If Hero is six foot, blond and built, who cares? Show me that by the way women swoon as he walks by. If Hero is three-foot two, has one arm and a pegleg, now that's some description I may need to know, otherwise I won't understand why he gets stuck in the sewer grate while chasing Raphael and why the driver of the truck that hit him didn't see him.

Siddow , I'd love to read your book/s. I don't think I've laughed this hard in a LONG time.

See Muse your rep is gettin' around-the second paragraph is brilliant if anyone tells you to write in a different way tell em to go suck eggs-the rest is for you irrelevant-if you can write paras like that don't ask-write-you know what I mean kiddo-Dave

I'm not a very visual person, so when I read a book I appreciate some clues as to what a character looks like. Doesn't have to be a head-to-toe inventory, but I prefer to have the basics to work with: hair & eyecolor, relative height.

Because of this, not describing a character in my own writing simply wouldn't occur to me.

When reading a book, I too would rather visualize the characters my own way within the general descriptions given. So I am being somewhat vague in my book, trying to give enough information to get the reader started and then they can picture the rest for themselves. I think it makes them more involved in the story, because if the way someone is described turns the reader off for some reason, and it isn't particularly pertinent to the story, it can negatively affect the way they feel about the character even if they're supposed to like them and root for them. Just MHO.

Well, the first thing you notice about a person when you meet them, even before managing to talk to them, is their appearance right? So personally, I don't have any problem with having a viewpoint character give a quick physical description of others, mostly pointing out their distinctive features.

Plus, when your heroine is tossing around large men and cleaving armored warriors in half with a gigantic sword, I think it's helpful to clarify that she is six feet, two hundred thirty pounds of muscle and not some skinny little thing with twig arms.

A character's idiosyncrasies will show through as the story progresses, so I don't think there's a need to mention a twitchy left eye, or permanent cigarette in mouth right at the beginning.

I give a brief bit of info when the character first appears, just to make it easier for those readers who need that little fragment of something physical to get them going. But if a character has a physical attribute that's important to the plot, i.e. she's in a wheelchair or blind or something like that, I try to make sure I establish that sort of thing as soon as I can. I think this is where the old 'show don't tell' thing really comes into play.

I think you need to give some idea of the way that the character percieves themself, so that we can understand how they react to other people. A girl who is sure she is beautiful will react to a confrontation in a completely different way to one who is sure she is plain and unattractive - and if we've not known this character long the difference could be baffling. But you can probably do this without listing a single physical characteristic - and certainly without going:

'Tiffany's eyes were the colour of sapphires and her lips were like cherries. She had a waist-length mane of wildly curling, golden hair, and a body to die for.'

Why should I care? I don't know anything about Tiffany yet. I certainly don't know much more about her at the END of that description that I did at the beginning. If you're going to describe her, use those descriptions to give us an idea of her character, as well as her appearance:

'Tiffany gazed at the world through set of eye-lashes like the finest, darknest mink. When she fluttered them, grown men fell over their own feet or walked into walls. Sometimes she practised doing it on the street, just for fun.'

Now I know something about her. I don't like her much, but I know something about her!

Or:

'Tiffany had copious amounts of blonde hair held in place with haphazardly jabbed pencils and chop-sticks that were always falling out at odd moments. Her large, wide eyes laughed at the world through a tangled fringe, and the lenses of her wire-rimmed spectacles.'

She's equally beautiful, but now I like her much more.

Quite often when a writer does a complete physical inventory of a character I ignore them anyway, and build the character my own way. The only exception to this is when something about a character's physical appearance is vital to the story - they're severely disfigured, they're different in some way to everyone around them, or they're the spitting image of their dead mother who everyone loved/hated/worshipped as the living incarnation of the Goddess Matahoohoo. Then you probably need to know.

I remember imagining a character as Eddie Murphy, from the way he spoke, and completly missing the first physical description of him. So, when he turned out later to be a flaming red head and a Scot, I had to change my mental image of him rather drastically - my fault for reading too fast, and not the writer's, in this case.

glutton said:

Well, the first thing you notice about a person when you meet them, even before managing to talk to them, is their appearance right?

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Right, but who are "you"? Are you the viewpoint character meeting a secondary character for the first time and thinking "Here comes a bald guy who's tall enough to play for the Knicks, but he's twenty years too old," or are you the viewpoint character in a story about your trials and tribulations as you try to reform your city's corrupt government, in which case your hairlessness, height, and age don't matter?

MidnightMuse said:

Mike was a film noir reject, with attitude to match. There was a cigarette adhered to his upper lip that would flap like a trout on a hot tile floor when he spoke, and his right sleeve was permanently stained by cheap red wine.

What are your thoughts on the matter?

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I tend to skip over the detail preferring to come up with it on my own...but I really enjoyed your description of Mike. I can see him...and I picture Vince Vaughn (ew) in my head.

If you look at novels written sixty to a hundred years ago, those sort of head-to-toe physical descriptions were the norm. Who could ever forget that opening paragraph to Gone With the Wind..."Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Traleton twins were..." not to mention Dickens, who made sure we could visualize every charcater all the way down to the moles on their lips.

But readers today are much more sophisticated and prefer much more subtle desciptions. What has been generally said in this thread is true: Most readers like to be given small, subtle details here and there so that they can gradually form a picture of this person. And while it's important to make the reader see what you see, it's not as all-important that they see it in exactly the same way you do, at least not as much as some outdated writing how-to's would have you believe. First of all, that's an impossible goal anyway. No matter how richly detailed your descriptions are, the reader is still going to come up with thir own, personalized internal version of this character, which may have some traits in common with your vision, but will still not be an exact, carbon copy. At best, it is only going to be an approximation of the same character you envision, and this is true no matter how good a writer you are. Sometimes I think it's better to think in terms of generalities--for example, the things that need to be established. We probably need to know the person's age, young or old or in-between. We probably need some basic idea of whether they are attractive or unattractive, fat or thin, male or female, and whether or not of a specific ethnicity. Beyond that, we don't need to be hammered with a blow-by-blow description; those details can be worked in gradually as the story itself unfolds.

Whatever helps your readers to "get" your character, be it dialogue, action or clothing. It's all about details. How much is too much, and how much is too little? You can say "the building is grand" or you can describe it for us. You can say "the man was a jerk" or you can show us. You can say the woman is "a goddess" or you can show us. However you want to "show us" dependds on you -- whether it's physical descriptions or action/attitude/speech. But you must do your job as a writer to give the readers details so they can BELIEVE that this character is real, and not a cartoon.

And make sure that if you must describe a character, do it early on. It would be frustrating if the readers visualize the character to be a blonde and on page 231 finds out he has black hair. You either don't describe the character AT ALL, or you have to do it as soon as you can.

Eventually, the readers are going to supply his or her own imagination. I have a character who is British, older, and female. I had her described one way, and my readers later told me who should play her in a movie and the actress mentioned was a complete opposite of how I described her (except for the attitudes, personality, etc.) It's very interesting to me.

description

Let me put it this way. I like to picture the protagonist as looking like me. I like to become teh protagonist as I'm reading the story. This is tough to do when the writer describes the protagonist as looking like Brad Pitt.

I always just throw the character in, and maybe later into the book they'll do something like toss their hair aside which gives me the opportunity to put a color to their hair.

However, I'm sometimes disappointed by the author's physical descriptions because I know what I've imagined sounds better for the character, so the least description I'm given, the better it is

Jamesaritchie said:

Let me put it this way. I like to picture the protagonist as looking like me. I like to become teh protagonist as I'm reading the story. This is tough to do when the writer describes the protagonist as looking like Brad Pitt.

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What if the protagonist is a woman? Or a dwarf? Or an alien creature? Do you still want the readers to picture the protagonist to look like you? If you don't at least give them something to work with, it could be very frustrating to the readers. Not all readers have the author's vivid imagination.

Characters come in all shapes and sizes and personalities. I really don't see why a writer can't describe the characters if those attributes define them. After all, when you cast a movie you need to find the right actors for the roles. Why not characters in fiction? If the character is short, tell us how short he is. Don't just say "he's short" or not say anything at all, if the attributes are relevant.

I mean would you just want to know that Snow White is a woman, and Prince Charming is a man, and the Queen is an ugly older woman and leave everything else to the readers' imagination? It's as bad as saying "the building is grand" or "the flowers are pretty."

maestrowork said:

What if the protagonist is a woman? Or a dwarf? Or an alien creature? Do you still want the readers to picture the protagonist to look like you? If you don't at least give them something to work with, it could be very frustrating to the readers. Not all readers have the author's vivid imagination.

Characters come in all shapes and sizes and personalities. I really don't see why a writer can't describe the characters if those attributes define them. After all, when you cast a movie you need to find the right actors for the roles. Why not characters in fiction? If the character is short, tell us how short he is. Don't just say "he's short" or not say anything at all, if the attributes are relevant.

I mean would you just want to know that Snow White is a woman, and Prince Charming is a man, and the Queen is an ugly older woman and leave everything else to the readers' imagination? It's as bad as saying "the building is grand" or "the flowers are pretty."

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Then I follow different rules. But I generally don't want any of these described in intimate deatil, either. I have an imagination. Let me use it.

I have to actually look at the characters in movies, and at least as often as not, I wish to God they had picked someone who wasn't so handsome or beautiful.

You do not have to tell me what Prince Charming look like for me to get the picture. What he does, and how Snow White reacts to him, will do the job nicely.

And you certainly don't have to describe flowers to me for me to know they're pretty. Shwo me how the character reacts to the flowers, and I'll be fine.

Sometimes just a bit of description can be helpful, but only a tiny bit. And I'd rather see what a charcter looks like through his actions. If he's strong, have him pick up something heavy. If he's short, give him a problem related to being short. I'll get the picture.

The moment you start describing eye color, hair color, etc., you lose me. If I like the rest of the book, I'll just skim past such needless detail without reading it. I the rest of the book is giving me any problems, this is just one more.

With some characters, some of the time, some physical description is necessary, but unless you have a very specific reason for doing so, do not go into much detail. Especially with the protagonist.

Good writing usually puts some dots on the page, and lets the readers imagination fill in these dots.

And I don't know what all other readers want, but I know what I want in most books. I want to livethe story as I'm reading it. And I know many readers do most often read the type of book where they can become the protagonist, and picture themselves as such.

But writing is always about the imagination. That's the sorry thing about TV and movies. No imagination required.

I respectfully disagree. Writing has a lot to do with details (the right amount and the right details), show vs. tell, etc. You don't want pages after pages describing the character's height, weight, hair color, eye colors, etc., but without the details of the sight, smell, etc., IMHO, the writer would fail to put the readers in that world. There is plenty of room for imagination in "written fiction" for the readers -- but words should paint a picture for the readers. We don't need the descriptions of every shape of the petals and the exact smell or the number of leaves on the stalk... but enough details truly enhances the reading experience.

"The man is a walking six-foot-tall tree stump, reeking of whiskey" is better than "the man walks."

The fact that Superman has black hair and blue eyes is important. The writers need to pick and choose the details that defines the character. It's not so much that they want every reader to imagine Christopher Reeves. But they certainly don't want something to imagine a blonde Brad Pitt.

There are times when these physical attributes don't matter at all, and in that case, by all means skip it. If the attributes are important -- for example, if they defy stereotypes, such as the strapping, virtuous romantic hero is actually short and stout, you probably want to make that very clear so the readers don't automatically assume the guy looks like Ben Affleck.


p.s. BTW, any writers who writes "The man is handsome and looks like Brad Pitt" should be shot. OK, not shot, but should go back and edit that sentence out!

maestrowork said:

I respectfully disagree. Writing has a lot to do with details (the right amount and the right details), show vs. tell, etc. You don't want pages after pages describing the character's height, weight, hair color, eye colors, etc., but without the details of the sight, smell, etc., IMHO, the writer would fail to put the readers in that world. There is plenty of room for imagination in "written fiction" for the readers -- but words should paint a picture for the readers. We don't need the descriptions of every shape of the petals and the exact smell or the number of leaves on the stalk... but enough details truly enhances the reading experience.

"The man is a walking six-foot-tall tree stump, reeking of whiskey" is better than "the man walks."

The fact that Superman has black hair and blue eyes is important. The writers need to pick and choose the details that defines the character. It's not so much that they want every reader to imagine Christopher Reeves. But they certainly don't want something to imagine a blonde Brad Pitt.

There are times when these physical attributes don't matter at all, and in that case, by all means skip it. If the attributes are important -- for example, if they defy stereotypes, such as the strapping, virtuous romantic hero is actually short and stout, you probably want to make that very clear so the readers don't automatically assume the guy looks like Ben Affleck.


p.s. BTW, any writers who writes "The man is handsome and looks like Brad Pitt" should be shot. OK, not shot, but should go back and edit that sentence out!

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Writing has everything to do with details. But the ones left out are at least as important as the ones put it. I really don't care in the least if the man is six feet tall.

Yes, words should always paint a picture, but never fully. The intent of words is to make the readers imagination paint the picture, not to do it for the reader.