Who are these people anyway?

[ElizabethJames]

Interesting discussion in writing group this morning about how and when to describe the physical characteristics of major characters. Our personal approach has been to leak out the details over a few paragraphs, gradually building up to a full picture. Here's an example. This character is named Donny Roy. (He's the man built like a silo.)

Our fellow groupies wanted the description of Donny Roy right up front.

Thoughts?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<span style="font-family:courier; font-size:medium;">Allan hurried through the pomp and plaids. Past a sign saying Turning the Caber. Up to the edge of the kilt-wearing crowd. He marveled with Rose as a man built like a silo grunted and growled and lifted a hundred-pound wooden pole and flipped it smoothly through the damp afternoon air. The caber landed with a wet thump and the crowd roared.

A red-haired pixie beside Allan and Rose jumped for joy and fluttered her feet in the style of highland dancing. Rose rolled her eyes. She doesn’t like enthusiasm in adults as a matter of principle, and this child-sized woman rubbed her the wrong way.

Allan watched as Silo Man left the field and walked into the pixie’s embrace. He saw her nuzzle her nose through the vee of his cotton shirt and lick the bulging muscles of his chest. He almost felt her grind her petite pelvis against the man’s hard thigh, bunching the kilt between his furry legs.

The man caught Allan’s jealous eye and smiled. ‘Aye,’ he said with a nod.

Allan was confused. ‘Are you talking to me?’

The man tilted his head and smiled again. ‘My name is Donny Roy, and I am indeed talking to you.’

‘Did you say eye?’ Allan was hoping he wouldn’t have to take offense.

‘You need yourself a kilt,’ said Donny Roy.

‘A kilt?’

‘Twill answer all your prayers.’

That’s how things got started. Allan wanted a woman to lick his chest, even if it had to be his wife. And Donny Roy seemed to have the key. He could have told Allan to put on plaid panties he would have done it. Plus the way he gives advice, you pretty much have to take it. Two hundred pounds of slab muscle. Legs thick as a bear’s. Fiery blue eyes under bright orange brows. A shaved head. And a quiet voice laced with the threat.
</span>

[sc211]

It's always good to have description right up front - just as you'd meet a character on the street. (And don't we all hate it when on page ten we're told he has red hair?)

But in this case it works because any man who can toss a hundred-pound wooden pole smoothly through the air isn't going look like Fred Astaire. We know he's a big, beefy guy and aren't suprised when he's bald.

So yeah, it works. The setting and action actually describe the character.

[maestrowork]

Yup, I don't think it matters if you dump a whole bunch of descriptions or sprinkle them over a few paragraphs, but do it soon when your characters are introduced. I just read a book where 239 pages later the author describes a character who appears on page 112. Agh!

[ChunkyC]

I think the way you've done it works well. The first look at Donny is from a distance, so you don't want details right away, just that first impression of a man built like a silo. Then as he gets closer, you build up the more intimate details of his appearance, and behavior.

Hell, if I happen across a guy who's tossing a tree trunk through the air, the last thing I'm likely to pay attention to is the colour of his eyes.

[ElizabethJames]

Thanks for such good clear feedback. We'll let this one sit for awhile and focus on why we made up Donny Roy in the first place.

This place is wonderful.

[mr mistook]

I have this theory that the movies have trained us all to automatically assume a character is good-looking unless otherwise stated.

[ElizabethJames]

We second that theory.

[three seven]

Having a goldfish-rivalling attention span, I have to read every word and clearly visualise every scene in order to follow a story. I was recently half-way through a novel when I found it casually mentioned that one of the main characters, who'd been introduced in the first chapter, was less the Cary Grant type I'd imagined and more Sammy Davis Jr. Imagine my confusion.
There's clearly a danger in taking your own characters' physical characteristics for granted and editing out the bits of description you feel are either obvious or irrelevant. Said character's ethnicity was entirely irrelevant to the plot, yet seemingly important enough to mention 200-odd pages in when it's clearly harder to adjust to than, say, the position of his parting.
In other words, I agree - drop it in early or not at all.

[Nateskate]

I don't know that every character has to be likable, but they have to be interesting. A man walking through the town square with a pitch fork and devil suit, screaming obscenities, isn't likable, but they are interesting.

I see it like the reader is one person in a room full of strangers, perhaps in an airport. They are bored, but wanting to find someone who will change that.

What makes a person in a room full of strangers interesting? Why does one draw your eye away from the others, and make you want to walk up and ask, "where are you from?"

Generally speaking, specific things make people interesting: Their look, the way they carry themselves, a sympathetic trait. If they are interesting, you will keep watching them until someone else catches your eye.

Mostly, I think that some people are gifted in being able to identify those things, and express them verbally.

Question: Not in a pervy way, but have you ever seen hair so soft, you wanted to reach over and sift your fingers through it, even if they were a stranger? It's like shinny silk. You could be behind them in a bus, or even sitting in a church pew. Well, you have no clue who the person is, but an attribute draws your attention.

We drink with all five sense. If they smell good, you want to sniff, if they have beautiful eyes, you'd love to look deep into them.

Likable people have something, a smile, a look in their eyes, and the author is simply capturing that and expressing it with a pen.

[katdad]

Although I describe my principal characters in some detail throughout my novels, I have deliberately avoided describing my private detective protagonist with any degree of precision.

We learn that he's Anglo, reasonably fit (but not an athlete by any means), about 5-10, and that he's okay looking but not handsome. And he's in his mid-to-late 30s.

Otherwise, I refuse to say more. I want my readers to form their own images of him in their minds.

[RGame]

My characters always seem to have thick, bushy eyebrows. I have no idea why.

[Will Abrahams]

Somewhere between 1966 and now, I read an excellent article in Writers Digest on when to fully describe a character and when not to. Let me try to remember the gist:

Don't paint vivid pictures of the hero and heroine; give readers a bare bones skeleton and let them flesh out the major characters in their minds according to their own preferences. Be specific only when specifics are important to the story. Other major characters should be treated the same.

It was a different story for the "bad guys" and characters in less important yet still supportive roles. The basic idea here seemed to be that a reader rarely has preferences concerning the physical aspects of, for example, a mobster or his doll. Use your imagination and have fun creating the plug-ugliest hit man you can envision, that author advised.

In my current WIP, the protag is a boy of 16. The reader only knows Joey is handsome because his father sees him as such. The same goes for the father, another major player. Handsome. What a powerful word! The mother? "She was very pretty as a young girl," the father says, answering a question from his young son. He adds,"Today, she's a very pretty woman."

Just think what an active imagination can do conjuring up its own vision of those people. Here, less is more.

But what of the winos and bums and hobos and other skid row denizens Joey meets on Denver's infamous Larimer Street once he has fled his home? Do you see a person ravaged by such a life in the words "An ugly wino stepped up to Joey."? Doubtful. How about:

"Joey looked Eddie in the face, saw the flesh there drawn tight over obtruding bones so sharp they seemed about to cut through. Blackheads left to grow over decades at the corner of each eye had the appearance of ants backing out of worm holes in a dead tree. The little wino's mouth was small as if nature had decreed nothing bigger than the mouth of a Thunderbird bottle would fit between his cracked lips."

At the other end of the spectrum, more is best.

[maestrowork]

We learn that he's Anglo, reasonably fit (but not an athlete by any means), about 5-10, and that he's okay looking but not handsome. And he's in his mid-to-late 30s.

That's actually quite a lot already.

You don't even know how tall my protagonist is.

[arrowqueen]

On an entirely different point and at the risk of sounding a wee bit picky, it's actually 'Tossing the caber' not turning it.

Cheers,
aq

[ElizabethJames]

Well, it depends. We've found it both ways all over the internets . . . and liked the weirdness of turning vs. tossing.

Are you certain? Will you swear on a stack of Bibles?

L

PS WE CANNOT BELIEVE WE WROTE 'KNOWING NOD.' WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE SHOOT US?

[aka eraser]

Arrow's certain Liz. She's from Scotland, where kids start tossing cabers even before they start drinking whiskey.

[ElizabethJames]

Okay. We'll take that as a solemn oath.

Tossing it is.

L

PS And very good to know about Arrow. Thanks.

[arrowqueen]

Yep, I swear on the Stone of Scone, the heart of Robert the Bruce and the left-over innards of William Wallace.

I'm a Ferguson on my mother's side. The Fergusons were recorded in Galloway in the 14th century. I'm still here.

Maybe I should get out more?

;)
aq

[ElizabethJames]

Aye!

Thanks, Ms. Queen. Hope you won't mind if we run some of our half baked satire by your bonny self from time to time.

:)