I was reading some of the crits of other people's work in SYW and one of the crits I noticed was in reference to describing the MC in the first scene. Since it's bad form to do the 'looking-in-the-mirror, pond, window, etc' for visual descrption, how do you go about describing your MC in chapter one, when the MC is the POV character?
In my first scenes, I don't describe my MC's appearance at all (I'm not big on lots of physical character description anyway) because my MC has always been my POV character for the first scene.
I know readers tend to form a visual of a character pretty quickly, so by waiting to describe my MC until a scene where another character has the POV, I risk changing my readers original visual of my MC.
I'm just wondering how you all handle this, especially when applied to close third person.
Thank in advance. I always enjoy reading how you all handle these things. Very insightful.
In my first scenes, I don't describe my MC's appearance at all (I'm not big on lots of physical character description anyway) because my MC has always been my POV character for the first scene.
I know readers tend to form a visual of a character pretty quickly, so by waiting to describe my MC until a scene where another character has the POV, I risk changing my readers original visual of my MC.
I'm just wondering how you all handle this, especially when applied to close third person.
Thank in advance. I always enjoy reading how you all handle these things. Very insightful.