Physical stuff

dondomat said:

Defago's face cleared.

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Maybe it's just me, but every time someone's 'face clears' in a novel I'm reading, my first thought is that their zits suddenly went away.

gp101 said:

I don't mean to sound snarky, and maybe I'm showing my age, but I don't understand seeking online aids for descriptions or facial expressions. Part of what will set you apart from other writers, and hopefully catch the attention of agents and readers, would be your cleverness, your ingenuity, your fresh take on descriptions. Not sure why you would want a list of such descriptions. Or maybe I'm misinterpreting the need in your post?

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They can be a useful springboard to come up with those descriptions. Also they may add some spice because they are written by someone other than yourself. And however old you are I doubt you pre date a thesaurus, word usage, quotation dictionary etc My shelves groan with language books.

In my experience, my readers don't want wall to wall ingenious language they want a clear well told story that they love. Peppering a story with the odd funky line can more effective than making every line like that, because the language stands out and is more memorable that way.

WriterDude said:

Categorised Pictures of facial expressions and body language is sort of what I'm looking for. I have something similar for my kids, but I need something a little more comprehensive than happy and sad.

Greys is a little on the heavy side. I used to do a lot of writing in a hospital library and had ready access to greys and the like. Lost a lot of hours reading up on medical ethics. Fascinating topic.

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YouTube and Google. I often "cast" my MC with a well known actor/singer with a large YouTube presence and stalk them round the site. Also I make up scrapbooks of Google images.

Consider that spending too much time describing the exact angle of an eyebrow or shape of someone's mouth is not going to be terribly interesting or useful to readers unless there's a reason for doing so, and your writing makes it interesting. Show don't tell can be taken too far. Sometimes a smile is just a smile, and sometimes smiles don't even need to be told, as they can be inferred from the context.

Roxxsmom said:

I've done this. But more often, when reading a novel, and I think a writer has done a particularly nice job of describing someone or something, I highlight it (I read books in kindle or nook format on my ipad) and make a mental note of it. Not to copy, but just to contemplate the approach. Seeing and thinking about this does free up one's creativity after a while.

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I think that's what dondomat was getting at. Not that one would copy the examples but rather use them as a way to set your own creative mind in motion. Kind of like, I wouldn't say it that way but it's given me an idea of how I might say it my own way.

wrong thread

WriterDude said:

Thank you for the reply James. My question was perhaps a little vague, but I'm certainly not the least interested in lists or write by numbers guides and hold no stock in the rules.

Where I do struggle however, where my observations fall short of my words is in subtle character traits.

Wife catches her husband allowing himself a brief approving grin at the sight of a passing butt. The type of smile that drops the dimples about the chin while the eye brows raise above wide eyes. He might even nod once involuntarily, before he earns himself a slap.

This observation has a name I'm sure, it's similar to dupers delight. It is these that I struggle with.

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I think you're getting too hung up on the technical vocabulary. If the wife was looking at him she wouldn't say "Why are you smiling that type of smile that drops the dimples about the chin while the eye brow raises above wide eyes?". There's verbs available- ogling, leching, perving, eyeing up- and any one of these could explain what is happening. Not every person makes the same facial expressions for the same emotions.

As others have said, a good simile/metaphor is your friend. Take Fitzgerald's description of Daisy "Her voice was full of money". We might not be able to vocalise what he means by that but we get a strong sense of her character. Sometimes the best way to describe something is in a leftfield way.