Describing Skin Color

Colors. Besides olive or black. Get creative.

Similes. Always the way to go (as long as they're not forced.)

Just remember: Is it really important that the reader have the same image of the characters as you have? If it is, describe their skin color. If it's not, save your descriptive powers for something more important.

If you don't want to come out and say they look like they came from India or Italy, find another way to work it in.

From my own stuff :

A girl who did something that scared her roommate - she said the roomie turned a shade of pale that should have been impossible given her ethnicity.

Another one who was very pale has a crisis at the lake and laments all she wanted out of the trip was a tan, not drama.

Neither is really specific about the color, but it gives the reader an idea that one is African American and one is white.

SoloArtist said:

I'm shamelessly fishing for alternative descriptions of skin color besides things like fair, olive, dark, or black . Are metaphors and similes the way to go?

In my case, half of my characters look like Asian Indians, and the rest look like Italians.

Thanks to any and all in advance who have some suggestions.

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Avoid the metaphors and similes as you might unintentionally come off as being offensive or too PC.
If their race/colour is important, just tell us. If you were asked the character's height, you wouldn't say 'he was as tall as a plum tree' or 'as short as a stick' (here we start to get the cliche problem as well), would you? You'd say he's 6 foot 3, or 5 foot 6, or whatever.

SoloArtist said:

I'm shamelessly fishing for alternative descriptions of skin color besides things like fair, olive, dark, or black . Are metaphors and similes the way to go?

In my case, half of my characters look like Asian Indians, and the rest look like Italians.

Thanks to any and all in advance who have some suggestions.

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For what its worth, from my perspective, this is how I'd approach it.

Since most of us know what an asian person looks like, or an Italian, lets pretend they are aliens. Say, from the movie avatar.

Do you really need to point out that they are blue, and ten feet tall every time?

No. Introduce the character type: Nav'i one time. Describe the slender legs, the long hair, and the blue skin. From this point on, every character need only be described by their deviation.

Billy was short for a Nav'i at only 9.5.

Susy's hair was coarser than the others, and embarassingly lighter.

Elmore had a nose that dipped down, betraying his years.

Get it?


Edit: In SPECIFIC reference to being an italian, asian, I would introduce one character per type:

Guido was a quintessential italian. 5 and half foot tall or so, with a thick black coat of hair on his chest that rivaled the dense mop on his head. His skin was dark, olive and tanned and he wore a constant smile. When he spoke, his hands moved without his mind's knowledge and his voice was at least three times louder than everyone else in the room.

Well, I'd start by asking myself why you want to describe them in the first place. Think about what the other characters might be thinking--do they look angelic, threatening, frightened, dirty? Then work the actual skin color into the descriptions in a way that enhances what you are trying to say.

"Her olive face was as smooth and inexpressive as a china doll's, complete the with glassy black eyes and thick false lashes."
"His ruddy skin seemed curiously out of place with his dark eyes and shiny black hair. It made me wonder if he'd been drinking."
"Her skin showed the aggressive brown of someone who visits the tanning booth weekly, and the curious lines and wrinkles of someone who sucks constantly on cigarettes."

ChristineR said:

Well, I'd start by asking myself why you want to describe them in the first place. Think about what the other characters might be thinking--do they look angelic, threatening, frightened, dirty? Then work the actual skin color into the descriptions in a way that enhances what you are trying to say.

"Her olive face was as smooth and inexpressive as a china doll's, complete the with glassy black eyes and thick false lashes."
"His ruddy skin seemed curiously out of place with his dark eyes and shiny black hair. It made me wonder if he'd been drinking."
"Her skin showed the aggressive brown of someone who visits the tanning booth weekly, and the curious lines and wrinkles of someone who sucks constantly on cigarettes."

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That's a good point. I actually don't describe my characters at all since I'm in third person limited. Some of the side characters in my story get a bit of description but only if its necesary for the plot. "He was a mousy man, devious looking from birth."

Or, "From his size, Mitch assumed he might have been a wrestler in his former life, or someone who simply picked up boulders and tossed them for fun."

Even my mc has never been defined as white or black. Though you might guess white based on how his wife is described in his stories about her.

I like people to use their imagination.

SoloArtist said:

Great comments so far. Fyi, it's a fantasy world setting, but I want certain parallels to our world to be apparent.

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Shit, that means my advice re: The Nav'i is even better!

Damn I kick ass!

All depends on what the POV character thinks for me

In one fantasy the two POV characters are from a country where pretty much everyone has pale skin and fair hair. So when they meet someone rather arabic looking, while they might use 'olive' to describe it, they mostly think of it as a tan ( because the only people they know other than him with at all darker skin get it from being out in the sun)

By the time we get to book two my male POV character is more used to it, so when he meets a lady of the same race, he doesn't think 'tan'. He does think 'honeyed skin' because he wants to lick it...

lucidzfl said:

Even my mc has never been defined as white or black. Though you might guess white based on how his wife is described in his stories about her.

I like people to use their imagination.

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If you don't say it, they're assumed to be white. (with very few exceptions). Let me introduce The Unmarked State:

There’s a term in literary theory for the ways in which a typical reader reads character - and by typical here, I mean typical in the Western-European First World. The term is ‘the unmarked state’ and it works like this: Say I read you a sentence about a character who is washed away in a river ravaged by storm, swims to the other side and climbs out, surviving by the skin of their teeth and strength of their will and body. Not so exciting or interesting a sentence, perhaps. What is interesting is that, unless told otherwise, the majority of readers will assume that the character fits the following description: white, male, 30-40 years old, middle class, employed, able-bodied. ...Even more interesting, especially for a writer like you, is the notion that most readers will hold onto this image of the character for a whole book if you don’t tell them otherwise.

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from here.

You don't want people to assume they are white, yet you don't want to fetishise skin color and spend ages describing the exact sahde of everyone skin. Does it matter what exact shade it is any more than exactly how long their hair is, their exact height or the exact pitch and quality of their speaking voice? Give the gist and let the reader fill in the rest. You don't need a paint chart to give they idea that we are in the beige to terracota range for most of the characters.

veinglory said:

You don't want people to assume they are white, yet you don't want to fetishise skin color and spend ages describing the exact sahde of everyone skin. Does it matter what exact shade it is any more than exactly how long their hair is, their exact height or the exact pitch and quality of their speaking voice? Give the gist and let the reader fill in the rest. You don't need a paint chart to give they idea that we are in the beige to terracota range for most of the characters.

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In the OP's case, the characters exist in a fantasy world. The italian/asian thing was for example.

I would say theres a grand difference between a troll, an ogre, an elf and a dwarf.

That said, once the stereotype had been elucidated, I wouldn't need descriptions any more. (As I said above, merely discrepancies)

It's probably not that important that the reader knows the exact shade of each person's skin, just which ethnicity they are and how the two ethnic groups are distinguished, if that's important. For example, one character has the straight hair, high-bridged nose, and dark smooth skin of the Javi people, and the other one has a thick beard, light skin, and coarse body hair typical of the Mo'ui. Or whatever.

You still just need to establish the general appearance of the race by comparison to something that is in their world and ours. She had the usual complexion for an orc, green as snot and twice as slimey.

Ah, this is for fantasy. In that case appearance is probably important.

My long-term back burner project is an epic fantasy with "new" races. I got through the descriptions of most of them in a bazaar scene because the MC is in disguise and obsessing over whether or not she's as well hidden as she thinks she is. Her skin is darker because she's from the desert; she has scarification marks on her skin that she has to make sure stay covered. She plays with the stacks of bracelets up her arm because she's not used to the weight of them, but they're a local tradition to mark age.

You just have to find opportunities to point out the specifics of their features. (Opportunities as opposed to manufactured reasons to say pointed things like "Gelendorph had blue hair, but not as blue as most of the Dorph, so it marked him as a half breed."

"As you know Bob" phrases exist even in fantasy.

I also write fantasy, and I've been trying to make my worlds a bit less white-and-flavorless. So I've run into this problem a bit...and acutally, it's not much of a problem at all. Where I'd usually describe a character as "a tall blond woman" now she's a "tall dark-skinned woman" or something. As for where I describe characters...whenever it feels right.

Read Tamora Pierce's Circle Series. She has some interesting descriptions of skin color. Might give you some ideas.

You may be overthinking this. There is nothing wrong with the plain and simple color. You can just say the skin is brown or green or purple without going all fancy about it.
As in:

He was warm and naked. Her hands fumbled with the edges of his robe, opening it upward, across his shoulders, deciphering the message of dark hairs and brown skin and the ridges of bone and muscle that were the body of Guillaume LeBreton.

The other Jacobin, pale skinned and pockmarked, followed, bearing a luxuriant mustache.

Gracefully, she reached up and stripped her fichu off her shoulders, unwinding it from her in a circle, uncovering white, white skin. The sun percolated through the trees to land in coin-shapesd drops all over her.

You can compare the color of the skin to something else -- preferably something that is evocative of the character.
As in:

LeBreton was earth brown. His hat, his clothing, even his skin were the dun and buff of the trees around them. He would be invisible in this corner of garden among the disorderly branches of the pear tree.

She stood behind the counter, neatly compact, with smooth night-black hair and skin like unbleached silk.


Or you can bring up the skin color as a way to say something useful about the character. Skin color as identification.
As in:

He spoke with a Gascon accent. He looked Gascon also, black-haired and slim, with the smooth, dark skin of the south of France.

Just... try to avoid the food descriptors, OK? All of the chocolate/caramel/nut stuff is just *so done.*

Or in the words of a friend of mine, "I am sick of being described as a delicious treat."

There's nothing wrong with just saying the color, and noting at all wrong with using similies and metaphors to describe it. Any description of skin color offends someone. You can't be bland because you fear giving offense.