How to Write Physical Descriptions of Characters | Creative Writing Advice
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- Опубліковано 21 лип 2024
- Writing character descriptions is hard, especially when writing first person. Here are 13 tips to make it a little less hard. Drop a comment down below, do you write first person or third? I have yet to try third-person but maybe I might be tackling it sometime soon.
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Great video, Meg!
0:44 - actually describe your characters
1:35 - don’t over describe your characters
3:00 - don’t make comparisons to celebrities
5:10 - make aesthetic boards
5:33 - avoid cliche comparisons
6:28 - be careful with purple prose
6:50 - don’t purse the story for description
8:10 - important characters = more description
8:54 - remember scene pacing
9:54 - don’t use food comparisons
10:55: don’t use a mirror to describe a character
11:03 - pov character descriptions are biased
12:27 - pay attention to word choice
13:00 - make character profiles
I was in a Writing Group where the leader was writing a book.. and everyone would ask "What does this character look like" and she would go "Oh, here" and show them a picture she got off pinterest... but never put any description in her books... but then got really offended when I thought one of the characters was black... And I'm like "Where does it say he's NOT black??"
Thank you for the 'don't reference celebrities'. Huge pet peeve of mine.
Usually I paint the character's appearances in my mind in a way he/she msy even look too beautiful/too handsome (then again humans are gone from this world so...) for example:
1) his human form was tall, his body was muscular and yet lean aa a result of training of many hundred years. His skin was pale, almost white, small scars here and there. His wolf ears were huge and golden as were his three long wolf tails. His claws were sharp. The long golden blonde hair reached to his knees being tied into a ponytail with two blue ribbons with bells. His eyes were beautiful honey brown color with catlike pupils and half moon shaped. The color and the shape of the eyes were heritaged from his second ancestor. He wore silver and golden necklace around his neck and the certain piece of jewerly was a gift from his father. Around his right wrist were silver bracelets with different colored stones, also a gift from his older brother. Despite his noble blood, he wore casual clothes: dark blue ripped pants with black leather belt and black shirt with long and wide sleeves. On his feet were simple wooden sandals (this is an appearance the MC usually takes with the choice of clothing replaced with silk kimonos/ battle armor/other type of clothing)
2) She was normal in height, her body curvy in a right way while also being full of powerful energy, it was a well known fact that she could broke bones with a simple touch of her fingernail. Her movements were silent and full of danger. Her skin was deadly pale and it looked like marmor with pale lines of old scars. Her long black untied hair cascaded past her hips and stopped at the ankles. She had huge breasts. Her huge doll-like chestnut brown eyes with catlike pupils held power and dangerous energy in them, like she would attack if given a reason. She wore a simple white necklace made from bones and pearls around her neck and golden rings around all her slender fingers. Her fingernails had been painted deep red as well her lips. She had long pointy ears with beautifully crafted earrings. She had those clothes that were only seen in royalty and in nobles: a long beautiful silk and satin kimomo of dark purple, crimson and black colors and golden yellow and white elegant bird patterns carved in the fabric. The dark pink sash around the slim waist was tied into a large bow from behind, it looked like she had butterfly wings. An obivious sign of her bloodline was her long curvy and sharp horns and two long tails with triangle tips. She was barefoot and it was like the ground was frozen solid every time she took a step.
(This is an appearance of either the current empress or her daughters. Most members of the emperial family who are mostly shinigamis share almost same appearance with different type of clothes/hair/eye color/height. The MC, who is a pureblood werewolf, is also linked within the emperial family as his aunt and uncle from his mother's side chose mates from this family of rulers a long time ago)
"Deglove their face. That's a term. don't look that up"
Oh no. My. Curiosity. It's. It's overpowering me.
*Uses Google*
I SHOULD HAVE LISTENED
Lmao. I tried to warn you. Now you too must bear the burden of the cursed knowledge
@@CloudKitten i looked up a goddang TEXT DESCRIPTION
boom, lawyered.
Yea I said the exact same thing
Wooo! Thank you! Totally taking notes and learned quite a few things... Also, can I say once again I love the editing of this video!
This video is underrated
Also nice commentary on food comparisons, very punny :3
this was such a great video!
New to your channel but loving it all already! You make some great points and give fantastic advice - can’t wait to check out the rest of your stuff, keep up the great work
Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my channel!! I'm super swamped with #Indiecember, but I subbed to you and can't wait to binge your videos very soon. I'm always so excited to find new narrative analysis type channels as that's something I'm trying to branch more into and something I'm super interested in
The editing of your videos is always so amazing 🙌
And then there's me who never sees faces in my head when I'm reading 🤣
Could food comparisons also apply to cannibal characters? Asking for a friend..... Sure, we'll go with that...
I vote yes. Because the reason people don't like it is in part because it's creepy but I think you'd want a cannibal character to be creepy
I just love your intro video 😁
Great video Megan!! Love your hair 😍♥️
Thank you
Ha yes NO CELEBRITY COMPARISONS!!!! I just seriously don't get writers who do that. It's like their character is so unoriginal they can't even have their own face
I've never run across actual actor references in work unless it's specifically to date the work (Stephen King), do people do that to compare their characters? Jeez..
These are some very helpful tips on character descriptions! I know this is a big area I struggle with, especially since I'm not great with faces irl, so this has given me some great directions to look. I liked how you brought up the choice of using synonyms, because that really can make a huge difference! I need to remember to do more digging for words, especially when I'm describing people for the first time.
I am curious though-- how do you describe your main character when you're in a limited (1st person or limited 3rd person) POV? I have the same POV character for most of the first half of my current WIP, and a lot of the times when that POV shifts, it does so to scenes where this character isn't around. So I'm realizing that I'm... not sure if I've really described him much at all? My readers seem to have caught onto the fact that he's short (maybe due to the fact that he has to look UP at almost everyone haha), but like... I've had no real reason for him to be conscious enough of his hair or his eye color or whatnot to actually bring it up. I liked the idea of using those around the POV character to compare/contrast their traits, but I feel like... he was more of a neutral observer at first, so he didn't really make a lot of comparisons right off the bat as much as just noticing things without connection to himself. Now that I'm 10-15 chapters in he's finally starting to have more reason to compare things, but that feels... really late to me. And it doesn't help that he doesn't exactly have a stellar reputation for noticing details right away either, whoops. So I dunno if there's more I can do to squeeze in that description right away?
Interestingly, my beta readers did pretty much hit the nail on the head when I asked them how they pictured him. But like you mentioned, it's probably not best to rely on everyone forming their own picture of the character with minimal detail to go off...
That background, I cannot think of a better one in any other channel.
Thank you ❤❤❤ I'm so happy you like it!
Bridge over the river cheese... nice reference
I think I love her she is awesome
Problem is...One of my characters IS built like a bear, he is a WEREbear (lol) a Kodiak. Of course, I did everything to describe parts of him more so than his overall appearance.
How do you describe race if your character has never seen someone of another race before. Like if you want to write about to cultures meeting for the first time?
Yeah that gets really tough. I have that issue in Aletheia where the characters grew up in what is essentially a prison and don't have much reference for races. Describing skin tone and hair color/type worked for my Latin decent character and black characters, but all the others were interpreted as white. I wish I had an answer for you but it's not something I've found an answer for. You can commission character art maybe. Or use environment, cuisine, and clothing styles as well if the characters are immersed in the cultures their generics relate to, but you'll want to research that really well. I'd also recommend speaking to some people from diverse cultural groups as they may have insight and opinions I don't have.
Just please don't make your characters describe themselves in front of the mirror like they know they have an audience XD
I want to write a naruto fanfiction but how would i describe characters who have very little change in looks and Asian deceptions not sure what i would use to describe them
For fanfiction you have the benefit that 99.9% of those reading it will have seen the source material and so even if your descriptions make the characters sound the same, their names will come with different images the read is already familiar with.
If you mean for OCs who have similar base looks, you can give them varying characteristics like scars, height, weight, hair style, glasses/accessories, and such.
And if you meant that you're not sure how to convey they're Asian: It can be really hard to describe ethnicities without using the words tied to them. I hit that issue in Aletheia where the main characters grew up as prisoners in the apocalypse so Korean, Indian, Australian, these words mean nothing to them. So honestly, given the words I had access to all of my characters of Asian decent were interpreted as being caucasian. So alas, I don't have a good answer for you here. I'd recommend you find some people who are members of the group you're trying to describe and ask them and perhaps they have some recommendations.
@@CloudKitten
Thank you
Love that blouse. ❤️
Thank you! 😊
I can say with certainty that facial degloving is disturbing and it's pretty much when your skin separates from the skin or bones underneath and the skin can slide off like a glove.
I have to disagree with the "readers who can't picture your character can't enjoy your book" theory. I don't visualize when I read, but I still love reading. Too much description leaves me feeling like I need to remember all of the detail in case there's a quiz at the end.
I'm the exact opposite. I get irritated at times by a lack of sufficient description.
I always find descriptions challenging. For one, all MC's are beautiful, so... no hentai!!! It's boring to hear/read/see reasonably good looking SC's. Something I find particularly annoying is female characters prime, flush with fertility. Ya-huh, you learned everything you need to know to save the world by age 16 huh. Ok, you know what, Danny needed a burn scar across her face. Female heroes tend to be infertile before they're done being heroes, by that point, the series better be done, cuzz I don't wanna read forty chapters about her moaning over her biological clock.
That said, let's pour on the hypocrisy...
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The Gran’s had their title simply by being over one hundred and fifty years old. They didn’t look much older than a typical Sapien of mothering age, and they wore the purple-hewed make-up agreed upon ages ago. Angel-Eyes was barely a quarter way to becoming a Gran, so she looked more like a fertile Sapien girl in her early twenties - thus ripe for marriage - with green eyes and wavy waste length auburn hair.
She had been told many times, that it was always amusing to see so much adorability in one room. The Tenders were small of stature, a side effect of the fountain of youth as-it-were; genetic manipulation had plagued and privileged them in equal doses, and while the neoteny had been the original goal, the drawn out lifespan had not; they were still waiting for the first of their kind to pass-on of old age, what would they even look like? All things being equal - which they weren’t - their genetics had purposely stifled their vertical growth, so you’d be hard pressed to find one over one hundred and seventy centimeters; that height effected their adult curves, giving them varying figures you wanted to ravish or corrupt or both. Angel-Eyes could almost be one hundred and fifty centimeters tall, if she stood on her toes at full stretch, and barely forty kilos soaking wet. She didn’t begrudge any of the genetics, as she had a purpose, as did her kith, present and away.
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Most of the rest of the descriptions are added by other POV's throughout the story. One is...
Her nose was so small, as if someone had pinched the clay of her face as an afterthought.
The comm chirped and she rushed over to stand on the spokes of the wheel, her chin barely clearing the top peg. Smiling happily as she clutched the pegs - which seemed enormous in her little hands - as if driving the ship. “Yes? Hi, hello.”
Captain Mason’s grizzled grandfatherly face replaced the center screen; a shrewd wry humor couldn’t be hidden by his bushy face. He blinked and his demeanor altered. “Miss Angel, I regret to inform you that we need to take an alternate route. We just got word that an ice ridge has been forming, about half a day ahead of us, it’s growing southward. If we change course now, it shouldn’t add more than two days to get around it.”
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As the bartender was about to make the transaction, a big hand reached over and grasped his arm. Emily turned around to see a grizzled giant of a man well over six feet in a black uniform with steel colored trim.
“The space navy is reimbursing their stay here,” he growled easily, “you’ll not charge them one copper more until further notice!”
The bartender seemed to whither and nod helplessly under the gentle yet overbearing weight of the mountain of manliness before him.
The giant let go, straightened up, and then pointed. “And get me three bottles of that Boor Bourbon, three glasses and a bucket of ice.”
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Angel woke up closer to proper morning as Lessa was sliding out of bed. She watched as the woman came around to gather her robe. The woman was just slipping it over her shoulders when she glanced at the bed and they made eye contact. Angel pulled the blanket tighter to her face as the delicate robe fluttered over the stretch-lined fitness. She coughed a quiet laugh as she entertained a thought of jumping out of bed to nuzzle that soft belly.
-----------------------
A cheery old voice spoke to them patting her bosom, “that’s right, give them a good scrub, a clean sole is a happy soul,” then she gasped as she turned to the Silvern family, “Suzy dear, no, hem hem.”
Suzy stopped just shy of barreling in and clawed at her skirt before rushing in again. The elderly woman in a fabulous kimono and a matching smile clapped her hands as she stood on a narrow protected catwalk that stretched from the inner side, but stopped a pace from the foyer side. Her eyes came up. “Lessa darli… gasp.” Her hands covered her cheeks and her eyes practically sparkled as they latched onto the new face among them and she started to bob on her spot. “Lessa darling, have you found us a new soul?”
Lessa bobbed deeply in response. “I wish it were so Mistress. Fret not though, she is a devout Youie.”
“Well, she’s young yet, perhaps we can still whisk her away and save her. Shall we give it a try, you and I?” Her smile was infectious as her fingertips rapidly flicked together.
Lessa hugged Angel to her and sighed, “I’m afraid not Mistress, her mortar is already cast and set.”