Character Descriptions How To Write Them (in 3 Steps)

Character Descriptions How To Write Them (in 3 Steps) Character Descriptions: How To Write Them (in 3 Steps) Character descriptions - those key passages that describe what a character actually looks like - are almost as crucial to a written story as the characters themselves. If you’re writing a novel, you’ve probably created an awesome, vivid protagonist in your head: motivated, quirky, maybe even memorably named. But how do you convey all that to a reader without depleting the magic?Writing strong character descriptions actually requires quite a bit of finesse. If you skimp on descriptive passages, you run the risk of leaving your readers with forgettable characters. But if you get too descriptive, you wind up leaving no room for the reader’s own imagination. So what does it take to strike the right balance? We’ll tell you! Here are three cardinal rules on how to write character descriptions without falling off that tightrope. Do you know the three cardinal rules for describing characters? Find out in this guide! 1. Choose your words carefullyWhen writing character descriptions, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself. After all, this is the first time you’re introducing a character you’ve created from the ground up.But just because you know everything about them, doesn’t mean the reader needs to. Character descriptions aren’t about doling out every detail in lavish language - they’re about succinct characterization. Here are a few tips on how to achieve just that.Be descriptive in your languageWe’re talking about character descriptions, after all - it’s quite literally in the name. When describing a character that you see clearly in your mind, it’s easy to simply give a laundry list of attributes: she had black hair, brown eyes, and freckles. But that tells us nothing about the character and is frankly a waste of words.Sure, your protagonist might have brown eyes. But so does half the world’s population! And characterization is all about showing what makes a character unique.Sometimes, this can be done through word choice alone. Take this example from Huckleberry Finn:â€Å"There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl – a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.†From this passage, we clearly understand how Huck’s father looks, as surely as if Twain had simply written, â€Å"He was white.† But through the use of figurative language and excellent word choice, another image sticks in our head: that of a sickly, grotesque drunk. Bonus points for the use of â€Å"tree-toad† and â€Å"fish-belly† - descriptors that match the tone of the adventure novel.Use adjectives sparingly Feel free to stretch the boundaries of what you’re describing and how you’re describing it. Rather than simply pointing out concrete characteristics or actions, feel free to describe abstractions, like this passage from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere:â€Å"Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike.†Or, describe physical characteristics in an abstract way - that is, use similes and metaphors. In A Christmas Carol, Dickens does not describe Scrooge as a Christmas-hating miser. Instead, Scrooge is:â€Å"Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.† How did Dickens turn Scrooge into a Christmas-hating miser without ever calling him one? Be biasedWhether you’re describing yourself to a friend or a friend is describing you to someone else, it’s very unlikely either of you would give a painstaking, perfectly objective account.. Biases exist in every aspect of life, so it’s okay to be biased in character descriptions, too.If a first person narrator is describing themselves, they might comment on their own attractiveness, like Humbert Humbert in Lolita:â€Å"I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor.†Or you could have one character describe another, which illuminates the attributes of the latter and the perception of the former. Take, for example, this particularly scathing description of one person by another from Jodi Taylor’s The Nothing Girl:â€Å"The only talents he possessed were delusions of adequacy.†This sentence succinctly describes a not-quit e-self-aware underachiever. But it also illustrates a narrator with a not-so-objective opinion of him.Show, don’t tellYup. The golden rule of writing applies here as well. At the end of the day, no matter what you decide to reveal to your audience, the most important aspect of character descriptions is how you reveal it. Regardless of how special, unique, or honest-to-god awesome your protagonist is, a reader forced to trudge through page after page of intensive description will find any character boring.Instead, think of how we learn things about other people in real life. Very rarely does the color of our eyes or the shape of our nose describe who we are. We don’t tell everything there is to know about each other - we show it, through our expressions, perceptions, actions, preferences, and even our stuff. Apply that same rule to your character descriptions, and your characters (and readers) will thank you for it.Are there any character descriptions that stand out to you? Leave any thoughts or questions in the comments below!