This week: Describing Characters Edited by: NaNoNette  
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“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.” - Washington Irving, Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.” - Stephen King, On Writing. |
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Describing Characters
Describing characters is not a very easy task. There are those writers who barely give any description past a name and maybe a hair color. Other writers thrive on lavish descriptions of their characters at any chance in the text. There is no good recipe on how to do it. Even in published books that made it past the editor's desk, there are some pretty basic character descriptions. You have seen those:
 Lists of heights, skin tone, eye color, hair texture and color
Narrator looking in a mirror and describing what they see
Outline of another character with a quirk for distinction
These descriptions don't serve any purpose in the plot and they also don't really introduce us to the character. So what if Mary Sue has a purple streak in her hair? This is only interesting if that purple streak will later on be relevant to the story. We learn more about Gary Stu by the way he treats the waitress than through a poetic dramatization of his crooked smile.
There are many ways that you can upgrade a character description without making them too involved or too long.
Yes, use attributes like race, eye color, and clothes to build a deeper understanding and to create a backstory without writing a backstory. If a character has a piece of jewelry or glasses, what detail about those items makes them worthy of mention? Who gave them the jewelry? Harry Potter's glasses were held together by tape. That gave us an idea of the kind of people who were in charge of him. Does the character have an item with bite marks that indicate an anxiety or nervousness?
When writing, you never have to be particularly clever on the first go. You can start with a simple list of visible attributes like scars and tattoos. Next you make a basic list of psychological traits. As you write the character's actions in the story, find ways to insert descriptions in as they fit and advance the story and plot.
Other techniques are to describe body language, posture, and how clean or unclean the character is. You can also give clues to something not being quite right by describing grooming habits. A perfect manicure on a car mechanic or high heels on a nurse don't make sense. But that is why they are in the story. Those details mean something. On the other hand, a perfect manicure on a banker is cute, but not surprising.
Give your readers characters with multiple dimensions to encounter in your stories.
How do you incorporate descriptions of characters into your stories? |
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A description of and story about the mole for children. 1st in Writing for Kids, June '23.
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Replies to my last Short Stories newsletter "Bits and Pieces" that asked: How many short stories did you start and never finish?
Beholden wrote: Thank you very much for featuring my short story, Encounter, in the Editor's Picks section.
Actually, I must admit that I was surprised to see it there (although it only managed to slip in at the last moment, by the look of it!). When I described it as a "short story," I was stretching a point since it is quite deliberately lacking in some of the requirements to be classified as such. It is part of an experiment I am trying at the moment to see how much I can avoid the accepted requirements of the short story and still retain the reader. So it has no real conflict and throws the reader into the piece without introduction or preparation. The ending too is intentionally enigmatic, leaving the reader with a question to think about and decide the answer for himself.
I have several examples of this experimentation in my portfolio and, so far, no one has yelled at me for breaking the rules. Perhaps, then, I may be correct in assuming that rules are made to be broken and, one day, they will be supplanted by others.
Rules. Yes, they are made to be broken. Especially in creative writing. R.R. Martin and e.e.cummings did it, so can you.
Nobody’s Home  wrote: Ha! I have five novella/novel-length stories that are unfinished from the past three to four years that I'm currently working on or plan to return to when I finish my current project(s).
What I have an abundance of is starts to stories prompted by the Writer's Cramp and Daily Flash Fiction that were forgotten or lost in the shuffle of the day. I use my Notepad to work on those items, so a few months ago, I created a collection in my port called "Story Starts" and moved all of those partially developed ideas to my Story Starts Collection as individual entries. So I haven't lost "what could have been" and I can one day get back to them. Maybe. Maybe I should make it a goal to finish one of them a month – that might be doable. After September. 
Wow. You are so organized. I have all my story starts here on Writing.Com, in my current computer, in my last computer, and burned to CDs that I will hopefully find someday.  Good luck finishing the stories. Let me know if you ever want me to read one.
dragonwoman  wrote: quite a few, not sure why, but I am delving into them to finish them.
Nice! I wish you all the best. Let me know when you have one or more old stories finished. It will be fun to read them and maybe feature some of them in a newsletter as a reminder to keep those old drafts around.
W.P. Gerace  wrote: Greetings Ms. Annette,
I do hope you are doing well today. I have a check list of things that I keep on my computer on a sticky note of things to do at every writing session. One of those things is I participate in the Writer's Cramp daily though lately I haven't been fairly consistent that is something I am working on. If the prompt is not one I can write to then I will work on my piece or pieces I am composing. But I do try to participate in the Writers Cramp daily as I look at as a warm up exercise to my main writing. Thanks so much for this newsletter. You rock. Have a beautiful blessed day my friend. :) :
Yours Truly,
Bill G
Hello Bill,
It is always a pleasure to read your replies to my newsletters. I also find that the Writer's Cramp is a great way to create daily writing sprints. I once tried to do it every day, but I petered out after three or four days. It's okay. I still have the stories - they were even finished. Thank you for your kind comments and sharing your experiences with writing. |
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Short Stories: August 23, 2023 Issue [#12122]
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