How to introduce viewpoint character's physical features.

[thaddeus6th]

Sometimes it can be mingled with behaviour, whether something violent (ie a muscular chap picking someone up by the throat) or habitual (such as stroking or twirling a moustache).

 

[STING]

Slip it unobtrusively into the narrative or dialogue.

There's probably a few sneaky ways to do it.

So I'd say don't try too hard, your readers will all come up with different pictures anyway. Just a few clues, and they'll picture him in their own way...

But you know even Sheakespeare in the written plays allows the characters to define themselves, or another character will make a comment

Caesar:Let me have men about me that are fat, Sleek-headed men....

Sometimes it can be mingled with behaviour.

All this makes perfect sense. But I am afraid I am breaking this rule by beginning a 2,800 word story (humour) with a 92-word description of the main character. It's a comment on his face and nose. And I have no description at all of the two other prominent characters in the story except some gentle clues.

Aware that most readers and editors might not take such description kindly especially at the beginning, I tried other ways mentioned in the above posts. It can be done. But I decided that beginning the story with the description worked best. (I am not into final draft yet.)

 

[digs]

But if you have to ask how to do it, you probably aren't up to that skill level yet.

True. I just feel that old standards often get a bit of a bad rap, when with a bit of juggling they can become something new and exciting.

STING, I can see an upfront description working, especially in a humour piece. It's the sort of thing I can see Terry Pratchett doing.

"George Watson was a sour old man with a face like a squashed jellyfish."

 

[STING]

STING, I can see an upfront description working, especially in a humour piece. It's the sort of thing I can see Terry Pratchett doing.

"George Watson was a sour old man with a face like a squashed jellyfish."

Thanks. Mine is 92 words though!

 

[slack]

Yes, I would advise against using any reflective surface as a device for character description. Kind of obvious and unoriginal.

Sprinkling the details over the course of the story, occasionally referring back to old traits, introducing new ones, is probably the best method.

I think a lot of things can contribute to a character description, not just physical traits. Mannerisms, mood; even technical things like word choice help create a picture of the character.

One of my favorite character descriptions came from a book I was reading about screenplays. I forget the script, but the character was described this way:

She was conspicuously attractive, like a house that had just been put on the market.

Says quite a lot, doesn't it? Of course, later on it might be prudent to back that statement with more concrete examples, such as the thick foundation she used to conceal her skin's blotchiness, or her dark smoky eyes.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Hi,

I was just curious on the best way to introduce the physical features of a viewpoint character, when you are trying to limit your third person to what they can see.

Maybe them inspecting a reflection of themselves in a mirror or in water?

Many Thanks!

Anhalo

Personally (and I know I'm coming to this very late) reading a character walking into the bathroom in chapter one and analyse his face is one sure fire way of making me stop reading there and then. Seriously, I have done it. Several times I've got as far as someone walking into the bathroom for the sole purpose of letting the author describe them to us and then thrown the book across the room* and started another.

Why do we need to know - unless there is some really important plot point hinging on the fact? ("Round up all the red-haired midgets!" roared the king.)

I don't go around thinking I have careworn, yet cooly handsome, features. I'm just me. Surely the protagonist of any first person narrative should just be themselves.




*Sometimes literally. I used to sleep on a balcony four metres above floor level. Crap books used to make a really satisfying thump when they finally hit the ground.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Yes, I would advise against using any reflective surface as a device for character description. Kind of obvious and unoriginal.

Personally I would never advise against not doing anything that folks call cliche it is all a matter of how, why and when. How the character sees themselves, why at that moment are they confronting their reflection and when in the story it is happening.

Example one:

“Richard. If you want the bathroom…”

He knew his mother’s hand was hovering over the door handle outside. She had not entered his room uninvited since he had returned ten months ago. “Up, ‘am up.” Richard threw the bedclothes back and swung his legs over, catching sight of himself in the long mirror on the small wardrobe. The glass was bowed, the result of the wood behind it being warped. It made him look as if he had flesh on his bones and widened his narrow features making his nose blur into his cheeks.

Richard had had his hair cut yesterday. The pale yellow strands hung down across his forehead, as if rebelling against his effort to curb them. His right hand came up and pushed the hair back. Then he rubbed his chin, fingers measuring the stubble. His eyes closed, as if he was refusing to watch the too familiar scene any more in the mirror. He forced his feet down onto the small rug by the side of his bed and stood. The wide legs of his striped pyjamas flapped against his legs, as he took one step forward. He did not need to see to navigate the room. Perhaps if he practiced he could find his way round the rest of the world with his eyes closed. Then he would not see the imps. Stupid; seen or no, the creatures were there.

Example two;

As he placed his hand on the polished brass handle of the hotel door, his reflection twisted in the large glass panes set in the upper section. For a moment in his mirror image he saw a stranger, a man with deep-set dark grey eyes; a career officer encased in green and grey who was lost in a world that had changed around him.

 

[slack]

Personally I would never advise against not doing anything that folks call cliche it is all a matter of how, why and when. How the character sees themselves, why at that moment are they confronting their reflection and when in the story it is happening.

That's true. I shouldn't have been so hasty to rule it out completely. As your examples show, even a well-worn technique is acceptable if done well. The difference, however, is that yours are not blatant lists of physical features. We aren't being told the character had a finely chiseled nose and steely gray eyes and wide shoulders, on and on ad nauseum. Instead, the passage is more about how the reflection is distorted, and the character's perception of that distortion. Stuff like that is lovely because it is layered and potentially symbolic.

 

[mosaix]

So I'd say don't try too hard, your readers will all come up with different pictures anyway. Just a few clues, and they'll picture him in their own way...

Excellent advice and not just for physical characteristics. Many authors overdo horror scenes for instance. As Bone man says a few clues are enough and each reader will fill in what's most horrific for them.

 

[Anne Lyle]

As Susan (SJAB) shows us, a good writer can make a tired old cliché sit up and beg - but too few writers take that kind of care. You have to know the rules before you can break them!

And I totally agree that physical description is rarely needed. It was popular in Dickens' day, when there weren't many leisure alternatives to reading, but today's readers have far richer media to feed their visual appetite, so they prefer to flesh out the story with their own imagination.

 

[Susan Boulton]

Like Anne said, you need to understand the "rules," before you try to bend and break them. Sometimes it works other times you produce total rubbish. The thing to remember is no rule is set in stone, except grammar ones. Besides, bending or breaking the so called rules works is very subjective. I have read some books that bend the rules and bounce off the walls, which others have praised and found them annoying as hell and also found the oppoiste to be true.

One thing I have noticed is that younger writers (late teens upwards) tend to go for the type of description you find in a computer game. You often see outlines posted with very detailed character descriptions almost to the point where I expect to see an Avatar next to it. Now I understand if you need something like that to help you visualise the character, but to try and fit that into a novel with out it sounding false and tacked on would be very hard to do. I certainly could not if I am honest. I often write sections describing a character from another character's POV if it is important to the story, but beyond that I think I am a bit fuzzy with what my characters actually look like. I tend to have a picture in my head of the character and work with that.

The Richard character is from something I am working on. He has the body language and mannerisms of a young Dirk Bogarde, there was a twitchness/nervous tension/slightly unhinged manner about his performances that I feel suits the character I want to create.(So I am watching a couple of old films over a few times, sad eh?) As for looks, a bit like a blonde Matt Smith with not so long a face. So I suppose I tend to think about what is on the inside of a character first, before I think what he/she looks like.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Something to keep in mind, however, is that readers on forums like this one do not necessarily represent the tastes of the vast majority of readers out there, being too small a sample. (Witness all of the very, very popular writers who not only don't have subforms here, but are hardly even mentioned.)

But even if SFF readers as a group do not care much for what characters look like -- and I'm not convinced of that -- if you are writing in certain other genres, readers do care very much indeed. Romance readers do want to know. YA readers want to know. The YA readers of today are the adult science fiction and fantasy readers of tomorrow. And quite a lot of the books you see on the shelves in the SFF section of bookstores are meant to have crossover appeal for romance readers (who represent a huge portion of the US fiction market). Paranormal Romance, of course, but also certain types of Urban Fantasy.

So it is important to learn how to describe your characters in ways that fit seamlessly into the story. Important to describe them, because otherwise you'll be dissatisfying a large number of potential readers, and important to do it the right way or you will bore others.

 

[STING]

I have to say that, no matter how many times the mirror thing has been done, if someone did it seamlessly I probably wouldn't care or even notice. Skilful writing can excuse a lot of things.

Personally I would never advise against not doing anything that folks call cliche it is all a matter of how, why and when. How the character sees themselves, why at that moment are they confronting their reflection and when in the story it is happening.

As Susan (SJAB) shows us, a good writer can make a tired old cliché sit up and beg - but too few writers take that kind of care. You have to know the rules before you can break them!

By sheer coincidence, I was reading the much-acclaimed, award-winning 1948 short story First Heat by Peter Taylor this morning. (From The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor.) A wonderful story about what goes on in the mind of a politician who knows he has done something wrong.

The most remarkable thing about the story (3,000 words -approx) of course is that the author doesn't even name the protagonist. Nor does he say anything about the protagonist's background. But he does have a mirror scene that describes his features in great detail: 300 words -approx. He does it beautifully. A good part of the story is about the sweat that breaks out all over the unnamed protagonist's body following the political sin that he has committed and so the description fits in.

I would have read the story in one go without a pause - it was so gripping. But I stopped at the mirror scene briefly only because of the discussion in this thread!
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(I no longer find the formatting icons for bold, italics, links etc when I am posting replies or threads. Wonder why.)

 

[Boneman]

(I no longer find the formatting icons for bold, italics, links etc when I am posting replies or threads. Wonder why.)

I would think it's your computer - mine is fine!!

 

[Simon tall]

All of the above are good ideas.
I try to describe during an action, "His long fingers curled around the hand grip of the gun slowly as his grey eyes studied her deeply."
Also for those of us starting out cliches are hard to avoid but are they necessarily a bad thing? Not all readers out there are used to so called 'high' literature and the odd cliche here may give them the comfort of the familiar...
Just a thought...

 

[Anne Lyle]

Also for those of us starting out cliches are hard to avoid but are they necessarily a bad thing? Not all readers out there are used to so called 'high' literature and the odd cliche here may give them the comfort of the familiar...
Just a thought...

I would hardly call my forthcoming novel "high literature"

Yes, when you are starting out you are bound to write some cliched or clumsy prose - but if you want to get published some day, it's advisable to learn to write as well as you possibly can. Of course there are always counter-examples of books that got published despite their less-than-stellar writing, but why shoot yourself in the foot? Finding an agent and publisher is hard enough as it is, without giving them an excuse to reject your book in favour of an equally entertaining one with a less cliched style.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

You must have been thinking of Jeffrey Archer, Anne.

 

[Boneman]

You must have been thinking of Jeffrey Archer, Anne.

Well, since this thread is about descriptive assets (?) shouldn't that be LORD Jeffrey Archer?

(Honestly, Lester Piggot was jailed for three years and stripped of his OBE because of Tax Evasion, Jeffrey Archer was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice) and kept his peerage... there's no justice in the world. Expect comment from TJ any moment...)

 

[Anne Lyle]

You must have been thinking of Jeffrey Archer, Anne.

Haven't read him. But then I've never read any Dan Brown either.

 

[David Evil Overlord]

I'm currently writing a super hero short story that may end up as a chapter in a novel.

In this story, the character does look into a mirror. Cliche, you cry? The character is not doing this to describe her eye colour/hair colour/skin colour or lack thereof to the reader.

The only physical description is of her injuries (two black eyes and a possibly-broken nose) and how the hell is she going to explain that when she takes off her mask and resumes her secret identity.

No other description of her appearance is needed.