How to introduce viewpoint character's physical features.

Anne Lyle said:
The point of cover art, like with all product packaging, is to attract the potential buyer's attention, not to illustrate the actual contents. If it does both, that's a bonus, but it's not essential.
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My cover's going to show the characters in a far more exotic and fascinating setting than actually exists in the story, and the words "serving suggestion" at the bottom.
 
I very rarely describe the characters appearance unless it matters somehow. I have a mental image of what the character looks like, but does it matter if the reader creates the same image ?

But I'm not a published author, so maybe my approach won't fit.

As for the subject of cover art. I do feel a little disappointed if I finish a book and the image on the cover didn't come up in the story.
 
I remember reading a thread of another forums somewhere that was about how terribly inaccurate a cover for one of Terry Brooks novels was.

So many years ago I read it so I'd have a hard time finding the thread again.

But anyway, the thread went on for pages and pages because the cover portrayed a particular scene with Allannon so wrong that the fans got all grievously upset.

I wonder whether in that case the artist either wasn't told anything, or should have paid more attention to the scene in the book, but then, fans will probably always be complaining about something...

It didn't seem to stop Terry Brooks becoming a bestseller either way so guess it's not really important.
 
I've already mentioned I have a character with six hair colours*. She also has skin striped in African-dark and Celtic-pale. I have another character ask her about her exotic (to him) skin and hair.

She explains about genetics, and how you inherit two genes for eye colour, hair colour and skin colour -- one from each parent (and even some stuff from grandparents that skips a generation). But only one of those colour genes is expressed. So people normally have only one eye colour, hair colour and skin colour.

Her condition, she tells him, is what you get when all those genes try to express themselves at once. It's what you get when genehackers p*** in your genepool. :(

And her appearance is important, because in her world the most common form of racial prejudice is directed against the genehacked.

I can't wait to see what a cover artist would do to her appearance. :eek:

*Possibly a slight exaggeration. Blonde, redhead, brown, black...even with honey-blonde and ash-blonde I'm only just about there... :confused:
 
Trust you to make things complicated for the poor artist David. ;)

Sounds like an interesting concept though.

One of the goddesses in my book changes wing colours as she moves. Cycling through different shades of the rainbow, like a prism. But I don't think the artist would even attempt to draw her.
 
He woke, lying on hard and uneven ground beside a rifled suitcase. Overhead stars winked between the branches. A migraine replaced his memories as he stuffed discarded clothes back into his case. He felt awful, nothing like himself. Sitting in the mud, he touched a wound in his neck: two holes an inch and a half apart. Suppressing a shudder, he pulled a mirror out of his wash bag and stared into the glass. The thief had stolen his reflection along with his soul.
 
Warren_Paul said:
Trust you to make things complicated for the poor artist David. ;)

Sounds like an interesting concept though.

One of the goddesses in my book changes wing colours as she moves. Cycling through different shades of the rainbow, like a prism. But I don't think the artist would even attempt to draw her.
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The artist paints one row of red feathers, one row of orange feathers, one row of yellow feathers, one row of green feathers...:)

I'm considering one of two options. Option one -- her skin colour is an unintended result of too much genetic tampering. Option two -- somebody had the bright idea of marking the genehacked so they can't hide what they are.
 
Karn Maeshalanadae said:
No, the character was never obese, and Morcalia didn't have gastric bypass surgery.
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Yeah I got that. Was just an idea that came to mind when you mentioned no way of explaining the malnutrition part, thought I'd just suggest it is all. :)


David B said:
he pulled a mirror out of his wash bag and stared into the glass. The thief had stolen his reflection along with his soul.
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Well that does make things simple doesn't it.

Move along... No character description needed here...
 
I had a surgeon discribe one of my characters as he stitched his face up thinking that the young officer would have been quiet handsome had the knife not cut him from brow to chin. And wrapped the bandage around his face so that just his dark hair sprouted out the top.
As he had just had his face mashed up in a battle.
Than lateron after a few chapters in other Povs I jump back to the officers and have him looking at the mass of bruised and inflamed skin around the scar that twisted his nose to one side and made him have a constant sneer in the mirror handed to him by the surgeon.

I know "mirror" most say it's a no no. But I reckon I've managed to make it look good on paper.
 
Menion said:
I know "mirror" most say it's a no no. But I reckon I've managed to make it look good on paper.
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Shall we just have no mirrors at all in our stories? If a character is using a mirror there is going to be some description of what they look like somewhere in there.

I've got one scene where the PoV character is sitting in front of a mirror, brushing her hair, and comments on how frightfully messy her hair is - which includes a little description of it.
 
I just abandoned a book, The Warrior Within by Sharon Green, partially because our heroine manages to 'catch a glimpse' of herself in the hall mirror in the third paragraph of the first chapter and pauses to describe her 'unfashionably long hair'. Yeah. Right.
 
I do have one character that might just get away with the mirror description lol he would stop and fully appraise himself pretty much in any one he passes. His brother comments about it in their first scene together.

Right now I am battling with describing my fire elemental but he isn't a POV character.
 
Have recently finished reading 'Resurrection' by Tolstoy. Loved it, incidentally. He's such a warm writer.

But what I like in his writing is that, although the book contains scores and scores of characters, each one is completely real and memorable and human, a mixture of attractive and unattractive qualities. I don't think Tolstoy writes bad people, just flawed, or pushed by outside forces, their jobs as soldiers, etc.

But when it comes to physical description, Tolstoy doesn't seem mess around, or bother to fuss with mirrors or anything like that.

It just: He was a broad shouldered man with a very thick neck and flappy ears, and small piggy light blue eyes in a red, pock-marked face, etc. (Not a real example!) He doesn't save words either, sometimes lists of words, four or five, separated by commas.

He makes it look easy ... :)
 
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I think that can work very well - it's how Dolly Parton does it, just dives in with a description and is how I tend to do. (she is my number one hero when it comes to characterisation.)
 
RJM Corbet said:
But when it comes to physical description, Tolstoy doesn't seem mess around, or bother to fuss with mirrors or anything like that.

It just: He was a broad shouldered man with a very thick neck and flappy ears, and small piggy light blue eyes in a red, pock-marked face, etc. (Not a real example!) He doesn't save words either, sometimes lists of words, four or five, separated by commas.

He makes it look easy ... :)
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If someone is writing in third person omniscient - I'm assuming this is true of the story you're referencing - it is indeed easy, because the narrator is not (generally) one of the characters whose story he (or she) is telling.

The business with the mirror, etc., is because the description in a close PoV third person narrative is being given by the person themselves and if they go about the place describing every one of their features, the reader might gain the impression that they're a narcissist, or otherwise self-obsessed, even if they're not.
 
Ursa major said:
If someone is writing in third person omniscient - I'm assuming this is true of the story you're referencing - it is indeed easy, because the narrator is not (generally) one of the characters whose story he (or she) is telling ...
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Yes, it will be more difficult where each character is written from within a person POV.

Often, in such cases or in first person narrative, the protagonist is hardly described physically.

But what I mean is that the physical description of a person doesn't have to be sort of concealed in a fold in the writing, as if the writer hopes you're not going to notice it until too late (like a mosquito bite, to mix metaphors).

It takes the ability of a writer like Tolstoy to pull it off completely in your face though, I suppose.
 
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RJM, out of interest, who was the translator for your copy of Resurrection? That is, presuming you don't read Tolstoy in the original. ;) If you do, apologies and I'm impressed.

It's just that translated works depend upon two people in getting the story told. For instance, Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, in the original English edition was a translation of the French translation rather than from the original Polish, meaning that much of the subtlety was allegedly lost. I wouldn't know if that's true. Until recently, it was the only English version available.

Apologies all for a bit of a thread-jack.
 
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