What Do They Look Like?: Factors Involved in Character Description

Running with a suggestion from Kristin, this week we’re backtracking to description again, though we’re going to talk about it in relation to characters rather than settings like we did previously. (If you’re interested in our thoughts on description for settings, click here.)

As a reader, I’m not really sure where the happy medium on character description falls for me. I think I’m someone who thinks very visually, so I don’t super like it when writers give you very little to go off when they describe their characters. At the same time, you don’t want to get bogged down with a ton of description to where you end up with a gigantic paragraph describing what someone looks like in extreme detail. I think, for me, I want enough description for my brain to get a general idea of what the character looks like, but I’m comfortable letting my imagination fill in the rest.

But as a writer, how can you determine how much description you need to use and when exactly to use it?

In our discussion about this topic, Kristin and I settled on a few factors that can affect how much description to use:

Genre

When looking at describing a character, something to take into account might be the genre you write in. Like we talked about regarding setting descriptions, one thing you can do as a writer is to study the common style of your genre and see what tends to be the norm.

Let’s use the same example again for fantasy. Fantasy (especially higher fantasy) tends to be very descriptive and prose-y in style, but also out of necessity. Fantasy as a genre typically deals with elements that are not common in our day-to-day experience- magic, dragons, etc.- which need more description because they’re not things everyone would immediately be familiar with.

The same is true for characters you might be writing in a fantasy novel. Fantasy stories (at least not contemporary or urban fantasy) don’t usually have characters running around in jeans and sneakers, meaning you will need to put more effort into knowing and describing the garb of your world. Do your characters wear tunics, or armor, or intricately designed dresses? This is also a place to remember that you can have fun with description and use it as a tool. Does a character’s appearance signal things about them? Their social, relationship, or religious status maybe, just to throw out a few ideas.

Beyond the clothes, genre might also drastically influence how you describe the character’s physical appearance as well. Let’s stick with fantasy because it’s an easy example. In fantasy, a writer could very easily be dealing with creatures that aren’t familiar. A human in a fantasy world would probably be expected to look pretty normal, though as I said before, certain aspects could be used to distinguish them- height, weight, hair, skin color. All these things could be used to inform the reader about the character, especially if certain traits were common or uncommon among the people of your story.

But, getting back to my original point, fantasy stories tend to involve things we’ve never seen before: populations, species, monsters. In fantasy, you could very easily end up needing to describe an elf or fairy or witch, and these characters would need more description because they might be unfamiliar to the reader. Also, a character like an elf would need to be described because they have specific features and behaviors that make them stand out from a human character as well. If your character needs to be purposefully distinguished from the other characters, you probably need to describe them.

Relevance to the Story or Main Character

Beyond describing a character due to the norms of your genre or making them specifically distinguishable, another factor is that particular character’s relevance to the story or the main character.

For example, we might need to describe our main character’s best friend a little bit more than maybe a random background character with a couple of lines in one scene. If you’re looking at a character that’s very important to the story as it progresses or someone who’s very important to the MC, then it’s a good bet you’ll need to describe them.

Now, there is an exception to this relevance rule toward describing characters. If you are hiding a character that’s going to be important later, then I think it’s perfectly fine if you take a few extra words to describe them. For instance, I think in the last description blog I used the example of hiding a future love interest in a crowd for the protagonist to bump into. In a scenario like that, the reader might pick up on the fact that there’s something to pay attention to in that scene if there’s a little extra description in there.

Have We Seen Them Before/ Time

This is a problem we ran into while working on the sequel to our manuscript, The Visionary. In the first scene, I tried forever to figure out a way to describe the main characters again, and I never could find a good place to do it except in passing. There wasn’t a good place to put in a big paragraph to describe how everybody looked or time to do it in an opening chapter that needs to move fast.

In this scenario though, not describing the main characters might not be that much of a problem. Theoretically, no one would be that far into the story without having read the first book, so anyone reading should already have a general idea of what everyone looks like. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t get to describe anyone at all, but I think it helps take the pressure off. A lot of what we ended up doing were quick descriptions that fit in naturally, rather than trying to put in the more intense descriptions called for at the very first introduction of a character.

To demonstrate, in a first book, you might take a paragraph to describe a character enough to distinguish them- maybe eye or hair color, height, type of clothes they wear if it’s relevant to something we need to know. We have a character in our stories that’s a cheerleader, so it makes sense to say she might be wearing a cheer uniform, for example, to clarify that.

In a second book though, the reader knows what’s going on. We know the characters, their personalities, how they might dress, so less time needs to be taken on it. In a sequel too (or at least it felt this way for us), we had so much stuff to just plow through plot and information-wise, that you didn’t really have time to describe every person, nor did you need to because the reader already knows them. We often ended up just using smaller bits of description here and there as there was room for it, something to the effect of “the blonde girl smiled” or “his blue eyes looked at me”.

The choice of describing characters is something that’s kind of up to every writer’s discretion. Some give you a lot of description (skin tone, eyes/hair color, style, height, build, etc.), while others might say very little at all about how their characters look. As I said before, I tend to favor the middle ground where I have enough description to get a basic idea of what someone looks like, but not too much that there’s not room for my brain to fill in the rest.

In truth, it all comes down to you as a writer and your writing style. Consider your genre, the relevance of the character in the story, and whether or not we’ve seen them before if you need to move things along.

Those were some of the contributing factors we came up with concerning when to describe characters. Let us know if you have any other thoughts about what factors play into description or if you have any particular tips or favorite aspects regarding character descriptions.

Thanks for reading. Write on.

-Kamryn