Choosing Descriptive Details One of the first encounters your reader has with your character will probably come from the outside, especially if your novel is told in third person.
Someone will observe the character's appearance, clothes, manner. This someone may be the author, or another character, or even the protagonist himself. Whoever does the observing, the description
will be related to us readers, and we will get our first chance to form an impression of this person we're going to spend 500 pages with. Readers pay a lot of (mostly unconscious) attention to this
first impression. They want to know if they're looking at a beauty, a beast, or something in between. Thus, you must make the first sight of
your character sharp and memorable. The key to doing that is to choose these first descriptive details very carefully. The details you choose should do three things: - create a visual
image, so we can picture the character in some important way(s);
- tell us something about the person inside the visual image;
- convey an impression of individuality: someone unique and interesting, whom we will want to know more about.
What you don't
want is the kind of description that turns up in police reports: | Caucasian male, 27 years old, six feet, 170 pounds, short brown hair, blue eyes. That could describe thousands of men, none of them memorably. It's not individual, it's
not evocative of personality, and it's not interesting. Such a description has detail, all right, but not the right detail. | So what kind of details are right? Ones that grab the reader's attention. I NOTICED YOU RIGHT AWAY... One way to grab your reader's attention, of course, is to create a character so bizarre that the reader can't look away: | Bethany, an inch short of seven feet high, had lost her bikini top again.
The blue-sequined bottom spanned her generous hips, with a hole cut on the left side for the growing calcium deposit, now the size of a golfball. But on top her 40D breasts flapped free, hidden only
by the cascading tresses of greenish-black hair. | We'll notice Bethany. But not every book is the kind of story in
which Bethany would have a legitimate place (in fact, very few are). And even in the right novel, a string of Bethanies would become tiresome. When everyone is bizarre, nobody seems really
weird. So what descriptive details both feel "normal" and succeed in creating a strong first impression of your character's physical appearance?
Let's consider some examples. THREE TERRIFIC DESCRIPTIONS The following are introductory
descriptions of a wide variety of characters, from wildly disparate books of different genres. (I know twelve is a lot of examples to throw at you all at once, but we're going to analyze them
throughout this whole chapter). The characters have nothing in common with each other--except that all arouse interest: Example 1 | | He was a lank, tall, bearded
man in a shaggy brown suit that might have been cut from blankets, and on his head he wore a red ski cap--the pointy kind with a pom-pom at the tip. Masses of black curls burst out from under it.
His beard was so wild and black and bushy that it was hard to tell how old he was. Maybe forty? Forty-five? At any rate, older than you'd expect to see at a puppet show, and no child sat next to
him. --Morgan Gower, in Anne Tyler's Morgan's Passing |
Example 2 | | Carrie stood
among [the girls in the locker room] stolidly, a frog among swans. She was a chunky girl with pimples on her neck and back and buttocks, her wet hair completely without color. It rested against her
face with dispirited sogginess and she simply stood, head slightly bent, letting the water splat against her flesh and roll off. She looked the part of the sacrificial goat, the constant butt,
believer in left-handed monkey wrenches, perpetual foul-up, and she was. --Carrie White, in Stephen King's Carrie |
Example 3 | | Solid, rumbling, likely to erupt without prior notice, Macon kept each member of his family awkward with fear. His hatred of his wife glittered and sparkled
in every word he spoke to her. The disappointment he felt in his daughters sifted down on them like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking the lilt out of what should have been girlish
voices. Under the frozen heat of his glance they tripped over door sills and dropped the salt cellar into the yolks of their poached eggs. --Macon Dead,
from Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon | Each of these descriptions creates a vivid picture (can't you just see Morgan
Gower, or Carrie White?) But each also does more; it links appearance to personality, letting us glimpse the person underneath. We not only visualize Morgan, we sense his exuberant, childlike
eccentricity. We are convinced that Carrie White is passive and Macon Dead is dangerous. And all from descriptions of less than a hundred words. HOW DO
THEY DO THAT? These authors, and the others quoted throughout this chapter, achieve so much with visual description because they choose
and present details that suggest more than their literal meaning. You, too, can choose from several categories of details that accomplish this. Consider the following list as a literary smorgasbord,
to sample as you wish: Use appearance to indicate personality. The technique is to choose details that match you character's inner self, and
then to use language that makes that connection clear. There are hundreds of details that could be cited about anyone's appearance. Stephen King choose to describe Carrie's blemished skin, passive
posture, and colorless hair because they suggest an unattractive victim. This suggestion is reinforced by King's word choices: "stolidly," "dispirited," "sogginess," "letting" the water run off
her--even the word "splat" to describe the water hitting her, since "splat" is usually a sound associated with someone being hit, rather than someone enjoying a hot shower. The facts that Carrie is
plain and overweight would not, by themselves, indicate a victim--there are plenty of plain, overweight, feisty fighters in the world. It's King's diction that transforms a collection of physical
details into a memorable impression. Similarly, Margaret Mitchell selects some details over others in describing Scarlett O'Hara (Gone With The
Wind): Example 4 | |
Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply
blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her
eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in
her magnolia skin... | By focusing on Scarlett's square jaw, aggressive eyebrows, and feminine skin and lashes, Mitchell
emphasized the contradictions within Scarlett's nature: a "delicate Southern belle" with a will of steel. Use a character's own reaction to his
appearance to indicate personality. This is Sylvie Fisher, from Marilyn Robinson's novel Housekeeping:
Example 5 | | After a while they would turn on the radio and start
brushing Sylvie's hair, which was light brown and hung down to her waist. The older girls were expert at building it into pompadours with ringlets at ears and nape. Sylvie crossed her legs at the
ankles and read magazines. When she got sleepy she would go off to her room and take a nap, and come down to supper with her gorgeous hair rumpled and awry. Nothing could induce vanity in her. |
From this we learn that Sylvie has long, thick brown hair. This helps us visualize her, but we actually learn more about
Sylvie from her reaction to her own beauty. She is unimpressed. She passively lets her sisters fiddle with her hair, rather than participating. She destroys their efforts carelessly, preferring
sleep to vanity. Sylvie, for the entire length of Robinson's novel, remains careless and unimpressed. How does your character feel about her
own appearance? Proud? Indifferent? Dissatisfied (why)? Insanely jealous of people with more attractive exteriors? Would including her reaction give us vital information about this person? If
so, do it. Use appearance to indicate current situation. In this case, you choose physical details that apply to how the character is feeling
at the moment, rather than as indicators of permanent personality. This description of teen Conrad Jarrett occurs early in Judith Guest's Ordinary People: Example 6 | | He does a quick look in the mirror. The news isn't good. His face, chalk-white, is plagued with a weird, constantly erupting rash. This is not acne, they assured him.
What it was, they were never able to discover. Typical. He tries to be patient as he waits for his hair to grow out.... Everything's okay, he's here, wearing his levis, boots, and jersey shirt,
just like everybody else, all cured, nobody panic. | From Guest's wording, we understand that Conrad didn't always have
acne, hacked-up hair, and an intense concern with dressing "normal." Rather, these are temporary conditions, and Guest has chosen to emphasize them because they reflect Conrad's current situation:
uncertain, still damaged from mental illness, hacked up inside. Even in a romance novel, where the heroine's beauty is usually fulsomely dwelt
on, you can introduce her with a focus on temporary disadvantages rather than permanent prettiness. Meet Hero Wantage, from Georgette Heyer's Friday's Child: Example 7 | | The Viscount looked her over. She was a very young lady, and she did not at this moment appear to advantage. The round gown she wore was of an unbecoming shade of pink,
and had palpably come to her at secondhand, since it seemed to have been made originally for a larger lady... in her hand she held a crumpled and damp handkerchief. There were tear stains in her
cheeks, and her wide grey eyes were reddened and a little blurred. Her dusky ringlets, escaping with a frayed ribbon, were tumbled and very untidy. | Hero's reddened eyes, tear-stained cheeks, and messy hair are not her usual state. She is currently very unhappy. The description thus accomplishes two
goals at once: letting us visualize the basic facts of Hero's appearance (young, small, dark-haired) and giving us her temporary state of mind. If you decide to introduce your character to us at a moment of high emotion, pick details that do this same double duty. Use dress to indicate personality. Because a character can control his choice of clothes--or at least his reaction to it--clothing details are a good way to tell us about
your character's personality. Note Jenny Fields's reactions to her own clothing:
Example 8 | | In Jenny's opinion, her breasts were too large; she thought the ostentation
of her bust made her look "cheap and easy."...She liked her simple, no-nonsense [nurse's] uniform; the blouse of the dress made less of her breasts; the shoes were comfortable, and suited to her fast
pace of walking. --The World According to Garp, John Irving | Jenny likes
her sensible shoes and relatively sexless nursing uniform because she is sensible and sexless. Dominique Francon, from Ayn Rand's bestselling
Atlas Shrugged, chooses much different clothing: Example 9 | | She had gray eyes that were not ovals, but two long, rectangular cuts edged by parallel lines of
lashes; she had an air of cold serenity and an exquisitely vicious mouth. Her face, her pale gold hair, her suit seemed to have no color, but only a hint, just on the verge of the reality of color,
making the full reality seem vulgar. | Dominique's subtle suit, which makes actual colors look "vulgar," tells us that
she is elegant and disdainful. Look back at the description of Morgan Gower. He has chosen a child's pom-pom hat, pointed like an elf's cap, in
bright red. To see how truly dress can indicate personality, try to picture Dominique in Morgan's hat. Or Scarlett O'Hara in Jenny Field's sexless uniform. No, no. What clothes does your character prefer? Sharply creased slacks? Jeans? Designer dresses? Shapeless ones? His military uniform? Give this some thought. Then show
us. Use dress to indicate current situation. On the other hand, Hero Wantage's shabby cloak and made-over, ill-fitting gown don't indicate her
basic personality any more than do her current reddened eyes. The frumpy clothes clearly have been forced on her by necessity, and so serve to tell us more about her current situation (poor relation)
than her own taste. Do this when you wish to put your character's current situation in the foreground, so you can change it later (Hero becomes rich and well-dressed). Use home to indicate personality. Among the first things we learn about Kinsey Millhone, Sue Grafton's popular detective, is that Kinsey lives sparsely: Example 10 | | My name is Kinsey Millhone. I'm a private investigator, licensed by the state of California. I'm thirty-two years old, twice divorced, no kids....My apartment is small
but I like living in a cramped space. I've lived in trailers most of my life, but lately they've become too elaborate for my taste, so now I live in one room, a "bachelorette." I don't have pets. I
don't have houseplants. --from A Is For Alibi | Note that this apartment
contains nothing living that might shackle its occupant: no pets, no kids, no plants. Kinsey has chosen this environment. Such a choice, beyond letting us visualize setting, is Grafton's way of
alerting us that Kinsey is a loner, not materialistic, wary of close bonds. And so she is. Use personal tastes to indicate personality. Not
only homes can function this way--so can anything else that your character gets to choose: car, food, drink, music, books, vacation spots. Ian Fleming suggested quite a lot about James Bond by Bond's
precise specifications for his martinis ("shaken, not stirred"). Is your character more likely to drive a Ford Escort, a Mercedes Benz, or a pick-up truck? Conservative black, or gold with racing
stripes? With or without bumper stickers? What do they say? What's in the back seat: decaying MacDonald's wrappers, a complete first-aid kit, a change of clothes and toothbrush (just in case),
fishing gear from last summer, kids' broken toys? When was the car last serviced? Last washed? Is it usually driven on a familiar round of home-work-mall, or has it seen both Acapulco and
Anchorage? The man with volumes of Nietzsche beside his bed is not the same man with Turkey Grower Monthly beside his. Or maybe he is
(interesting). Show us. Not everything, of course. Just two or three personal tastes that, in your opinion, indicate a lot about who this character really is. Use mannerisms to indicate personality. Jenny Fields walks fast, swinging her arms. Carrie White stands with her head bent. Other characters may chew on their hair,
endlessly jiggle one foot, or carefully fold all pieces of paper into precise thirds before throwing them away. Such mannerisms--habitual physical gestures--tell us something about the inner life of
each character. Some mannerisms, such as lighting a cigarette to show nervousness, have been so overused that they're now clichés. But
the idea of using mannerisms is still viable. Search for fresh gestures that both let us visualize what your character is doing and also tell us something significant about her personality.
Use description to indicate relationships with others. Look again at the description of Macon Dead. We don't actually learn anything about what
Macon looks like (the only physical description is "solid"). What author Morrison is doing instead is using minimal physical description as a jumping off-place for some authorial exposition about how
Macon Dead relates to other people. Philip Roth uses the same technique in Good-bye, Columbus. Here is the narrator, Neil, describing his new
girlfriend's mother: Example 11 |
| I did not like Mrs. Patimkin, although she was certainly the handsomest of all of us at the table. She was disastrously polite to
me, and with her purple eyes, her dark hair, and large, persuasive frame, she gave me the feeling of some captive beauty, some wild princess, who had been tamed and made the servant to the king's
daughter--who was Brenda | The actual visual details about Mrs. Patimkin are pretty generic: handsome, purple eyes, dark
hair, large frame. That's because the visual details aren't the point. They're merely a springboard for the narrator's observations about the family's social dynamics. But, you might ask, isn't that just abstract "telling" rather than "showing"? Not the way Morrison and Roth do it. Both use command of the English language to create
vivid metaphors, word pictures striking enough to replace the ones we're not getting about bodily appearance. Macon Dead's hatred is a physical thing; it "glitters" and "sparkles." His
disappointment, too, is physical: "like ash, dulling their buttery complexions and choking" his daughters. His glance is "frozen heat" that causes more specific physical images: the daughters'
tripping over door sills and dropping salt cellars into poached eggs (more specificity: poached, not scrambled or over-easy--nothing in Macon Dead's house is easy). Attitudes have been translated
into strong and original metaphors that show us Macon Dead as well--or better--than a direct description. Similarly, Roth gives us a striking
metaphor for Mrs. Patimkin's relationship with her family. She's a captive princess forced to serve a younger woman, "disastrously polite" in her impotent rage. This is such a startling metaphor to
evoke about a mother-daughter relationship that it serves as a memorable description of Mrs. Patimkin. She's fixed in our minds. This works
best if you allow us to first glimpse your character when he's in the presence of other people. Visualize the scene carefully before you write. Where is everybody standing? What do the body
language and facial expressions say about these people's relationships? When you're sure you know, search for an interesting way to convey that information to us. Use other senses to indicate personality. Although none of the above descriptions employ this technique, it can be very effective. Describe your character not in terms of
the more usual visual images, but in terms of a characteristic sound, smell, feel, or perhaps even taste. Think of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan, whose "voice was full of money." Of John
Steinbeck's Tom Joad, day after day tasting dust. Of Sandra Cisneros's Lucy, "who smells like corn." Does your character always feel warm to the touch, radiating body heat? Smell of cinnamon--or
manure? Talk in a voice so shrill it sounds like fingernails scraping a blackboard? What can you imply about her inner self through such sensory details? COMBINING TYPES OF DETAILS: BUBBA'S PLACE Your descriptions, of course, don't have to be confined to only one of the
above techniques. Look again at John Irving's description of Jenny Fields. It combines details of physical appearance, dress, and mannerisms ("her fast pace of walking"), plus Jenny's own opinion of
all these. Mix and match. However, one important caveat: Don't get carried away. Too many details are as bad as too few. Paragraph after
paragraph of descriptive details, no matter how brilliantly evocative, will overwhelm your reader. He'll burn out from sensory overload--and all you've done so far is introduce the character!
So how many details are too many? As with nearly everything else in writing, there's no simple answer to this. It depends on the book's length,
purpose, voice, and overall tone. But as a crude rule of thumb, keep it to under a half-dozen things to visualize. If they're carefully chosen, that's usually more than enough. (For more on leaving
out details, see Chapter Seven.) To see just how much the right details can contribute to readers' picture of a character, consider the
following three descriptions. The action is exactly the same--but the details of environment and diction make all the difference: Example 12 | | When I stormed
into Bubba's trailer, the Carson-Akabar fight was playing on the TV. Bubba was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I tore past the beer cans and the Harley, racing
through the trailer until I found him taking a crap in the bathroom. "You bastard! I've got something to give you!" When I sauntered into Serge's,
"Tosca" was playing on the stereo. Serge was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I strolled past the library and the dining room, making my way through the mansion
until I found him repotting violets in the conservatory. "You sly dog, I have a message for you." When I crept into Daddy's, some old-timey music
was playing on the radio. Daddy was nowhere to be seen, but that didn't stop me. Nothing could stop me. I sneaked past all the woman's clothes on the living room floor and the closed bedroom door,
tiptoeing through the house until I found him in the garage. "D...Daddy, listen, please, I've got to tell you something!" | It's all in the details. You can have Beauty or the beast--as long as you choose your specifics carefully. SUMMARY: THE KEYS TO
SUCCESSFUL DESCRIPTION - Choose details that create strong visual images.
- Choose details that add up to an accurate, coherent impression
of your character's personality.
- Use word choices that further reinforce this impression.
- Don't choose too many
details. Quality is more effective than quantity.
- Use your effective details the first time we encounter your character, so we will want to keep on reading.
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