On Character Descriptions

 Today is my dad’s birthday and the plan is to cook him a jambalaya and cobbler tonight. So I have that to look forward to! I also hope to get a good walk in, some Christmas shopping, and get a bit further with “Tombs of the Fallen” in Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla this weekend, but the game keeps freezing when I get to East Anglia so not sure how that will go!

Also I read a comic that had been on my to-read list for ages on Goodreads, and sadly it wasn’t as much fun as I hoped. Oh well.

And I think at least some Puerto Rico pictures will show up on Facebook this weekend.

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How to Tackle Character Descriptions in Prose

I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I figured this would just be a thing I talked about verbally, until I sat down Thursday and figured, hey, this would actually be an okay Saturday Note topic. But basically: I’m starting to get kind of fascinated about the ways in which authors of books decide to design and describe characters. 

For example, I think most of the writing guides I’ve seen in the past decade or so try to discourage the notion of you stopping the action to describe what a character looks like, especially the main character. The surprisingly popular way of doing this, which I’ve seen almost universally condemned, is the Mirror Scene, in which the protagonist is getting ready for his or her day and looks into the mirror, and explains to the audience what he or she looks like. And I get that halting everything to give a description, especially if it’s not a good one, can be incredibly annoying, but how else are you going to get this information across?

And there ARE ways, but then you have to work to spread that information out in a way that’s not an infodump, or accept that not all the details you have in your head are going to make it into the text. If you DO put that much detail, you have to make sure it’s applied fairly consistently. I’ve noticed that sometimes authors will put plenty of detail into describing one or two characters but not work on the others. Kevin Hearne in the Iron Druid books (at least the first two) has attractive female characters described in pretty excruciating details in their outfits and the way they look, whereas most of the male characters are given much more basic descriptions--in that case it’s pretty obvious what’s caught the author’s interest.

Something I find really interesting is how a lot of authors manage to describe a character really well without actually giving you a ton of details? They hand out abstract ideas more than concrete information. Moist von Lipwig is, for instance, said to be really average-looking with no obvious distinguishing facial characteristics, and other than maybe his hair color and a couple of basics we’re not given much to go on. Which is part of the point, as Lipwig uses his nondescript appearance to avoid the authorities as a con man and thief.

I first started really noticing this with a blog post from Rick Riordan ages ago, when he mentioned that he doesn’t do detailed character descriptions in his books, citing that he wants readers to make their own images from imaginations, as they’re probably going to do that anyway while reading. And he’s right? Percy Jackson isn’t given that much of an obvious description--we’re told he’s got dark hair and green eyes, and maybe he looks mischievous. The sequel series tells us he’s apparently attractive for a guy his age, and that he looks a bit like a skater kid. And it’s said in a roundabout way that he’s white. I think my favorite description though is Annabeth--Percy tells the audience she’s pretty, with blonde curls first when he’s flitting in and out of consciousness, but then when he’s fully awake that she would look like a stereotypical California girl, except that her gray eyes ruined the image.

And right there, you probably have in your head a very solid image of what she looks like, to you, but the author managed to get that picture in your head. It works really well when he’s describing the gods as well, because with the Greek mythology theme he’s depicting them as archetypes that are adapted to American culture. Telling you that Ares is a mean-looking biker, or that Poseidon is tanned and wearing Hawaiian shirts, or Zeus is in a pinstriped suit--this all gives you a better picture, one that feels better for you, than if he did paragraphs upon paragraphs giving you exact body proportions and facial features.

Also going on character descriptions: I don’t remember exactly covering this one point in a creative writing class, but there’s a tendency to try to make sure that characters fit our expectations in that they way they look “fits” with their personality traits. And that’s not bad in and of itself, and there are ways in which it really works. But I also really like when character descriptions subvert your expectations?

Right now I’m slowly working my way through the Witcher books, for instance, and there’s a character, Sigismund Dijkstra, who we are told is fat and bald and large, and dresses flamboyantly, giving the impression of a well-dressed pig. And you know what his job is? He’s head of Redanian intelligence--and he’s darn good at his job. It’s a bit wasted because from the beginning of his appearances the viewpoint characters all know exactly who he is, so it’s not as if the discrepancy ever actually becomes relevant.

I would like more authors to really play around with character descriptions like this? To have a character look a certain way that automatically brings to mind a certain personality or archetype and then have the person act in a completely different way than one would expect from the way the person looks. This isn’t that rare in fiction at all (though usually it’s reserved for villains who look like heroes), but I would like it to be more varied in different character types other than ‘Here’s a bad guy who looks like a good guy,’ or vice-versa.

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