How to Write Physical Descriptions of Characters | Writing Advice

hey guys welcome back to the channel my name is Megan Tennant and today we are talking about how to describe characters [Music] so this video is dedicated to SATA pine who is one of my lovely patrons I needed video ideas and so I periodically asked my kittens and South the pine recommended this one and it sounded like fun so then just add the pine for the suggestion you can go follow her her links are in the description and also in the endcard cuz she is wonderful so let's get right into it tip number one actually describe them I know not what you wanted to hear though if you plan on not describing your characters I'm not quite sure why you're watching this video but you know you do you some authors will argue that you don't need to give a physical description for to your characters because readers will just make one up if you don't and although that is true for some readers it is not true for all of them and the readers who are not capable of creating these images in their head without the help of a description are going to be just completely unable to enjoy your book but readers who are capable of designing the characters in their head will be able to design the characters they want in their head even if you provide a description for the character so it's just an overall safer bet to just describe them tip number two don't over describe your characters because with that last tip being said there are no readers out there in the world but don't know at least the basics of what a human looks like because here's the thing we've been staring that faces literally since we were born that's why we see faces in weird things in like bread and crackers and all over the place is just because that's one of the first things you see and you don't remember that but your brain recognizes the patterns of a face so we have all these images of faces catalogued in our head and we're even capable of just composing random faces this means you do not have to describe things like nose shape jawline cheekbone height eyes shape or anything like that unless it's relevant or stands out in some way generally speaking you will want to describe things like hair color style and type eye color any piercings tattoos or markings general height general body build general skin tone anything where you don't want your reader to just picture what they see as a default person for example if your character has no teeth that might be worth mentioning if your character has massive breasts you could add a brief description of that and when I say brief I mean brief I don't want to see your book on the men describing women Twitter in two years tip number three don't make comparisons to celebrities I cannot say this enough this is one of my personal pet peeves look I get it you wanna bang Chris Pratt that doesn't mean you can say that the love interest in your story looks exactly like Chris Pratt and yeah I get that you also want to bang Jennifer Lawrence that doesn't mean you get a free pass to ride in a love triangle just go watch passengers and write a fanfic or something like all the rest of us so they're serious talk there are so many reasons why this is a bad idea hey that's not an A that's the one it's not even an A in sign language a the reader might not know that actor is B it dates your work 3 it's generally immersion breaking I think I said number 3 number C not number letter C this is just a disaster what am i doing why did I decide to even make D actors appearances change over time and you probably want people to be able to still read this book in 20 years Chris Pratt it was brought like maybe in 20 years he's kind of more of a dad character and a dad role and your new readers are gonna read that and be like whoa I don't want a picture my dad in this love interest role that's a problem also actors fall off of wagons sometimes figuratively sometimes literally and that can change their appearance either because they love their face that's a term don't google it or because they become crackheads and just it's a bad idea and it's just lazy writing anyways but with that being said having a secret dream cast can be helpful for you create a folder and then put in images of either one actor that looks kind of like how you want this character to look or multiple different actors or models or random people and when you're writing them just reference tools images because it'll make it easier for you to describe it accurately and no one has to know that you're using reference images it can be your dirty little secret tip number four make us setec boards yes I'm giving you an excuse to procrastinate you are welcome I don't recommend you to do this for all characters because then you'll just procrastinate forever and I'm not giving you that extent of an excuse but for your main characters and your main villains add images of certain aspects of their appearance that stand out against the norm and make them who they are things like that tip number five avoid cliched comparisons and descriptions these are things like saying her hair is as red as a rose or his eyes are blue as the sky he was built like a bear if you use too many of these your writings gonna start to feel really stale instead use this as a great opportunity to not only world build but to build out the character who's POV this information is being filtered through because you can show what their most frequently exposed to for example you could say her eyes were as blue as the core of a portal or her hair is as red as the lights of the radiation alarm or he says big as a biolink bear which truth be told are supposed to be the same size as old world bears but who would know because they've been extinct for five hundred years and I don't know what an old-world bear looks like fam world building tip number six be careful with purple prose I love purple as much as the next person and purple prose has its place but its place is not in character descriptions you can add a little bit but you have to tread very carefully here because when it comes to character descriptions the bridge over the river of cheese is a thin one yes that's the description I chose to go with tip number seven don't pause the story to describe characters character description will flow so much nicer if you can weave it into the scene and what's currently happening especially if you can tie it directly into movement this is especially helpful for first-person where the character is describing themselves for example I pull an elastic band from the Jumbo of items inside the cubby and tie my uneven hair into a knot if you dark red waves escape my trembling hands they swing loose on the right side of my face obscuring my vision my fingertips meet uneven skin as I glide them across a scarred cheek brushing the hair to one side nearly two decades worth of similar scars speckled my body some of the marks I can feel others like the small number tattooed on the left side of my face I often forget exists you can implement this with other characters too when describing their actions for example later on in that same chapter the first chapter of ilithyia I make reference to 1633 not having an arm using the motion of him shrugging another way to keep the story going is to weave in these little bits of character description throughout multiple paragraphs or dialogue or something else that breaks it up because not only will that make it more interesting but that way the reader never feels like you hit pause on the image so that the narrator could then describe to them what something looks like number eight generally speaking the more important the character the more description they should get now keep in mind that if there's character that you don't want to seem important but it's actually important keep their description minimal though in their first introduced and you can then add to it later as they become more important also keep in mind that if you're filtering through a POV character the amount of description will actually depend on how important that character is to the POV character in that mode but do not waste the readers time by giving a full description for a character that's gonna exist for like half a scene and then we're never gonna see them again we're not gonna remember them anyway so you don't really need to pair descriptors to them unless again it's something out of the norm number nine keep in mind scene pacing when describing characters if a mysterious stranger shows up just in time to help your POV character as he's running through a crowded market trying to escape a Dark Brotherhood assassin don't waste your precious words in this fast-paced moment to stop and describe things like their eye color because your character wouldn't notice that in the moment now if that mysterious stranger jumps over a box stashed into an alley and then your character then trips over it they might notice that the mysterious stranger is very tall then it makes sense to maybe add in that detail but otherwise just wait until they finally found a safe rooftop and they're hiding and they're trying to catch their breath and then that's when your character is gonna look the stranger over and analyze them more deeply and this is where you can add the description besides your reader not knowing what they fully look like before is just gonna kind of add to the sense of a the blur of motion and action and running and it's gonna put them deeper into the shoes of the main character tip number 10 as a general rule don't use food comparisons to describe any physical trait ever unless maybe your main character is a chef and they compare everything to food and that's just like their thing and it makes sense to that character otherwise don't say skin the color of caramel say golden brown don't say her breasts were like juicy ripe melons say basically anything else that is not that camara someone's physical traits - food is not only cliche but it can also be dehumanizing as you're linking this person to something that exists purely for the purpose of being consumed it can also be viewed as fetish sizing and uncomfortably sexual there are just too many strange undertones here so doh not to be a crepe and cut the food words you're welcome I put all of the puns into one sentence and now you are safe and that that's it that's that's all the puns for the rest of the video tip number eleven don't use a mirror to describe your character that's that's it that's the tip rule number 12 rule tip tip number 12 if your story is filtered through a POV character remember that the descriptions are going to be biased the way a POV character describes someone tells us a lot about not only that character but their relationship to this other person if they're describing someone that they love or are very attracted to odds are they're gonna put more focus on the perfections and they're going to ignore some of the flaws in which case you can often have an external third character bring up the love interest laws so that the reader knows about them but it still makes sense that the bias POV you would have kind of filter those out whereas if they're describing someone they hate they're going to look for the flaws specifically if it's family they'll likely draw comparisons to themselves given the genetic connection if it's a rival they may measure their own traits against this person and that can give you a good point to bring up their own traits and if it's a friend they're gonna probably look for things that they relate to where choice will also be hugely important here because the words they use are going to depend again on their relationship with that character for example if your POV character is attracted to someone they're scruffy beard could be described as rugged whereas if that exact same person is instead a rival they might instead describe their beard as mangy which ties directly into to number 30 there tip number 13 pay very close attention to word choice for example I could describe a guy's beard as any one of the following scruffy untidy mangy rugged shaggy unkempt neglected bedraggled dilapidated rickety okay I ran out of synonyms but are you gonna be cut off those last two those are a lot of different words and each has a slightly different image that you would pair to it so look up synonyms when you're describing characters because there might be a word that you don't use very often but gives the right type of vibe the situation and last but not least tip number 14 make a character profile because you're gonna tell yourself that you can remember your character designs but you're a liar and you won't remember especially if it's a series and then if you want to remember to make the later books in the series accurate you're gonna have to go back and rewrite the first book because you cannot for the life of you remember which I have the bigger blocks of brown and did I ever give this character a number tattoo how could he have gone the whole book without a number tattoo he's the main character and yes his name is a nickname and it's not a number but how did I not think to give him frickin number tattoo so there must be a number tattoo described somewhere in the book but now I gotta find it so I got a read hope so that was it for this video thank you so much for watching go watch my video on world building clothing because it was fantastic if you want to suggest videos and have them dedicated to you like the lovely SATA pine go become a patron the links are in the description down below and then use so much for watching as always I will see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Cloud Kitten Chronicles

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Keywords: megan tennant, authortube, how to write, writing, book, novel, writer, writing tips, writing advice, describing characters, how to, how to describe characters, physical description, character description, screenwriting, how to write character description, nanowrimo, preptober, creative writing, writertube, how to describe, character description screenplay, character description writing, screenwriting tips, screenwriting 101, nanowrimo prep, nanowrimo 2019, creative writing tips

Id: yJDe4psmAaM

Length: 14min 22sec (862 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019