How to Write Physical Descriptions of Characters

hey everyone its Jalen and I'm here today with another rating video today I'm going to be talking about writing physical descriptions of characters character descriptions are a tricky Beast they're something that I think a lot of new writers especially are kind of scared of digital descriptions can be hard to insert naturally into the narrative they can easily come across as cliche or force and for first-person narrators if they're not done well they can make the first person narrator come across as very vain however in this video I'm going to be talking about some ways to take your physical descriptions from bland to interesting make them work harder in the narrative and make them a part of the story that's actually interesting and important rather than something that just feels necessary first of all let's address the great debate do I need a physical description of my character in my opinion it's a strong yes readers seem to fall into two camps readers who don't need physical descriptions and if there is one we'll probably just ignore it and readers who really need one or they can't picture the character but I think the readers who don't really care about physical descriptions will probably just ignore and not really care if it's there however I'm in the camp of readers who if there is no physical description of the character I can't picture the character I can't just make something up myself all I see is this vague blur it could be a shrub it could be a surprisingly eloquent bear standing on two legs it frustrates me for the entire novel and I really do think in use as a description because the people who don't need one won't care but people who need one will really care if you don't have one the next thing is how do I insert one into the story this is where a lot of people struggle where do I bring it up where how in a very main character you want it to be relatively early if your story starts high energy with the inciting incident current science is really early I wouldn't place it there not lean extremely dramatic and high energy is happening and your character goes one second everyone stop halt we need to know what I look like before we can continue on if your story's just a little more low energy you can place it back look for the earliest point of low energy in your story and that's where you want to put your little description don't put it in a place of high energy high tension high stakes because that's really weird no one has ever been in the middle of a gunfight going to stop the battle it's very important that everyone knows that I have brown hair I without shame pretty much always use the same technique and that is comparison usually shoe a family member with a side character you're pretty much always going to physically describe them as soon as they are introduced so if you bring in a new side character especially a family member you're going to physically describe them so it's very natural and pretty subtle to just sneak this is a cool the description of your main character in with the family member especially because the family members it makes sense to compare like these are the traits we have the same these are the traits we have different I do in like every book you also want to keep it short one of the great pitfalls of character descriptions is when they go on way way too long what in doubt three sentences if I am doing two characters at once then I give it like a full paragraph because I'm describing two characters at once you want a description that taxes much punch as it can in a few words and it can I do have a video on writing descriptions and a lot of it applies to ready vism description so I will leave that in the cards now I want to talk about what you should avoid in a physical description of a character and then I'm going to go into what to include this shouldn't be a surprise to you you should avoid cliches simple descriptions often fell prey to cliches in how the description comes about caulking the mere cost the gem from every why a novel with a female main character ever I'm too skinny it just saw I don't agree with specific traits in essence being cliche like I've seen so many you will say that blue eyes or cliche I don't really understand that someone with blue eyes I'm like well I guess I should start wearing contact and not be a freakin cliche I don't think individual traits can be cliche I don't think you should not give your hair to blue eyes if sou picture them I just think you shouldn't describe their blue eyes as beans blue the sea that would be a cliche the blue eyes in their essence are not a cliche in my opinion I I just need the press to but if all her red hair is a cliche how can that be a cliche I just and get behind this Isuzu look straight in its essence is a cliche it's about how to trade you describe now the tree itself the next thing you want to avoid is over-the-top detail if you have too much in detail the reader won't retain it if you have three paragraphs of just telling us where every individual freckles place to me left shape of the eyes it doesn't not if you're painting a picture in my mind a very very detailed picture I won't forget all of it instantly it would be much better to go with fewer bolder traits that are strongly described than a lot you want to avoid purple prose I find that interesting how sometimes every book don't even have like this very purple prose but yet the descriptions of characters are super purple there is a line here though because you want your description to be interesting like I have a rather figurative writing style and I don't like it one like cigarette writing is equated to purple prose because they're different purple prose is just like when it's over the tall I like language to be interesting I like language that tries hard and that pushes them as a language but an electrical road we can describe eyes and an interesting way without them being glimmering orbs of ocean that would be purple prose my friend throughout the rest of the video I think I'm going to touch on some things that will kind of make that line between interesting and purple a little more clear now what do I include first of all voice voice is such a great story element that I love it's my favorite story element to work with and it is very important to consider in your physical description like everything else in the story should be in the voice of the character and as well it should be in the tone tone is the view the story has towards itself introduced to the description you can think what is the view the character has of their own appearance insecure confident for a side character what's the view that the main character has towards them number two and this is this is the most important part of this video highlight this circle this I don't know just do someone with it make it interesting obvious tip ever it's not followed enough I think that to make it interesting you have to either make your language enter or you have to make the features interesting and both would be good so I'm going to read an example of what I mean about making traits interesting this is from a short story Anatomy her face was narrow and hawk-like feature strangely soft like she was a broken piece of marble weathered by centuries of current curls fell ragged around her face knotted around her ears pale uncombed and grappled into an unraveling braid so fine she looks like an unfinished doll abandoned by her maker not on a thread woven through the pores of her skull next second this is very important and I think it was touched on quite well in that last example flaws are more interesting than perfection and it's also important to notice that the lack of description of flaws kind of counsel they're not being flaws if you describe a character to someone and you don't mention the flaws even if you just describe them in kind of simple ways the reader will probably picture them as like conventionally attractive because that's kind of just how people are and it left to our own devices we should really just picture attractive people because people like looking at attractive people if you don't specifically point out the flaws and you don't go out of your way to make sure you comment on the flaws the reader will not picture them and I also want to note that if the word perfect or any of its synonyms or any similar word appears at any point throughout your physical description you should delete it immediately because anything that is perfect is not interesting rather than trying to convey how attractive your character is convey how interesting and unique your character is find little details specific to that character whether it's a birthmark a scar calf you clothing choices and next time you want to include more than appearance the way to character looks and teaches a lot about their personality their lifestyle and their habits yes I have my natural traits that I have nothing that I can do with I just look the way I look right not really my hair has cut to this length because I chose to have it touch to this length I was not born with a nose where I decided to add that to my appearance I decided not to wear makeup today or any day because I'm lazy I decided to wear this shirt described your character is more than just describing their natural traits it's also describing how they work with their natural traits clothing is also important you can say a lot about character and you're physically describing your character don't make the aim to be just so that the reader can picture them make it so that the reader can learn about them as people use a physical description of the form of showing for the character's personality layers and depth to your physical description and this is what I mean about making a physical description work harder make it pull its weight in the story make it accomplish more than just physically describing the character and a physical description is a good time to more overtly include other details beyond just therapure so we're going to break down a couple examples now a bit more in depth the first two are both from my short story symbiosis and this one is a description of the character Ophelia he's not the main character in the story she's a side character but because the story is in third person I don't know I think it pretty much all the principles apply so here's the description of her in the store he crawled out to find her shins and knees bruised blonde waves frayed and long as if they've never been cut dark eyes really blinking she was always sunburned and covered in dust because she hated being inside at 9:00 she patched her own clothes with needle and thread but didn't cover bramble scrapes she just let them bleed and scab and open air so what have we learned about the character from this description we learned the basics of her appearance she has dark eyes and she's long wavy blond hair don't we've made that each other more to see now I did say and achieve dark eyes that rarely blend I don't know how I feel about that detail and I honestly think I want to delete from the story because I think it's kind of like weird and I don't know what it's supposed to imply about the character so let's just focus on her hair which is described as frayed as if it had never been cut I was pretty proud of that because when I picture you know someone with wavy blond hair and then when I other afraid - it totally changes how I'm picturing the hair in my mind and this is what I mean by treating the perfection from the character if I had just told you that she had blonde long blonde waves without saying that they were beautiful luscious or anything you probably pictured some pretty nice hair and it does nothing to do with the fact that her hair is wavy or blunt with badness like that we just still with beauty that's just how I think most people's brains work trim the perfection by noting that her hair is actually framed it's messy and now we're asked personality it has history it's interesting what else have we learned about her well she spends a lot of time outside as she's always sunburned and covered in dust say explicitly that she hates being inside he learned that she has a disregard for personal safety it's just a hint at her character it's the beginning of a set up of a pattern in her behavior and in her characterization she has a lot of injuries that she doesn't really care about she just left her injuries believed she doesn't put band-aids on them she obviously doesn't wear sunscreen because she's oh it's Umbra she doesn't really care about being injured and maybe to some extent she enjoys being injured this is a character with really self-destructive tendencies and we start that pattern the instance she's introduced with her appearance from the reps in her clothes we start to learn a bit more about her lifestyle you know there's a lot to deduce here it's pretty open to interpretation the immediate assumption would be that her clothes are wrecked because she can't afford new clothing but what about the fact that she catches them instead of her mother that just raises a lot of questions she doesn't have a parent or anyone else to fix her clothes for she stitches them up herself if she's knowing what about the fact that she fixes her clothing but not her own injuries I mean about you can say so much about a character just through how they look here's another example this is from the same story and this is a description of the character blue I do want to say that this isn't the entire description of blue she's described more in depth throughout the story like her descriptions have spread out kind of a portion of her description but it just felt like the most relevant to what I was talking about so here it is she was Twiggy and slight her metallic black hair gleamed under sunlight with streaks of cerulean indigo and turquoise he expected it some shimmery like a wind chime when rustled faint and phantom like her chest barely Rosenfeld was she human or statue she had a history of nearing the lyre so he checked her pulse it's wrong metrically under his fingertips and he dropped her wrist the tendon so really he worried the slight pressure of his thumb break them what have we learned about blue from this description we learned the basics she's black hair she's really small we learned the rest of the basics of what she looks like in another part of the scene this is what we learned about the basics in this part so she doesn't have black hair her hair is metallic looking I don't know from picture something pretty strongly with that word and not only that but she's dyed streaks of blue and green through it and three she should spray unhealthy she's so thin that the protagonist worries he's gonna snap the bones of her wrists with like a super light touch again this is the beginning of a pattern this character isn't too rug addict and that's not revealed yet but we're setting that up we're learning about her we're learning about her lifestyle she's a very unhealthy person she's very physically unwell now I want to make a note on describing attractive character both the characters I just described were romantically involved to the protagonist or the protagonist was romantically interested in them I paint descriptions that just tell us that a character is the most beautiful in all the land although that seems like something we wouldn't do for our main characters it seems to be something that's fun to do for love interest because the main character is attracted to them so obviously it's okay to describe them like that for me any physical description of a character that just goes on and on about how attractive they are I find extremely patronizing it's kind of unrealistic and it's also like why does the character need to be the subtractive and it's not interesting to me like I said perfection is like the least interesting quality that you can give a character instead of making it clear how attractive a character is they have the softest hair and the prettiest eyes and the perfect body we should focus on why they're unique that stands out that's individual in the description of blue who is the main character's girlfriend in description of her hair we expected it to sound shimmering like a wind chime when rustled would you describe the hair of someone you were not attracted to as like thinking it would sound shimmery like a wind chime like that's not going to happen I think it's pretty clear from that thought that he's attracted to her and I think in the descriptions of both those characters I think both of feeling and blue sounds and they're supposed to because the main character is attracted to both of them and the story is told through his voice the main character is noting these weird little details that means he's looking for them next time you're writing a character who is describing a character that they are infatuated with I would skip the description that makes them unrealistically perfect and instead I look for a little specific and describe it in a way that is in the voice and the tone of the character finally I wanted to look at a first-person example because that's probably the hardest case the most room for awkwardness and this is from my novel someone will save you this is again an example of the comparison I'm comparing her to her mother mom comes and goes in unpredictable patterns of spells and spirits you never know when there's an emergency seance you need to attend but some notes would be nice we've always we've always looked more like sisters born 20 years apart than mother and daughter the same light blue eyes except hers are framed with wrinkles that spread like some rays like messy brown hair except mine is bluntly cut above my shoulders and hers the streets with grey and long enough to reach her waist we both have round faces that never lost their baby chub and are pale enough to sunburn on overcast fall days the only reason you can tell she's not me from the future other than the fact that time-travel is because well she's unmarked a birthmark curves around my left eye means it's jagged edge across my nose slices the corner of my lip and disappears down the side of my neck the description of the main character Luna and that book is very important because like I mentioned she has a giant broke mark on her face the reason why I think I picked this example is because it manages to describe two characters at once and it has voice and tone and although nothing here is honestly overtly weird I mean I'm here to this a vagina birthmark on her face but like in the previous descriptions I'm still in my opinion the descriptions have the little authentic details that actually paint a picture rather than big that's everything I want to say about physically describing your character II I just had a lot to say about this topic but thank you so much for watching if you have any questions you can send me an ask on tumblr and I'll see you in another video [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 102,067

Rating: 4.9526582 out of 5

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, aspiring writer, teen writer, writing vlog, teenager author, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, writing physical descriptions, how to write physical descriptions, how to describe characters, describing characters

Id: CIdq1HyZZoc

Length: 17min 42sec (1062 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2017