How to Write Character Descriptions Like a Pro

describing people like you introduce new character and you kind of want to pause the story for second just to explain what this character looks like and go through their physical appearance and and give the reader good mental image of what this character looks like but you don't want to just go through an inventory list of all their physical features because that can first of all be too long and dragged out it can also make the story make the like kind of hit pause on the story for long time just to describe this character and go in depth about every single detail and lot of times we don't need that much description so lot of writers do get carried away with detail but some writers don't describe characters enough and then we're left with this false mental image like we're allowed we're left to like create our own mental image and then have it shattered later like I've experienced that many times and then the movie comes out and then there's outrage because no one thought the character looked like that yeah because we didn't describe them exactly so that's why it's important to have some foundational building blocks and then small things you can leave Upton the interpretation of the reader yeah but it does help us to have more Vivid image in our minds of okay who is this person we just met right exactly so some Basics that you might want to describe about physical description is facial features eyes lips nose jaw brows Etc build and height skin tone hair color and texture those are like the absolute Basics to me that's like need to know these four things or at least you know two or three out of four to be able to conjure like pretty accurate mental image however you can also use other distinctive features about character to show us something not just about what they look like but who they are and maybe their history maybe their backstory maybe where they're from maybe something about their personality so those things can be hairstyle scars or tattoos if they have any makeup or the lack thereof clothing what's what's their fashion style Voice or accent posture scent and gestures or non-verbal cues so like their body language can say lot about who they are as well if you have character who is more confident their body language will be different than somebody who's more insecure so those are all physical description things that could serve to say something about who this character is and where they're from and what is their role in the story and maybe even something about their internal conflict who knows get creative with it and again take into consideration the point of view character who's doing the describing of the character that we just introduced what are the things that they notice about this character and why are they things that this character would notice that the point of view character would notice I've seen that so many times in in books where like the point of view characters describing another character and they just start describing things and and using words and descriptors that feel so outside of their personality and their voice it's like they wouldn't notice that they wouldn't describe it like that it's and it feels little bit unrealistic because of that so asking yourself how do their preconceived ideas and opinions affect the way they see this person and how does their personality affect the way they see this other person and how they describe them and and also how how the point of view character is looking at this new character what do they mean to them like what is the purpose that this new character is going to serve and how does the point of view characters perception of them change because of that that's another question that you could ask yourself for example was once writing story where my point of view character was pickpocket and he was describing woman that he was going to steal from and put more emphasis on describing the jewelry that she was wearing that he was going to steal more so than describing her physical appearance because that's what he would be thinking about and that's what he would be noticing so that's what mean about like taking into account what the point of view character would realistically notice about this other character right yeah that's great example because it's very rooted in his character who he is as an individual based on what he's noticing right that's really dictating what he's noticing what his attention is being drawn to so then the reverse can be true as well for an example when it feels out of place is if we've established that maybe character doesn't really pay attention very well or they skim over lot of details and then suddenly they meet someone and they're describing every single detail about that person and we've already established that they don't really necessarily pay attention to lot of things right maybe their their mind drifts more they kind of gloss things over well then they wouldn't really notice too much about someone else so so there's lot or if you have character who's more self-absorbed maybe they notice hardly anything about other people so it's like you have and vice versa maybe you have someone who's very you know sensitive to small details so maybe they notice something like you know the color of the buttons on someone's shirt but if you have someone who's like doesn't notice much around them suddenly they're describing the buttons on someone's shirt feel like that's little out of place for them why are they noticing that and another thing to keep in mind is that you're bringing not only your character's attention but the reader's attention to all of these details and everyone's attention span is different most people don't have an extremely long attention span and they're looking for reasons why you're bringing their attention to this thing so it's best to make it meaningful make it matter to the character either because of their personality or has to matter to the story somehow like you know those buttons are gonna have special meaning later you know what mean exactly so just keep keeping in mind and of course you don't have to overthink it when in doubt just write whatever you want and in the editing process you can always go back and ask yourself these questions if you find that you're getting jammed up overthinking this like do really need to describe that her hair is Curly just write whatever you want and when you edit these are great questions to come back to through the editing process we do that all the time yeah 100 so true and remember that you don't have to describe everything all at once if you do want to describe everything about character you can also like describe the the rudimentary Basics at first and then sprinkle in more descriptions as time goes on which is one of my favorite methods okay so two more examples side by side of describing characters first the flat example she had long curly hair the color of Honeysuckle and eyes as blue as the morning sky in late June her skin was tanned from the Sun and her strawberry pink lips were always smiling she had dimples in her cheeks freckles across her nose and peace sign tattoo on her left ankle from her freshman year in high school when she and her friends had all dared each other to get tattoos she never wore makeup but she didn't need to she was natural beauty today she was wearing Rolling Stones t-shirt and denim shorts but she still looked glamorous so as you can see that description is pretty loaded with like lots of metaphors and comparisons and colors and backstory roots and backstory right so it's like it's bit muddy right and once again remember every single thing you mention you're bringing your readers attention to that thing yes and doesn't matter bringing them to that ask yourself why does it matter why does the peace sign tattoo matter it doesn't to this character we're describing now now if she had like some mysterious scar that's lead that's like attached to her backstory and we have to know about this backstory that might be meaningful or even tattoo that's attached to her backstory that's meaningful but it's in this case not meaningful so would start by taking away that and would also start by honing in more on these descriptions of like hair the color of honeysuckle eyes is blue as the morning sky in late June can we like make those little bit less dense and little bit more quick giving the same impression but in like quicker more of snapshot view so that we can deliver the same sort of feeling and at the same time show the reader who this character is not just what they look like so here's better example for comparison she was like sunshine in human form honeysuckle hair sky blue eyes and laugh like the first day of summer effortlessly glamorous even in Rolling Stones t-shirt and denim shorts it was impossible to not notice her dimples because she was always smiling and that was the most beautiful thing about her she was genuinely happy in way that made everyone around her smile so shorter more to the point but as you can see the difference the first one is like an inventory list of the characters physical features and the other one serves to tell us not just how they look but little bit about who they are and we still have room for those more descriptive lyrical that style but in like the metaphors of like the honeysuckle the sky blue eyes but without it bogging down the description so finding ways to play with that and remembering that less is usually more find with descriptions if you can say what you want to say in fewer words that to me is even more impressive than having big long ostentatious sentence and what's interesting too unless you're literally going to rewind and re-listen to the flat example again you probably don't even like where are the differences you know what mean it's almost like they kind of convey the same thing right you know mean you're not like I'm really missing this part of it right which mean maybe you are everyone's different but yes true but it's almost like they're they're so similar but yet the the small differences made it more Compact and made it snappier fresher and it conveys the meaning quicker but yet it's still so similar we still have so many of the elements that made the first example fun that there's really it's almost like unless go back and read the first one it sounds pretty much the same just little bit quicker little bit snappier yeah exactly and think that it's it's easy to go overboard especially with metaphors especially when describing person but also other descriptions too because if you use too many metaphors stacked on top of each other you almost lose track of what you're even looking at it's like am looking at girl or am looking at honeysuckle or no sky or what am looking at you know it's like it's strawberry pink lips it's like all these metaphors stopped on stacked on top of each other and then you're almost trying to like see through the metaphors right what's behind the metaphor and remembering too sometimes if you want one or two features to Stand Out Among the rest we want to sort of centralize around those features rather than spending too much time like her eyes were like this her lips were like this her hair looked like this we want to maybe just like boom here's the centerpiece yeah you know her hair was tumbling around her shoulders like waterfall whatever that becomes the centerpiece and then everything else is little bit back seat right because our attention can't be brought to all of it at once so that's something to just keep in mind is if you want something to stand out make everything else sort of support that one feature rather than everything has big description around it because then the one thing you might want to stand out sort of gets lost in the white noise of everything else yeah very true it's very good point so yeah those are the main three pillars would say of writing descriptions that you'll encounter is describing scenes and scenarios putting that through the lens of your character's perceptions and then describing situations where you can bring your character's voice and personality into the description and then describing other characters where again you're you're putting all of this together you're putting together the perceptions the interpretations and the character voice and personality and using that to also help you describe other characters in your story through the perspective of your point of view character but remembering that oftentimes less is more but in the first draft when you're just letting the creativity flow just see what happens just write forward and don't doubt yourself too much enjoy the creative play time that is writing it should be enjoyable it should be fun but remember these examples remember these side-by-side comparisons and see if you can write your own side-by-side comparisons of taking flat scene flat description and turning into something more creative and immersive and layered with conflict it's really fun exercise you can do exactly like we did like Abby was saying you can even just copy and paste maybe you're working on like okay this is section I'm working on copy and paste it into separate document and then come up with few different versions and read all of them and then see what do like about some which one do like the best which one is my least favorite and then ask yourself why yeah it's great point that would be fantastic exercise guaranteed to improve your writing and this these are things that you learn from doing and Kate and are big proponents of learning from doing and learning from the practice of writing not from you know studying it forever and never actually doing it so you have to get your hands dirty you know do the thing write the book write the story and write forward and learn from the experience just play enjoy the process try different things see what works see what doesn't that's the best way to just get familiarized with with what is your style what is your voice what do you like what do you not like you can only learn these things by just doing it over and over again and just play and have fun thank you