Feb 15 2009
More on Character: Beauty and Appearance
One aspect of character building I didn’t mention before, but that’s important, is appearance. One reason I don’t is that I don’t give it the kind of emphasis many writers do. In fact, my physical descriptions of people are few and far between. Why?
Well, I like for people to put their own twist to things. Even though I might want to emphasize this or that physical feature here or there, I really like people to paint their own images as much as possible. I often have clear images of characters in my own mind and might describe features correctly, but never in such a way that a sketch artist could draw a face. I want it that way. People make their own images of what someone looks like when they read things.
What’s interesting is that, despite the lack of descriptions, people often reach their own conclusions on the beauty of my characters. In *Curse of the Jenri*, someone wrote me a long comment, condemning the fact that all of my large ensemble cast was described as young and beautiful. I was surprised and called the commenter on it. Turned out, I had described a young pair as beautiful and one with a “sweet” face. One I had described as scarred and distinctly ugly and I hadn’t described ages or appearances of anything else. However, my main character clearly liked everyone there, saw them with affection and that lead the reader to imbue them with beauty charm and grace without my describing it. In some ways, the criticism was really a high compliment.
In fact, for most of the book, I really described only my female protagonist in glowing physical terms and, since she was being described by a clearly besotted spouse, what would one expect?
Still, as my sister noted, I do actually like things like a picture in a novel to anchor some of the descriptions in the head. I’m sure that, for those that need a visual image, it would be particularly edifying.
Beauty, of course, depends on the eye that beholds it. And, more than that, there are so many kinds of beauty inside and out. If you’re going to pick a beauty for your character, start with the inside. The outside will take care of itself, believe me.
That’s an interesting idea–to purposefully be vague in your character description so that readers can let their own imaginations create a visual picture. I think that’s why people who love to read, don’t like the movie version of a book. The film director’s interpretation is never quite like the reader’s.
Davida
I find visual description useful, though not necessarily the eyes/hair/height/level of attractiveness combination that a lot of people use. For me, it’s more important to get the things that give a sense of the person, or might be important to the story, and even then it’s not ’stop the plot I have a description’, but more weaving the description into what’s already going on.
So I might sort of touch on hair color, but I’m likelier to describe things like a character being very good at sitting still but wearing clothing that emphasizes movement, or walking with a limp, or wearing loose clothing and so many veils you couldn’t tell a thing about how they looked. It even makes it into the characterization; one of my characters, when asking about people, goes for things like “The twitchy one, always looking over her shoulder?” or “Looks like she just stepped out of a teahouse?” rather than the kinds of descriptions you usually see. It’s rather fun seeing how characters look at the people around them.
I agree with you, and Ravyn, too… better to give us something meaningful about the character, using it to flesh out who they are. Perhaps that’s one thing I like about the Potter novels… the actors fit the people because some key items were the same… though when I looked back at the description, I was working off only a few interesting details about each person. Far more meaningful, if you ask me.
I personally like not-so-beautiful people. They are more interesting.