Physical Description Of Characters

Personally, I think that professional novelists mention eye color way too much, especially for minor characters. In most situations, it's a trivial detail.

@JHM: Now, that's the kind of thing that I love—describing one character through another's eyes. It's a tricky manuever (especially since the character's opinion is subjective), but an interesting device.

^^ Sometimes it's a welcome break from The Law of Conservation of Detail. How do you know audiences won't like Generic Extra Red Shirt #47 who has Green Eyes?

Aren't personality quirks generally better for accomplishing that?

I understand calling attention to eye color if it actually means something or is especially odd, but this can get overboard, even a little creepy. If I met a guy who noted the eye color of everyone he met, I'd think 'what' and back away.

edited 6th Jan '12 5:31:36 PM by CrystalGlacia

Depends on the medium, I think - in a visual medium, it's possible that audiences can get attached to a character based solely on their unique physical appearance. However, I'm pretty sure this thread is meant to be about non-visual media, in which case I'd agree with you.

Eye color description also seems to be one of the things iconically associated with Mary Sues - this doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing, but it's worth noting.

I know in real life, I hardly notice anyone's eye color. Hair color, yes, of course, but eye color, no. Though this may be because I don't really look in peoples eyes when I talk to them.

edited 6th Jan '12 5:45:30 PM by NoirGrimoir

The trope to blame for the abundance of eye colors in fiction. (I admit to having abused this—for instance, having characters' magical abilities influence their eye colors.)

edited 6th Jan '12 5:59:47 PM by feotakahari

Usually, I give physical description when a character in the story says it. Not in first-person POV, but like:

"Bring me that girl. Yes, the one with brown hair." He pointed at Jane on the screen, intrigued and fascinated by the girl's persistence to rescue her best friend.

Yeah. I would also at least give the most basic description like build and height so that readers can imagine how the characters look like to them. Other things, like eye color or hair color only comes in if it contributes to the plot, or in the protagonist's eyes, think that it's worth noticing should the character is a humanoid or a non-human race or whathaveyou.

edited 6th Jan '12 6:11:42 PM by MrHollowRabbit

@RE eye color: I describe the eye color of my characters because eyes are the first thing I notice when meeting or talking to a person in real life, and I look into their eyes when I speak. Eyes can be important when taking note of things like expression or demeanor.

edited 6th Jan '12 6:48:16 PM by BetsyandtheFiveAvengers

By contrast, I tend to not look at people in the eye, so...

Personally, I think characters do it too often.

- Writes Visual Novel and Video Game plots and therefore avoids this problem -

Uhh... I'd want any description to only include what the perspective character would notice, unless it's specifically noted that it's something important that they don't notice. It breaks my Willing Suspension of Disbelief a little if I get an Info Dump on what they look like.

I describe just enough to establish the character's demeanor/background (hair, skin color, height/build, eyes), and that's usually it. Exceptional focus on appearance is usually reserved for plot purposes.

In my fantasy stories, I tend to describe more clothing than a person's literal appearance, but the two of them tend to overlap anyway.

edited 6th Jan '12 9:18:17 PM by Sharysa

When describing characters I usually discuss whatever features set them apart from humanity; in essence, I describe the details the in-world observer would notice.

EDIT: An example (it's just a fragment):

She was a wisp of a thing, frail and thin, with eyes shadowed by fatigue and bones that showed beneath the skin of her face. She carried herself with a sort of brittle dignity, marred by the wariness of the downtrodden.

edited 7th Jan '12 1:50:26 AM by drunkscriblerian

On eye colour: a description of the color of a persons eyes says more about the narrator than the owner. The perception of color is subjective.

For example, take blue eyed Alice: Bob says "Her eyes are colored like a clear sky in a Provence summer", while Charlie likens her eyes to the Cerenkov radiation of a nuclear reactor. We know nothing about Alice except her eye color, but we know that Bob likes France and probably has been there and that Bob is a physicist or works at a nuclear power plant.

edit: there is always a bit of subjectivity in description, but things like physical build and how the skin looks (not color but scars etc) show something about the character's life, while eye color does not.

edited 7th Jan '12 1:50:26 AM by honorius

In theory, I'd like to know as much about what a character looks like as possible. I just don't want it all dumped on me in the first paragraph they're introduced. I mean, it's alright to do it for the more important characters by a third person narrator, but having a first person narrator go on for twenty lines about how good-looking a girl is— that's only allowed once or twice before I chuck the book across the room.

edited 7th Jan '12 5:04:32 AM by SalFishFin

It's a point worth noting that almost everyone except the last poster focused on first-person or limited third-person narrators and how natural it is for them to describe people's appearances in detail. Personally I don't find it intrusive when characters' appearances are described in relatively high detail in omniscient third-person writing, as long as it's done well and doesn't go on for too long. I don't know how other people feel about that.

edited 7th Jan '12 11:26:50 AM by cityofmist

I don't really see detailed physical descriptions as natural no matter what the POV.

It really depends. Like I said, if a third-person narrator wants to give me three paragraphs about what someone looks like, that person had better be pretty damn important to the plot. My problem with first-person narration and descriptions is that I have to believe that an actual person is talking to me, and long, drawn-out descriptions are not something people really do. The average person would describe someone in the following manner, with varying order depending on taste:

He/She's about this tall/short, skinny/fat, with X color eyes, Y color hair that's X texture and N length, B color skin, insert odd facial feature here, describe clothes if you want to.

nrjxll: SCRIPT POV BOOM!

I'd say that's a medium more then a form of POV.

It's author POV :D

I go with height, build, hair color and style, ethnicity, distinguishing features. I'll also throw in details about their general appearance as pertaiing to important aspects of their characters, so if a character is a soldier I'll describe his posture and the way he carries himself.

I've noticed that I have difficulty describing male characters in any sort of detail, and tend to give the bare minimum where that's concerned, while my descriptions of female characters are more detailed. I worry about this, for obvious reasons... don't want to be mistakenly labeled a Heteronormative Crusader when I'm just heteronormative without the crusader part.

I've also noticed that, because of the more visual aspects of writing adult fiction, my stuff for Literotica contains much more physical description — of both genders — than my works for which I eventually intend to get paid.

I try to give at least a paragraph of physical details when introducing a character, keeping it focused mostly on clothing and general build. I personally hate trying to imagine a character in my mind, because I may read some "hints" differently than the author expected. That and it just feels like a cop-out if what the character was wearing plays significant importance later, yet I was never told what they were wearing.