Jeanna Stevenson, an author of “Think and Write” and a review on tutoriage, shares her secrets on writing characters descriptions.
Writing good character descriptions is one of the most complicated things for a writer, especially when it comes to the protagonists. If you’ve done good previous work (like one of these exercises to get to know a character better ), you’ll know a lot about them. But how to make the reader know it too?
Below we will see five ways to describe our characters subtly, so that we make the reader see them clearly, without the need to write heavy and detailed character descriptions.
In addition, we give you some examples so that you can see more clearly the best ways to approach the description of a character.
But don’t forget that the description of your characters should not have more weight than the development of their dramatic arc, as you can learn in the Novel Course . It does not matter how well your descriptions are worked if you have not properly cared for the evolution of your characters.
- Clothes
Unless fashion is very important in the development of the plot, it is not convenient to stop to describe in a neat way what our characters wear. Instead, we can include small details about her wardrobe during the development of the action or in the dimensions of the dialogues.
Example: instead of “Ana was wearing a blue silk blouse and a tight black skirt” to attend dinner, we can include this detail in the action: "The sauce, served without care, splashed the blue silk blouse of Ana and slid down to her skirt.
2. Physical traits
When making character descriptions, it is not necessary to describe their body or appearance from top to bottom, not even of the protagonists. It is enough to include a couple of relevant physical features that provide the reader with the necessary data to know who the character is.
Example: A couple of well-chosen traits can say a lot about the character of the character they describe.
The phrase “Ana gathered her well-groomed hair in a ponytail that exposed the small pearls of her earrings” describes a sophisticated woman, probably a professional and mother of a family.
While “Ana put on some very tight pants and added more fixer to her hair to make sure it stayed on end,” she describes an absolutely different woman: young, rebellious, iconoclastic.
3. Character
Rather than specify in a long relationship what the character of our characters is like, let us show it to the reader through their attitudes, gestures, words and actions throughout the narrative.
Example: Instead of “Ana was a nervous woman”, let’s give the reader signs of it throughout the narration: “While waiting for the bus, Ana bit her nails.”
Later: “Ana found it difficult to fall asleep, as soon as she lay in bed she began to turn the events of the day a thousand times and plan what she should do the next day.”
Then: “Ana had started smoking when she was very young and, in stressful situations, she lit one cigarette after another without pause.”
4. Dialogues
The vocabulary that our characters use defines them. We must keep in mind their place of origin, their cultural level and even their profession every time we make them speak in the dialogues. Here we list some things to keep in mind when writing dialogues .
Example: if Ana is a daughter of Spaniards born in England, she probably will not speak Spanish correctly and this must be reflected in her dialogues. “There are towallas in the closet,” he warned me with his heavy accent.
5. Context
When writing character descriptions, we must remember that our character has hobbies, family, and friends, we must also use them to reveal details of his character.
Example: Ana, a police inspector, goes to the pool every afternoon because since she was a child she went swimming with her mother, who died. By providing this information, we not only point out that Ana likes swimming and that she is fit to do her job. We are also giving details of her relationship with her mother, of her particular way of worshiping the memory of the dead woman.
As we can see, there are many ways of posing character descriptions without falling into the hackneyed way of placing him in front of a mirror and painstakingly describing, throughout two dense and boring pages, down to the last detail of his anatomy, his character. and its hobbies.
You can also go beyond the mere description and characterize your characters carefully throughout the novel, using resources like the ones we tell you about in this other entry .
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