How to describe a character’s appearance
Creating a vivid character capable of falling in love or arousing hatred is a sign of great skill of a writer.
You can invent a most interesting plot, master the subtleties of literary style and language, but fail the character, make it faded, inarticulate. To the bright character the reader shows sympathy, respect, curiosity, fear, disgust.
Appreciate the master’s word:
Voland’s face was beveled to the side, the right corner of his mouth pulled downward, the high balding forehead had deep wrinkles parallel to the sharp eyebrows. The skin on Woland’s face seemed to have been permanently burned by tanning.
М. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita”
Do you want to “draw” images with words just as skillfully? Let’s figure out how to describe a character’s appearance after all.
Appearance description: what is included in this concept and what is its significance
Face, figure, gait, clothes, manners – that’s what a person shows to the world.
What do we take into account when working on a portrait of a hero:
The era, the country, the hero’s world
The place and time of the events described also affects the appearance of the hero. If you’re writing about 16th-century Europe, don’t be lazy to study pictures of the time – how they dressed, what hairstyles they wore.
The background of the character
A character’s past life can be reflected in his or her appearance. Scars, stuttering, strange habits? These details add zest to a character’s portrait, but they need to be explained at least once – where they came from.
Origins
As in that joke – is there a mama-daddy? There is. When inventing a character, think of his parents as well (even if they don’t appear in the book), what nation they belonged to, what characteristics they passed on to their offspring. Recall how M. Sholokhov describes Grigory Melekhov: From his grandmother, who was a captive Turk, he inherited a swarthy face, a humped nose, slightly slanting eyes, and a violent temper.
The Hero’s Arch.
Does the hero develop, change as the story moves along? Perhaps the appearance changes as well. Show it. Remember the wizard Gandalf in J. Tolkien’s book? After transforming from a gray wizard to a white one, he is transformed. The wizard is hardly recognized in Middle-earth when he appears after his initiation.
The plot or the idea of the book
Sometimes a character’s appearance is conditioned by the idea of the book itself. That is, the appearance can be one of the mechanisms for the movement of the plot. If in S. King’s “It” the evil did not wear the guise of Pennywise the Clown, how could it gain the trust of the victims?
How to describe a character’s appearance in a book: 5 basic principles
Memorability and catchiness
The author should imagine the character very clearly, but a detailed description of all appearance traits is not required. Both over-detail and vagueness are detrimental to the portrait of the character. If the hero is significant, then add a striking feature, a detail that will be remembered, will be associated with your hero like a smoking pipe with Sherlock Holmes, or glasses with Harry Potter.
The focus of attention is on the protagonist, and we give the others juicy details.
Minor characters do not need a detailed description, but we can give them a few “tricks” so that the reader will recognize them. The most striking secondary characters are the cat Behemoth and his buddy Koroviev (the one who checked) from the novel Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita.
Separate the secondary characters in appearance, don’t clone them unless the plot requires it
If the text will have two blondes fighting over a prince, the reader will be confused.
The secondary character should shade the protagonist, not obscure him
Remember how we sympathized with Scarlet when Ashley’s love went to the unsightly and humble “gray mouse” Melanie. But could Margaret Mitchell have given Melanie’s appearance to the main character?
Passable characters or feature characters can be left without description
If your character comes into contact with a lot of people in the story (a store clerk, a woman at the door, a neighbor, a colleague, etc.), but these people are not significant, they are just functions (they passed something, reported something, spilled oil), then you don’t have to pay much attention to their appearance, just a passing phrase: “A withered woman with a can and a bag in her hands…” – did you recognize her? This is the same Annushka from The Master and Margarita.
Techniques in describing the appearance of characters
What methods can be used to describe a character’s appearance? Static and dynamic.
Static description implies a rather detailed listing of the characteristics of the character’s appearance when he first appears on the pages.
Dynamic description is a method in which the features of appearance appear in the text gradually, for example, through the dialogue or actions of the character.
What methods of describing appearance are most often used?
- Author’s Speech. A technique loved by many, which gives the reader the author’s point of view of the character, and it is perceived by the reader as the most objective.
- “Inner monologue” is the character’s thoughts about himself.
- “Reflection.” The character looks in the mirror, in the water, in the window, in the shop window, in the eyes of the interlocutor. Alas, this technique has been used repeatedly in fiction texts and is perceived as formulaic.
- “Picture or picture.” A good example is the scene from “The Hound of the Baskervilles” when Holmes recognizes Stapleton’s features in a portrait of Sir Henry’s ancestor.
- “The prism of another character’s gaze.” A retelling of one character’s subjective perception of another. It is influenced by the relationship between the characters, the properties of the narrator. What is beautiful to one is ugly to another.
- “Memories.” Such a description, too, is colored by the subjectivity of the narrator and can be unreliable.