Describing Characters

pinterest: sunshine & gossamer

Two weeks ago I wrote a post on descriptive passages in general, and the topic of how to describe characters came up in the comments.  We all want our readers to draw a vivid and accurate image of our characters from the book.  But how do we manage to plant that image without abusing adjectives?

I don't believe there is one right way to go about this: it's something determined by style.  There are definitely, however, wrong ways of doing it.  We all know those introductory passages where so much is said about the character's beauty/intelligence/ah-MAZing skills that it turns your stomach.  Should we all have ugly, stupid characters, then, so as not to irritate readers?  By no means: oftentimes the fault comes not in the merits of the character, but from the delivery.  I can get just as frustrated with over-described dolts as with over-described geniuses. 

One of the main problems, I believe, with the attempt to describe a character (especially a main character) is that we have this idea that if we devote enough words to his features, we can translate our own mental image into the reader's mind.  But at least for myself, I don't find that to be the case.  The mental image I have of, say, Tip Brighton is probably not the exact image that a reader would piece together; and I doubt that an image I have of another author's character is quite what they had in mind.  The most important means of communicating who a character is have little to do physical descriptors; they're far more visceral - actions and quirks, not bone structure and eye color. 

All that to say, we needn't depend on descriptions to summarize a character.  That isn't to say we should rid ourselves of all descriptions, however, only that less can be more where adjectives are concerned.  The amount of description for any character should be determined by the circumstances of his or her introduction, and by the style of narration.  I mentioned in the comments on my previous post that I tend not to describe my main characters much beyond hair or eye color.  This is because my main characters are my narrators, and even in third-person, it's awkward to have the character appear be describing himself.  (Apparently mirror-scenes are cliche to the nth degree, so I can't recommend them.)

It is possible to get around this in means other than the mirror-scene, though, especially if a novel has two point-of-view characters; I do this a little in The White Sail's Shaking, since I switch between Tip and Marta.  When Marta first meets Tip, there are certain things she fixes on at once: his hair, which is always sticking up, and his laugh, which sounds like a cork coming out a bottle.  When Tip gets to know Marta, he's much more attuned to her looks than she is to his.  (And he has this idea that she's pretty, which is silly, but what can you do?)  If you do have more than one narrating character and they interact, I think it nice to show their first impressions of each other and what features stand out in their eyes.

Another good thing to do - and I mentioned this briefly in a post I did almost a year ago - is to allow other characters to comment on your narrator in subjective terms.  Charlie Bent is always quick to point out how plain Tip is.  (What else are friends for?)  A seaman who rumbles briefly through The White Sail's Shaking very kindly remarks that Marta's features look like a boy's.  I like these dashes of outsiders' thoughts, so long as they are in general and not specific; unless the speaker is lovesick, I doubt they would go into detail about the narrator having blue eyes and perfect teeth.

There's more freedom in describing secondary characters, I find, as long as the setting is appropriate.  Note - if the main character meets a person while they're both running away from the Gestapo, that's not an appropriate setting.  But in normal circumstances, some description from the narrator's eyes is good.  Try to incorporate the main character's feelings, rather than conveying mere lifeless adjectives - it makes it much more enjoyable to read, but also to write.  I just picked up The Lantern Bearers last night, and the first chapter is a good example of this.  The main character, Aquila, has just come home for a visit after a year away and is seeing his sister, who has grown up in that time; the descriptions are tinged with nostalgia and affection.

Emotions are the best means of adding color to the characters on the page, for they introduce the element of subjectivity that gives reality to the mind of the narrator.  No matter how you go about bringing them into play, they must be present.  Without them, people are not people at all and the only images the writer communicates will be of colored carboard-cutouts.

Salt of Description

pinterest: the white sail's shaking

As I was preparing to sit down last week and write a post on the subject of using all five senses in descriptions, I looked at my blog feed and discovered that Go Teen Writers had just done such an article.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I call unfair.  However, I decided I would go ahead and write my own thoughts on the matter, and in the end you can read both posts and compare.

Descriptive passages have never come to me with quite the same ease as dialogue.  Perhaps this is because dialogue tends to follow a more logical procession from point A to point B, or at least from point A to point Q back to point B, while description is more intuitive and emotional.  But difficulties notwithstanding, I do enjoy writing these scenes.  I enjoy them because it is a pleasure to take a step back or forward and examine the world in either broader scope or closer detail - and because, by looking at a scene through the eyes of a character, I see things in a different light.  (That is part of the brilliance of fictional people: not existing, they still manage to be so real.)  While of course still utilizing my own senses, I am at the same time accessing the senses of the character.  Separating those senses into the five common ones, and leaving out the sixth sense of intuition, each one provides rich means of vivifying description.

sight - touch - hearing - smell - taste

We depend very heavily upon our eyes, so it's no wonder that descriptive passages tend to be heavy on this aspect.  I don't know about you, but when I'm reading a description, no matter how well I can smell and feel and hear and even taste the object, I would very much like to know what it looks like.  The man may smell of horse and sweaty leather boot-soles - grand!  The pipe may make music like the wind across the surface of a lake - brilliant!  The decorated cake may taste like the cover of a hardback book - disgusting!  And yet, without a few choice visionary descriptions, it is difficult to bring to the reader's mind exactly the same image that was in the writer's thoughts.  I can imagine a great deal about how the man in question feels about bathing, and even create my own mental image of him; but my imagination is probably quite faulty.

Descriptions based on sight tend to get a bad rap, I find.  This is reasonable, as many take this as the easy course and write off a hasty description about how the man is 5'9" and tanned (or is that dirt?) and has piercing green eyes, which evokes nothing.  However, it is possible to go to far to the other extreme and eliminate all sight-based descriptions.  Strike a good balance!

The next four senses are, I think, the most fun and provide more food for the imagination and for one's originality.  This is especially so if you mix and match them, and do not simply use them in obvious settings.  Of course if you're describing a stew, you'll want to describe its taste - but what about its appearance, or the sound it makes falling into the bowl, or its texture?  If a flower is in question, appearance and smell are obvious.  But how do the petals feel against your skin?  How does the wind sound thrumming over its leaves?

Another good thing to do, and one which is used powerfully by such writers as Rosemary Sutcliff, is to link senses together in descriptions.  Colors can be used beautifully in these descriptions.  Something might taste scarlet - similar, perhaps, to saying it tastes like blood, but far more evocative in the writing setting.  Perhaps the flower smells the way honey tastes on a day in midsummer.  A laugh can sound like silk running through one's fingers.  Oftentimes these sorts of descriptions leap to one's mind and can't be actively sought out, but if you're watching for them, you'll see them more frequently.

Caveat!  (I do tend to have caveats, don't I?)  Descriptions of any one kind ought to be used sparingly, sprinkled rather than dumped into a story.  Too much of a good thing is still too much, as they say.  These are thoughts to keep somewhere in the back of one's mind during difficult descriptive passages, not to have always and obsessively in the forefront of one's thoughts.  I find they're like salt: useful in small doses, not so useful in large.  ...Unless you're Sutcliff, because she pulled it off amazingly.

Gone with the Wind

Over the past few weeks I've been reading Margaret Mitchell's famous Southern novel Gone with the Wind. I grew up on the movie; it was given to me as a birthday gift when I was too young to watch it, and I'm sure that the first time I actually did, half of the story went over my head. But I have not read the book before. Last year I began it and then put it down, not being in the mood. This year I picked it up again, determined for one reason or another to plow through.

I'm nearly done with it now with about a hundred pages left - and in the 1000+ page copy that I own, that's not much. I have not enjoyed it unreservedly, nor can I recommend it unreservedly: Scarlett's morals are pitiful, to say the least, and Rhett's are nonexistent. Yet at the same time, there is something more than engaging about the story. Though she shows the world through the cold eyes of Scarlet O'Hara, yet Margaret Mitchell portrays the effects on the South of the Civil War and Reconstruction with a potency that cannot help but stir the reader. I have always been glad that the Union won the war (another bad-Southerner trait!), but still the Confederates engage my sympathies - especially during the horrors of Reconstruction. And, being Southern myself (although not Georgian), Mitchell's descriptions of the South leave me with a sense of pride. Here are a few of the quotes from the book that have left me with respect for the author's powers of description...plus a quote or two for sheer amusement.

"Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything...for 'tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don't you be forgetting it! 'Tis the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for - worth dying for."

- chapter ii

Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of the furrows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf...

It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: "Be careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again."

- chapter i

[Melanie's] heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging close to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water.

- chapter vi

Already summer was in the air, the first hint of Georgia summer when the high tide of spring gives way reluctantly before a fiercer heat. A balmy, soft warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth. Through the window Scarlett could see the bright riot of the twin lines of daffodils bordering the graveled driveway and the golden masses of yellow jessamine spreading flowery sprangles modestly to the earth like crinolines. The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

- chapter v

What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe and secure! What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall, that Georgia could never be invaded. But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life, and dropping her down in the midst of this still, haunted desolation.

Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind that had swept through Georgia?

- chapter xxiv

"...I've lived with Melly long enough to know she's sickly and scared and hasn't the gumption to say Boo to a goose."

"Now why on earth should anyone want to say Boo to a goose? It always sounded like a waste of time to me."

- chapter xl

For instance when she decided to change the name of "Kennedy's General Store" to something more edifying, she asked [Rhett] to think of a title that would include the word "emporium." Rhett suggested "Caveat Emptorium," assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning. And Rhett had roared at her rage.

- chapter xlix

There I am the Expert

"But people? Their hopes, their aspirations...
There I am the expert."
- Emma (2009)

This weekend my family and I were on a short road trip, and the drive afforded me an opportunity to gather some names. You see, I have a terrible time coming up with surnames for random characters. And I've found that it is necessary to be able to do so for books like The White Sail's Shaking, as extremely minor characters who may or may not need to be named often pop up in one scene or another. Thus, I have started a notebook in which to collect names as I come across them. I found six or seven during this trip, and I thought it would be fun to take them and try to form an idea of what sort of person would have each name.

horne

A teacher or a doctor. Middle-aged and stocky with thick sandy hair (baldness is a long way off) and perhaps sideburns; he has pale blue eyes and his eyesight not being the best in consequence, he wears strong glasses. His suit is usually grey and he sometimes carries a cane with an engraved silver head. He likes to jog and his shoes do not always match his suit; his passion, however, is the study of medicine - its history, development, and practical use. Although of a decidedly no-nonsense turn of character, he is not a bad sort and quite knowledgeable in his field.

winslow

Winslow is a man of about thirty, dark-haired and -eyed, always with a black suit, an impeccable cravat (his manservant is especially good at cravats), and a silver watch that doesn't work but which looks like an antique (don't ask if it is, and don't ask him the time). He comes from a rich family, but their wealth is a new development; his grandfather began to amass it and then his father's successful speculation increased the family's standing still more. Winslow has a head for business, but I daresay the speculation will ruin him.

rhyne

A rough fellow with a strong accent (and a strong smell). Hugely blond, he keeps some of his hair and his beard plaited and on special occasions will grease the braids with some manner of fat. Rhyne falls into the category of "brawn," not brains; his life revolves around being paid and sitting in his favourite tavern until the wee hours of the morning. He works on docks and has all his life. I wouldn't get on his bad side (which is most of him), especially after his first few pints at the aforementioned tavern.

awtrey

Miss Genevieve Awtrey. Miss Awtrey is a small young lady - mouse-like, in fact - but her brunette hair has definite red highlights and so does her character, once you get to know her. Her features are pale (except for her mouth, which is too small and red) and distinctly pointed; she has light freckles and very grey eyes. She is not very pretty at first glance, particularly because of her habit of wearing a shade of grey that makes her look washed-out, but she does have character. She rides well and enjoys hawking with the other ladies, but she also likes reading poetry and Shakespeare aloud, paints landscapes well, and can embroider passably. The piano forte, however, is her Achilles' heel. (Actually, this young lady will probably make her way into one of my stories at some point.)

moreland

Moreland is one of those dark, brooding hero-types - the Count-of-Monte-Cristo-vampire kind. Of course he has black hair and eyes and shows no emotion (except maybe when his eggs are done improperly), but contrary to his staffs' belief, this is not owing to any childhood tragedy; he's always been like that. I think he never got over the annoyance of being born. However, he consoles himself passably by spending his days hunting with his three dogs, in making plans for improvement to his house (which he never puts into action), and in importing wine from the Continent. Tough life, isn't it?

In Thunder, Lightning, or in Rain

We are having a November day. Everything outside is grey and dreary, with a lazy rain pitterpattering on the gutters and the stark, silver branches dripping - though the Christmas pig our neighbours erected in their yard kind of ruins the effect. (Seriously? A pig? In a Santa hat? You have to be kidding me.) But all in all, it's a day that represents November and makes you want to curl up with tea and a blanket and a good book. Preferably not a Geometry book.

Weather is a poignant thing, and a few good words concerning it can create atmosphere in a scene like magic. It could be rain, or it could be fog, or it could be full sunshine, or it could be a peek-a-boo pattern of light and clouds, but whatever it is, it is important to the life of a scene and should be treated as such. You can't just arbitrarily decide that the day is sunny or the night is dark and stormy; you've got to know that the day is sunny, and it has to be sunny with a purpose. Otherwise the descriptions will turn out bland, unimportant, and perhaps even invasive.

There are two main things to consider about blending atmosphere and purpose. The first is correspondence. To go back to the example of a dark and stormy night, what is the cliche supposed to signify? Drama, of course. You know - "It was a dark and stormy night. A door banged. The maid shrieked. A ship appeared on the horizon." To be more literary, when A Wrinkle in Time starts out with that sentence, you see Meg Murry in her attic room, scared out of her wits as she thinks about the wind and the rain and the tramp who has been stealing things around town. The weather mirrors her emotions; this is correspondence.

I went for correspondence in the title of my story Sunshine and Gossamer. (Actually, the title came before the plot, but still...) The mood of the novel is light; it's a children's story, of sorts, and I wanted it to be in the style of Daddy-Long-Legs or Dew on the Grass. Therefore, I wanted some whimsy in the title. Other forms of correspondence might be rain at a funeral; sun at a wedding; or fog around a haunted house. Put bluntly they sound cliche, but with the right touches they can be pulled off - just like the beginning of A Wrinkle in Time.

The other option is contrast. This is where you take the cliche and turn it inside out and on its head, making the sadness of a funeral clash with a sunny day, or turning a wedding whimsical or ominous by placing it in the rain. The death of a character can be made even more terrible by contrasting it with a gorgeous summer day and by making the protagonist feel the grossness of that contrast. I wanted this in the scene in The Soldier's Cross when Fiona is informed of her brother's death; I wanted two worlds to clash there - the sunlit world she had always known before and the dark chaos of the life in front of her. A rainy day wouldn't have conveyed the message with the same pathos.

Both methods are useful in any story. It is possible to try too hard to use the principle of contrast when having weather correspond with emotion would do just as well; it is also possible to err on the side of the cliche. As with all things, balance is important. Take time to consider the atmosphere as you write each scene; you may not end up using the weather, but it is good to know things outside the immediate sphere of the written word. After all, what you don't write is quite as important as what you do write.

She Thought Her Heart Would Break

Question number four (-ish) on You Haven't Got an Appointment! was put by Londongirl, who asked

How do you write a sad, emotional scene without making it seem sappy or forced?

First of all, I'm flattered that you thought the scenes in The Soldier's Cross met this difficult hurtle! Emotion can be a very hard thing to capture, but, when done right, it also provides some of the best dramatic scenes; done incorrectly, the scene becomes melodramatic instead. So how does one manage to convey emotions, whether it be fear or anger, tension or sorrow, without falling into the trap of being ridiculous and cliche?

Probably the most important element of writing emotion is knowing your character. I won't go so far as to say that the whole issue boils down to that one thing, but I will say that if it boils down to anything, that's what I would expect to find left in the pot. Individual characters will react differently to traumatic events, just as individual people in real life will; there is no cut-and-dry solution which allows you to say, "If the event is a death, the main character will feel this way," and, "If the protagonist is insulted, he will react like that." In every story you write, you should find the protagonist a little different from the one in the novel you wrote previously. Get to know your character; this may mean filling out pages upon pages of interview questions, or it may mean simply continuing to write and learning by trial and error. When you begin to understand what makes that person tick, you'll be better able to write those dramatic scenes.

As to the nuts and bolts of writing an emotion-packed scene, these are a little more difficult. I wouldn't venture to give a dogmatic answer, but I can give some suggestions that you may or may not find helpful - hopefully you will! First off, recognize that in the early scenes of a story, you probably won't get the character's reaction quite right on the first try. I wrote a good 40,000 words of The White Sail's Shaking before I had a handle on Tip's character, and I had to go back and rewrite the early chapters. Don't deceive yourself into thinking that you won't have to edit, and you'll begin to realize that there is no point in being too hard on yourself the first time through. Relax.

Second, as you write (or before you write, if you like to warm up before you start in on a scene), put yourself in the place of the character to the best of your ability. What would you feel like if someone were coming at you with a knife? Or, to use the example that Londongirl did from my own story, how would you react if someone told you your brother was dead? Try - again, to the best of your ability - to see things with the eyes of your character. K.M Weiland on her blog Wordplay frequently emphasizes the importance of using all five senses in description (not all at the same time) - smelling, hearing, tasting, and feeling as well as seeing. It might help to consider each of these as you write out a scene, then hone in on the ones you feel are most important.

Third, don't forget the little things. I mentioned in a post some months ago how marvelously Rosemary Sutcliff conveys emotion through small things. You may be inclined to think that in the midst of something traumatic a character wouldn't notice details, but this isn't always the case; the mind often fixates on strange details like an odd smell or a particular color. Incorporating something like that to a highly emotional scene helps to set off the character's emotions without forcing the author to relate his or her feelings point by point.

And then, of course, look beyond the cliche! Think about how you can describe reactions and emotions in a fresh manner. Give the old phrases a new twist or look at an emotion from a different angle, and see what you come up with when you do. After all, isn't that part of the fun of writing?

Well, Why Not?

For those not in the know, I am doing a series of question-and-answer posts: you ask the question, I (hopefully) invent the answer. If you have one to ask, you can just drop a comment on this post or on You Haven't Got an Appointment. Rachel got the first comment in with a couple of inquiries, but I'm going to take her last one first:

Do you disagree with Sarah Stanley from The Story Girl [L.M. Montgomery] in the thought that if you're going to the trouble to make up a character, why not make them good-looking?

What a fun question! First off, I will say that so far none of my characters have been either very good-looking or horribly ugly. In fact, I rarely describe his or her appearance in detail; the pictures that the reader gathers are based on other characters' comments and the main character's actions. In The Soldier's Cross there are only a few comments made about Fiona's lack of any striking beauty; in Wordcrafter it is not much that Justin is ugly, but rather that he pales in comparison to Ethan. Nor is it so much that Ethan is handsome, but that he is so full of life that one forgets he isn't handsome. Tip of The White Sail's Shaking is a very awkward, clumsy fellow, not hideous, but plain and stiff and not exactly a lady-killer.

[Charlie] lowered his drink again and swished it, replying with a clever sidelong look at Tip, “Aye, and it’s not as if you have any looks to recommend you. Anyhow,” he continued, “at least you scared those women away. There is some advantage to your clumsiness.”

That being said, my main characters' looks were not intentional. They just showed up that way. Personally I think that, in moderation, Sarah's remark is true: if you're going to create a character, I see no reason why he or she shouldn't be handsome. One can either go too far to one side and have the character be ridiculously beautiful, or too far to the other and have them constantly bemoaning the fact that they're so hideous. I like a mix of both pretty and plain, and I think the best way to go about it is not to spend too much time fretting about the character's looks. The more you say "his grave and handsome face..." or "her beautiful sad eyes," the more the reader will be annoyed and dislike the person.

I remember reading several of Agatha Christie's Tommy and Tuppence novels and absolutely loving the characters, and then noticing a phrase like "Tommy's homely face..." My first thought was that Christie had gotten it wrong, because I always thought of Tommy as very good-looking. She had never described either him or Tuppence before, but I created a very pleasant picture of each in my head from their actions and attitudes. So less is more, as the saying goes.