Character Descriptions

11 secrets to keep in mind as you breathe life into your characters through effective character description, including physical and emotional description. (Link: https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/11-secrets-to-writing-effective-character-description)

This article was about how to better describe the characters in the stories you write. After reading it, it made me wonder how much detail is really necessary in describing a character. I always do the basics, like height, hair color, eye color, etc. but maybe my descriptions need to be more than that. This article also talked about how a character’s physical description should also describe their personality, and I think that’s what I need to work on—describing their personality through their physical description.

How to describe: Writing clear places and characters (Link: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/how-to-describe-place-character/)

This article was about describing characters and their setting. Unlike the first article, this one went beyond what to say about a character, but also, how to say it. It focused more on word choice. This article also gave lots of sample character descriptions which I thought were helpful, and it inspired me to go back through my own writings and enhance my descriptions. After reading this article, I think a good title for a future piece of writing I might do could be, “The Importance of Adjectives In Character Descriptions” because this article really highlighted how much of an impact adjectives can have on a description.

How to describe clothing in a story: Creating characters (Link: https://www.nownovel.com/blog/write-better-characters-clothing/)

This article explained why describing the clothing of a character is also important. Clothing can reflect a character’s personality, their class, their interests, and even their fears. I never paid much attention to clothing when writing descriptions, so reading this article really helped me to see why giving a good description of a character’s clothing is worth my time. This article also had sample descriptions, and I liked that. However, a question this article left me with was if descriptions of clothing are always necessary? Like, I could show that a character looks unkempt by saying they looked unkempt, or I could give a lengthy description of how their clothes are torn and muddy, etc. Which would be the better way?

5 Ways to Describe Your Character (Without Actually Describing Them) (Link: https://pshoffman.com/2018/03/27/describe-your-character-without-actually-describing-them/)

This article was interesting. It, as the title says, spoke about describing your character without actually describing them. And what that means is, instead of providing a physical description of your character, you describe them by talking about they act. Are they nervous? Friendly? Etc. While I like this advice, I still think that it is important to also describe how a character looks, and this combined with how they act will provide a complete description.

Character Descriptions: How To Write Them (in 3 Steps) (Link: https://blog.reedsy.com/character-descriptions/)

This article talked about describing a character little by little. As in, don’t give the full description of the character the first time we meet them. I thought this was helpful, but I think that it would be best for when trying to describe the appearance of the main character. For example, if a story is from the main character’s point of view, the main character isn’t going to just describe their own appearance. So, their appearance could be revealed throughout the book with sentences like, “Her grey eyes shined like two moons as she . . .” and so on. After reading this article, I think a good title for a future piece of writing I might do could be, “Show Through Descriptions and Actions”.

Do you personally use these methods in your own writing or character descriptions now, or do you think that you will in the future? How do you plan to implement them?
I like to do character studies as an opportunity to develop a character and get a better feel for how to describe them, so you could try that!

I love writing too, so I might have to try some of these methods! What are your favorite ways to create characters? I usually print out a template for each of my characters and fill in the blanks about their favorite food, best/worst memory, hobbies, etc. Maybe you could write a piece on how you usually come up with characters and then if any of the new methods that you learned are helpful compared to your old method. Great research and writing!

I suppose I have a question in reply to this, how much would you believe having an artist rendition would affect the process if describing a character through text? Making it redundant? Help it? Harm it? What would a drawn picture of them do?

I really liked your topic because it's really true. The way characters are mentioned and described in stories help us visualize them and imagine them a lot better. The characters that don't receive as much detail are usually the ones we forget about or don't care too much about so when making a story it is important to know when and how to talk about a certain character.