So how much do you describe your characters? Do you toss off a few references here and there, or go into a longer description? Do you ever use poetic terms or not? And how do you handle characters who really are beautiful?
And sometimes, I think its easier to describe characters who aren’t. I know that my pale, foxish faced prophet with the perpetually grumpy expression comes a lot clearer into my mind than the beautiful heroine. I’m trying to keep her appearance from being Tall Slender Generic Gorgeous Blonde, but its hard.

Okay, I’ll preface this by saying I have some very specific preferences, and things I say here aren’t intended to be read as The One Right Way(although obviously I think it’s the best way).

So how much do you describe your characters?

Not a whole hell of a lot I don’t think, but I hate writing description anyway and try to avoid it when I can. It depends entirely on the viewpoint character(yes, even in third person I think the narrative content should reflect the character’s PoV and omniscient is a crappy way to do it). So if Female Lead tends to notice things like hair and eye color, facial features, unusual clothing and such, then those are the terms with which I try to limit myself to using. If Male Lead tends to notice things like posture, style of movement, height, weight, age, attitude, then I go with those.

Do you toss off a few references here and there, or go into a longer description?

I think I only have a few descriptive sections that go more than a couple of sentences in my novel, and it generally only happens with meaningful characters with specific symbolic visual designs that I want the reader to know. Other than that, I’ll toss in tidbits from time to time if I think it helps out the sentence or the imagery really requires that you remember that Male Lead’s eyes are, in fact, gray.

I also almost never describe a character in their own PoV. I think there’s maybe one exception to this in 500+ pages, and it’s right at the beginning telling you Female Lead’s hair is red as she brushes some of it out of her face. It just feels tacky otherwise, because people don’t think of their own appearances in the terms we use to describe others, you know?

Do you ever use poetic terms or not?

Very, very rarely, if at all. If I do, it’s for something very specific like telling the reader how the PoV character is feeling without saying it outright, rather than just wowing the reader with my awesome description skillz and painting them a pretty picture. The thing about trying to be poetic is that you have to do it right, or you turn something that would otherwise be mundane and overlookable into something dumb and cringe-inducing.

And how do you handle characters who really are beautiful?

Mostly I try to show it in the behavior of other characters, and I don’t mean shit like having them so OH YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL. I mean really trying to get your people to act like they would really act if they were dealing with a pretty lady, because really, isn’t that the whole point of your character being beautiful or not? How it affects other characters? It’s not like it has any other value as far as storytelling utility goes.

My female lead is a real knockout, but you’d never get that just from reading the descriptions of her. She doesn’t dwell on her own attractiveness, and Male Lead’s PoVs never make mention of it except for a few lines about two thirds of the way through(which are treated as somewhat revelatory), but skeezy men are always leering at her, and non-skeezy men tend to be polite with her even when it’s not super necessary, and Dashing Rogue gets heavily flirtatious with her, so you can figure it out if you’re paying a little attention.

Anyway, I’ll tell you what I do hate.:

Description that attempts to use the explanation of basic physical traits to the reader as a half-assed backdoor to characterization. Idiotic things like “intelligent eyes” and such. There’s no time that doesn’t sound not stupid.

Also, description that’s ostensibly written from omniscient PoV(which I already don’t like) and tries to tell me subjective things about the character as if they were objective fact. Telling me a character is gorgeous is dumb, unless that’s your PoV’s opinion. If it isn’t, just describe the character using fair terms and I’ll be the judge of whether or not they sound hot. This is the same sort of shit I hate when lazy writers tell me a character’s personality traits through exposition and statement, which is terrible writing and insults the reader’s intelligence.

So yeah, that’s how I feel about it.

Thanks! I especially like the idea of showing her beauty by how the other characters react.

I think that just giving a rather vague image of a character's physical appearance also makes room for the reader's imagination (i.e., for them project themselves onto the character), which I personally find to be a bit of a guilty pleasure ;P

I love character description. I like picturing them in my head (especially if it’s from a series like ASOIAF with crazy numbers of people involved) and I feel like certain names evoke very specific character appearances. Therefore, the name+appearance connection is just important for me to feel grounded in the story for whatever weird reason.

I try not to dump too much and kind of sprinkle it around so it’s not a block of text, and I try not to wax too poetic. But I think I could describe my characters better from another’s point of view. It’s still a trouble spot for me.

I adore writing out descriptions of my characters and it's a bit hard for me to pull myself back at times. I still try to describe them a lot, but I spread it throughout. If I mention her scars or his eye colour here, I'll mention her calloused hands or his tattoos elsewhere sort of thing.

I actually don't mind characters describing themselves too much, within reason. It's fine to say 'I've got brown hair and green eyes' or 'I look a lot like my mother, with the same sharp, angular features and wide mouth' but a character thinking about how her hair is like a big golden waterfall down her back and her glistening eyes that glimmer like God's own diamonds needs a slap.

The only thing is, Taku, that now I want to read it. Wow, just wow…;D

Somebody needs to tell him that, among other things, writing in present tense is rarely a good idea, especially in any kind of longform narrative.

The present tense thing reminds me if this terrible story I had to read in creative writing. It also had terrible grammar and formatting and was extremely unclear.

He advised this other girl to write her story in present tense instead of past like it was. When it was my turn to talk, I advised her to definitely not do that.

Ugh, present tense. I read one well-done story written in first person, but I can’t see it working for any more than a very short story, and only with a very good writer handling it. It’s very tricky to do well; I know I’d never be able to pull it off.

I’ve used present twice, both for stories that were under 4,000 words. I think it worked okay, better in one than in the other, but it’s really hard, and I don’t think I could ever write a novel in present tense.

I’ve only done first-person present. Third-person present does sound really awkward. That’s what the guy’s story I read was in. I’ve always wanted to write something in second-person, but I don’t think I could pull it off right now.

^^I honestly can’t think of any story I’ve read in third-person present besides that sucky one I mentioned. I’m sure it’s fine if, as sansa said, you do it right. What you did in your story sounds really interesting actually. I don’t know if you used third-person or not.

bq. So how much do you describe your characters? Do you toss off a few references here and there, or go into a longer description? Do you ever use poetic terms or not? And how do you handle characters who really are beautiful?

I distill any major character's appearance into a standalone sentence. If I can't work into a single, coherent sentence, things need to be addressed.

I usually try my utmost best at describing a character from the POV’s perspective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Also, it just makes more sense.

Yes, I think that is a good idea.

Thanks, but I’m not the first to think of that.:-)
Although, I’ve always found it funny when Harry Potter described Past!Sirius and Past!Voldy as “very handsome”...

And I’ve just gotten into that a little with my character—she’s visiting a friend in a city of short, dark people, and everyone is staring at her because she’s tall and blonde.

Cool. When one of my female MCs first meets the future leader of their team, she describes him as hot. She also picks up his accent. The other male MC sees the same person – medium height, impressive figure, black hair, dark eyes – but he notices the guy’s fancy suit (because the POV guy himself is pretty poor) and calm, fearless demeanor (because the POV guy has anger issues and is used to people being easily scared off by his rough looks).

I remembered the other day that Unwind (really, really awesome book) is written in third person present and done really well. I still think I’d have trouble with it.