I think I covered it in the title.
What a horrible attempt at a thesis… Let me redeem myself.
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Everybody has their own idea of what good-looking is. Some prefer lean bodies with darker tones, others lean towards the more solid and vibrant hues. Or a combination of them. Either or, it’s my opinion that when a book provides a description for it’s characters, the person is left with a permanent, set-in-Jell-o image (as it can change due to the events in the book). Take Jonathan Stroud’s The Bartimaeus Trilogy for example: Nathaniel is often described as foppish, lanky, and trying-too-hard-to-be-fashionable-look. When authors do that, it makes me wonder: does it take away from a reader’s involvement in the story?

I’d personally prefer a few vague details about hair colour and such, over a whole heap of description. There again, in y WIP I haven’t described any of my characters at all unless it’s in dialogue, (“oh you shaved your beard.”) or if someone very out of the ordinary comes along (like a northerner wearing northern-style clothes entering a south-eastern hotel, for example). Because all my descriptions are from the perspective of the POV character at the time, I tend to skip details that the character will know very well, and focus on those details that are different or have changed. Unless the character is dwelling on something or daydreaming about his lover’s hair and the way the sun reflects off it just so, although very few of my characters (thank goodness) are prone to that sort of contemplation.

I much prefer to describe characters through their actions, and indeed the actions, voice and language-use of a character can help me form a particular image in my imagination of what they might look like. I don’t know if it’s the same image as someone else, but if someone acts and talks like a grizzled, battle-scarred ex-mercenary, I’m going to imagine a grizzled, battle-scarred ex-mercenary, with all the archetypical accoutrments; square jaw, broad shoulders, cleft chin, stubble, a scowl or a squint or both, lots of muscles and very little facial fat (possibly even sunken cheeks) etc. etc. etc.

However, if the character isn’t described early on and then is described later, that will shatter my mental image, and thusly my suspension of disbelief. I learned that the hard way, a story I wrote for my fiction class had a female characrter, but the gender wasn’t explicitly stated anywhere until a few paragraphs in. And as I apparently have a rather masculine way with words, the class all had a mental image of a male, which was then shattered when I revealed that she was female.

The lesson? Not only should boys never try to write from a girl’s perspective in first-person, but you should always include important details like gender and skin clour early.

Eh, I generally show a character’s appearance through dialogue/actions, if I show it at all.

Well, I don’t think anyone ever says that ‘Mom has brown skin’ or something like that. They usually drop it in in some other context. For example, ‘Mom’s usually brown skin flushed, putting me in mind of a peach that had started to rot.”

That’s a bad example, but you get what I mean.

I usually drop in description like that.

Have you ever found a picture that just is the character you’ve been writing about? It’s happened to me like once. This is one of the characters from the story I’m currently working on. (I know I’m an Amy Lee fangirl, but I saw this pic and went that’s her!)

!http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/amy%20lee%20(Small).jpg!

(Why isn’t the pic posting properly? Usually it works…)

It’s the author’s character. He should describe the character in as much detail as he likes. Just like any scene, whether placed in a grand throne room or in the shoddy stable, or any situation where the character is doing something. You wouldn’t want an author to never explain how his character managed his magic, or leave it up to your imagination to figure out how that character got from point a to point b: “And then Doris managed to find her way over to this other place that wasn’t where she was before.”

Details are in the author’s power and while there is possibly a case where a writer spends too much time obsessing over details, I would prefer to know that Doris took a hot air balloon to the kingdom of Gyrmesh, rather than be left to guess for myself. Same with a character’s features. An author might overdescribe like Meyer but there is a happy medium between her method and a “floating head” situation where the reader is left with no idea what is intended.

Amy Lee’s physical features would do well with a wise-woman or a rebellious princess.

@ Steph: I said it was a bad example.

@Un-Dante’d- the character in mind actually is a rebellious princess of sorts.

I’m not good at making things up. Or description. XD

Don’t ask me why I like to write.

Perhaps. I just can’t think of things quickly. I need to ponder them and ponder them for long periods of time and after the glaciers melt maybe I’ll have something.

Ever have a fantastic idea, and then you forget to write it down?

Only every night as I fall to sleep. Of course, they are probably terrible ideas, because when I’m half asleep I’m not thinking straight anyway. But I do have the ideas, there’s no denying that. Sometimes I’ll remember one of those half-dreams days, or even weeks later, though. It’s a creepy, deja vu kinda feeling.

Nice. I’ve had several great ideas for novels, among them a water-witcher/douser in Post-Apocalyptic Canada, a ghost, a man and his son who work for Your Own World Industries, a custom-planet contractor (Thank you, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).

Oh, I agree with gender and skin colour.

I never quite know how to subtly describe skin color without saying, “He was black/white/purple with polka dots.” Or else sounding really stupid like, “His skin was darker than any I’d ever seen before,” and then comparing it to something of similar color.

I like to know what the characters look like, so long as it’s consistent. Maximum Ride is a good example of not being consistent. Max’s hair is sometimes blonde and sometimes brown, and there is never a definitive description. I originally thought it was brown, but then adjusted to it being blonde, and then he said it was brown again. Ugh.

I am a fan of the minimal character descriptions. General descriptions scattered throughout the story to give a basic idea of what the character looks like is fine, but anything more, and authors tend to get infodumpy with the describing. If I see a large chunk of text devoted to extolling the character’s physical appearance, I tend to get annoyed and just skip over it unless it’s part of the previously established writing style.

To me, the most important aspect of the characters is not their appearance anyway; it’s their characters, their personalities. If they don’t have an enjoyable or compelling personality, there is no way that I will be willing to read about them, no matter how beautiful they supposedly are. Especially if they are supposedly leik OMIGAWD the most beautiful person in that story’s existence. Haven’t you noticed the sheer numbers of characters that are externally beautiful yet completely devoid of character? (coughBellacough)

So far I’ve tried to vary the level and type of description based on the sort of things the PoV character would be likely to notice. For example, my female lead would be more likely to notice unusual clothing, hair/eye color, that sort of thing, while characters introduced during male lead PoV portions are described more in terms of their physical builds, bearing, information that would matter if he suddenly has to kill them for some reason.

Basically, it seems like you should describe as much about a person as you can without the description being intrusive.

I almost always imagine characters to have brown or black hair, even when the book explicitly states that they have blonde or ginger hair. I still visualize Lyra as having brown hair, despite the fact that the book says that Lyra is blonde.

I almost always imagine characters to have brown or black hair

I tend to do this too, except with HP. I saw the first two movies first, so I saw the Weasley hair.

But whenever a little girl/boy is supposed to be all sweet and angelic I see them with curly blond(e) hair.

No, dirty blonde, I think.

@sansafro: I have a hard time describing beauty too. I’m afraid of going all ‘Edward-y’ if you get my drift.

Unless you go to Bella-level carrying away. Then it doesn’t matter how carried away your character is, you need to tone it down a bit lot!

^^This is true.

I would hope you have to do it on purpose.

Unless you’re obsessed with your own character.

This probably happened in Twilight.

By SlyShy
on Mar 1, 03:23 PM

It might look like this…

From: http://8th-circuit.com/?q=node/350

Lol. Completely off topic: next time you’re with your significant other, bake a pumpkin pie.