All are questions to be asked and answered on this topic.

I find so many stories now-a-days that place a great emphasis on the physical description of their characters, and too many that go about like this:

He had wavy blue hair that fell past his shoulders in gentle waves. His eyes were an unusual color for one of his race, bright gold. He was rather handsome, slightly effeminate in appearance, but well-muscled. He was wearing gray pants, a brown shirt, and twin longswords on his hips....

I'll admit falling into this one myself most of the time, though I'm trying to work on it. It's not bad to describe your characters, but doing so in a big block like that does not give much insight into who your character IS, just what they look like.

To improve on that, I suggest picking out the details that actually say something specifically about your character, or use descriptions that show more than color or shape. For example:

Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun. Her eyes were slightly narrowed, giving one a sense, always, of intense focus. She wore no adornments besides the minimal silver chain around her neck. Her perfectly tailored pencil skirt came exactly to the knee and a matching blazer, under which she wore a white blouse buttoned all the way up to the collar.

Here, you get a sense that she's a rather neat, tidy, and perhaps severe person, even if you do not know the color of her eyes or hair.

Now for an even better example of a description, one where everything's been tied together (and throws my rather pitiful attempts aside)let's go to great literature.

From "The Great Gatsby":

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy straw-haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and supercilious manner. Two shining arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body--he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing, and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage--a cruel body.

Thoughts?

Girlbrainiac

Really, there's no one way to do description because, who knows? Maybe certain characteristics are important to the story. I think a big part in description is word choice. Look at the example from "The Great Gatsby" (yay! one of my favorite books!): "hard" mouth, "supercilious" manner, "arrogant" eyes", leaning "agressively" forward.... Physical description deals with more than just the way someone *looks*, it's how they *carry* themselves and to an extent their personality. I have one character, Miravoh, who's mostly know for his smoking so I added a lot of words that allude to ciggarettes, cigars and smoking in general (sorry for the slight plug!). I'm not gonna lie, tho'. I hate it when people use 'tags' for characters. Yes, I'm looking at you, authors who say X character "smiles evily". There *are* other ways to describe someone with a smile that's hiding something. Think, what would your character as a person, not a some silly cliched role, do?

My only warning for description: When describing someone, beware of purple prose. I don't need a sonnet about your character, Mr. Fantastic.

I'd cover a lot more ground, but I hate writing huge entries on forums. Plus, I feel like I'm rambling.... Any extra thoughts?

I tend to do the big blatant descriptions when writing in third person, but not so in first person. After all, do you ever say to yourself "I'm a tall, brown-haired beauty of 21 with big brown eyes, silver-rimmed glasses, and a sloppy sense of style."? It just doesn't fit or flow right to me. As for writing about other characters in first person, you always have to make sure to use your character's bias in the description, even if the main character sees the other character as something they truly are not. I've been trying to do that in the story I've been working on. The main character thinks she's the only one like herself, so she only sees the ways everyone else is through that lense. Is her grandmother truly the way the girl sees her, or does the girl miss the point? That's something to be determined by the reader.

As for what you said about tags, I have to agree. The reader isn't stupid. You don't have to put 'evil' next to a person's description for the reader to figure it out. You can give subtle hints that allude to it. Instead of saying "Ember smiled evilly" you could say "Ember's lips twitched upward in a sort of grin, exposing her rather prominent canines, which seemed sharp enough to tear flesh." You associate tearing flesh with her grinning, letting the reader know that it is a threatening gesture, not a friendly one.

As for physical descriptions, it's as you said. Pick out what's IMPORTANT. It may be interesting to know your character has aqua eyes, but what does that say about WHO he is? More important is how he carries himself, and what sort of role he plays. Pick out the most important aspects of your character's personality and describe the things that reflect that. If your character is the strong, aggressive, football type like Tom Buchanan in my previous example, the words, "arrogant", "aggressive", "hard", "heavy", "thick", "strong", etc. might describe them well. If it's a quiet character, perhaps "meek", "gentle", "soft", "thin", "mild", "small", etc. It's all about the word choice, as well as what pieces of info you pick out to share.

Picking out which details to describe is just as important as how you describe them. With JJ's smoker, you might decide to start with the smell of smoke about them, their bad breath. Maybe they have a cough. Maybe you'll use yellowish words to describe their skin and teeth. Perhaps their pockets have conformed to the shape of a box of cigarettes.

Girlbrainiac

Even in places, I generally associate a new place with how I see it, and have to look back to see if I was correct in my assumptions.

Though, I have to admit, a good discription in wiriting is a short one. Less to get all tangled up with.

Basic background. Takes place in a hospital, after the "curse" on the boy is broken. I always wondered what would happen if neither character was aware that one of them had transformed.

----

Persephone felt eyes on her back as she stared after the doctor. The other bed! Persephone whirled around, catching him staring. Embarrassed, his gaze automatically dropped. She frowned at him, a snake splincer, not even a full one, either. It looked like the young man had barely finished the first stage. And he had injured Ishtari that badly?

“Are you…are you all right?” he asked, looking even more surprised than she did at what came out of his mouth. His voice was light and soft, a soothing tenor, and lacking the customary hiss that snake splincers were known for, even at stage one. Plus, it sounded much too young compared to last night.

“No I’m not all right…One of the most important people in my life needs major surgery thanks to you.” She glared at him.

“I’m…I…” he sighed. “I’m…sorry. I didn’t realize that you knew him.”

“Well I more than know him.”

“Oh.” He sounded confused at her concession, like the news caught him completely off guard. “Um…,” he was still looking at the floor, but she could tell his eyebrows were scrunching. “Hey, uh… Does my voice…well, do I sound different to you?”

Persephone simply raised an eyebrow at him. “How am I supposed to know? Like it’s missing the hiss?”

“Hiss? Nooo. Like, I dunno, too high? Too clear? Too…human?”

“I don’t know. Now do you mind? This is all your fault.”

“My fault?!” His voice cracked. He swallowed heavily, startled by the sound. “Okay, now I know that wasn’t right.” He interrupted before Persephone even began to answer. “How hard was I hit anyway?”

“Apparently not hard enough,” she grumbled under her breath before turning to leave.

“Wait! Please don’t leave, Selphie!” That stopped her in her tracks.

“What was that?”

“Look, Selph, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I hurt that splincer, too. But, everything’s... everything looks weird, and sounds weird, and I don’t- I don’t want to be alone right now,” his voice cracked again.

Persephone took her time in turning to face the…whatever he was. No one, no one, called her Selphie. Only Ishtari. When she turned around, she took the time to actually look at the “splincer.”

What struck her first was how young he appeared. He fit the description of a young man, but barely, she was severely tempted to call him a boy. The hospital clothes he had been dressed in hung loosely on his slight frame. There was a stubborn childlike softness that hung around his high cheekbones. He had a strong jaw line, but his chin would be called stubborn long before it was called square.

His messy bed head hung in front of his eyes, and as she noted before, it was a warm hazel-brown . Except, now that she looked closer, she noticed that there were streaks of the most familiar shades of blue scattered intermittently throughout his hair. His bangs, the ones that hung where they were supposed to, draped over dark eyebrows. They rested over a narrow, slightly upturned nose.

Nothing about him looked like how she thought her demon would appear as a human. He was small…ish. And if six-foot would be unlikely, seven-foot-three was entirely out of the question. Also, there was an air of innocence to his actions. He was like a frightened child who had lost his mother.

Now, Persephone had seen Ishtari scared before, but she had always felt it rather than seen it. This… boy’s face gave away his every thought. From the slight purse of his lower lip, to the frown lines forming on his forehead, to the slight widening of his yellow, slit-pupil eyes. Hell, they were so wide, she could even see… the… amber…

“Ishtari?” she breathed, taking an involuntary step closer to the boy. His face did give away everything, especially the amber rimming his irises, as the fear of being left alone smoothed into the fear of something wrong. He could read her, even though her earlier outburst had left him confused. No, he had been confused because she wasn't reacting like she should. Ohgodohgodohgod. Thrown by this… revelation, she whispered his name again, just to be sure. “Ishtari?”

“Selph… I’m worried enough as it is, the way you’re acting, not helping.” Now that she knew what to listen for, he sounded like the demon. The tone, the intonation, even the wording was the exact same. Only the voice was different. His voice was different. Oh man, what was going on?

“Selphie?”

“I’m sorry. About, about everything I’ve said and done so far today. Things have been frantic and I… Well, I didn’t know what to expect. I definitely didn’t expect this!” she gestured at him emphatically.

“This?” the boy, Ishtari, gestured at himself as well, raising one of the dark eyebrows behind the curtain of bangs.

“Yes, that. Nothing you said, they said, I didn’t know what I was supposed to look for! I just assumed! And you probably thought it was hilarious watching me fly off the handle like that.” She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. Thankfully, Ishtari cut her off before she could fully get into it.

“Persephone! What’s wrong?” He would have reached out for her, but the distance between them made that impossible. Looking in his amber flecked eyes, Persephone could tell that he honestly had no idea what was bothering her so much. How could he not? The truth of the situation hit her as quickly and as harshly as the DRUID had only a few nights before.

He didn't know.

--------

It get's better when he finally learns what has happened. I also have another version with Persephone's thoughts scattered throughout. I would be interested in seeing what Ishtari looks like to other people, although one or two important details are missing here. This is kind of a major spoiler, though.

Persephone felt eyes on her back as she stared after the doctor. The other bed! Persephone whirled around, catching him staring. Embarrassed, his gaze automatically dropped. She frowned at him, a snake splincer, not even a full one, either. It looked like the young man had barely finished the first stage. And he had injured Ishtari that badly?

“Are you…are you all right?” he asked, looking even more surprised than she did at what came out of his mouth. His voice was light and soft, a soothing tenor, and lacking the customary hiss that snake splincers were known for, even at stage one. Plus, it sounded much too young compared to last night.

“No I’m not all right…One of the most important people in my life needs major surgery thanks to you.” She glared at him.

~Marie Silver~

I don't usually do a check-list of traits, but it depends on which character it is. For the protagonist, I throw in description gradually, but for another character or someone the protagonist is seeing or thinking about, I might describe them in full right then. Even in those situations, however, I don't like sticking to a simple list, because it's still the protagonist's point of view. Like..

Under the heady electric lights, Jathen could see the boy’s appearance clearly for the first time. He was of middling height and stocky, with thick, firm muscles, and had a rosy-cheeked face under a cap of tightly curled hair as brown as an acorn. His eyes, Jathen noticed, were large and round and very blue; they unexpectedly reminded him of a tattered children’s book he had once found abandoned beneath the trees – “And who could resist such big blue eyes?” said the frog. Jathen very nearly smiled, but his smile froze and shattered sometime before it reached his lips as he remembered how Airain had read the book out loud, laughing; how she had delighted in the pictures, eagerly turning the pages as if she were herself a human child. “And look,” she had said in happy amusement, “The frog turns into a prince!”

Great idea for a topic Brainiac.

Description can be a hard thing to tackle, when writing a story, but I'll have to disagree with those of you who say it's not too important and therefore can be sacrificed to preserve the flow of the story.

I think description is very important. As a reader I don't want some ambiguous, half-faceless character walking around a white screen. I believe good descriptions of character and especially of setting, sets the good stories apart. And you can't just include things that are important, as a writer you have images and actions in your mind and your task is to put the same images and actions in your reader's mind, as accurately as possible.

However, as important as description is, big long list-intros that describe the details of the character's sword handles, or traviling cloke, but say nothing else of interest about the character's personality, or the the story, are completely uses. Big, block description loose the reader's interest in a heart beat.

The trick is to tied details of descriptions into some other aspect of the story or personallity. How you do this depends on the story and the character. The key is atmosphere.

Find the most dominate aspect of your character. What would people notice most about his/her appearance/personalty, latch on to that and have all the other features revolve around it, using the less prominate features to describe the main atmosphere of the character.

You can see this being employed in Brainiac's example from the Great Gatsby. The conclusion is that he has a cruel body, all the rest of the paragraph builds up the that conclusion, creating that atmosphere with words like, "hard" "arrogant" "dominance" "aggressively" and "enormous" facts about the color of the hair and type of clothing are included, but are being used to build up to a final overall atmosphere, which defines that character.

Once you establish the atmosphere of a character or a place, continue to build onto/add/recall the description, as the character and situations allows. If you're writing from the point of view of a calculating, observant character, say a detective, you've got it easy. Every time this character comes to a new place, or meets a new person it's likely that s/he will take note of what everything and everyone looks like, and then come to his/her overall conclustions concerning them. If you don't have a character who's likely to notice their surroundings, then it might be a little harder to inclued description. You may end up being forced to step back from the story and put in the description, but even this can be done without braking the flow too much. At the the beginning of a new scene is a good place to sneak in a paragraph devoted to desription.

However the situations and characters of your story allow you to let the description florish, just remember to tie the details together to descibe the overall atmosphere, of the person/place. Details alone will bore your reader, and the over all conclutions with out the details, leaves things ambiguous and is like that "evil smile" stuff talked about eariler, all telling and no showing.

For great use of atmosphereic descriptions, read Edgar Allen poe, Emily Bronte, or, to promote a more modern writer, Mary Stewart.

~Star

Here's a description, very boring, but hopefully will improove in time...

The little boy sat by the fire, staring into the flickering flames. The green eyes were half closed, thick eyelashes framing the eyes. The hair fell in shoulder length curtains, gently brushing the soft pale cheeks.

The little arms held a pup and he smiled with content.

The room of the palace in which the boy sat was large. It was full of books of various subjects and sizes.

The windows were high, showing the outside world in which the boy had never ventured.

The boy looked up and smiled at the other occupant of the room.

This person was a man, a man who was great and powerful. He was a man who was well known.

His name was Elgour. Legend say that he was the son of a god, the god Elvour.

“How is the book, Master Elgour?” The man looked up. Grey eyes turned to the direction of the boy.

The beard was long and flowing. The hair was brown. The strong hands held a book, thickly bound and full of interesting things the boy would not understand.

“Fine, my boy. Why don’t you go outside and play in the stables?” The old man asked.

---

Any thought on that description, if you'd like to read the chapter, click on my profile.

Thanks

Personally, I believe that reading is as much as an imaginative process as writing itself. At the moment I think that description should only be used if it contributes to the plot, or reveals information about a character. I think that unless it is important for a character to be really well defined, you should leave them open to interpretation. (Of course this always causes conflict when the movie version comes out :P)

As with one of the previous posters, I also tend to either ignore descriptions of characters, or forget them. Only when the characters size for example, is important to the plot, do I remember their features.

But on second thought, it entirely depends on the type of story you are writing to how much description you use. In most fantasys, I can agree that the world, and its description is one of the main parts of the story. However, if your story is more character based, description is less necessary.

I think with my latest story (shameless plug time) I have really matured as a writer, and this is largely because my characters are defined more by what they say or do, then what they look like. It also may be because the story isn't based around the fact that it will end in a big battle, but there you go. I only use descriptions sporadically, like to show the reader it is winter time, or to set up an important scene.

In the classic 'Pride and Prejudice', you can see something similar, where you can go whole chapters without a single line of description, but still not feel cheated or confused as to what is happening. I'm not saying I enjoyed reading it, the subject matter tends to bore me, but what it does, it does well. I can't help thinking now that I've been influenced by it in some strange way, probably because I had to spend the most of half a year studying it.

Well thats what I think anyway. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am...

My constructive criticism: too choppy. These line breaks chop up the description and make the eye skip ahead to the first sizable block of text. Also, what's with your fear of pronouns? Writing 'the' instead of 'his' looks odd. Also, dialogue goes with the character. Don't write something like:

"What are you doing?" Sarah looked up at Megan and answered, "I'm reading."

It should look like this:

"What are you doing?" asked Megan.

Sarah looked up at her. "I'm reading."

That being said, if I was your beta this is how I'd adjust this scene:

The little boy sat by the fire, staring into the flickering flames. His green eyes were half closed, thick eyelashes framing the eyes. His hair fell in shoulder length curtains, gently brushing the soft pale cheeks. His little arms held a pup and he smiled contentedly. He sat in a palace room full of books of various subjects and sizes. The windows were high, showing the outside world in which the boy had never ventured.

The boy looked up and smiled at the other occupant of the room, a great and powerful man famed throughout the world. His name was Elgour; legend said he was the son of the god Elvour.

“How is the book, Master Elgour?” asked the boy.

Elgour fixed his grey eyes on the boy and stroked his long flowing beard thoughtfully. His strong hands held a book, thickly bound and full of interesting things the boy would not understand. “Fine, my boy. Why don’t you go outside and play in the stables?” asked the old man.

Personally the minion would try to imply more in the scene. Like, instead of just saying "there was a puppy in his arms", maybe having him struggling to keep the puppy under control or simple petting it on the head. She'd also prolong Elgour's introduced facts, maybe showing his fame with a journalist coming to the door or recieving letters from exotic locations. Maybe even introduce the fact he's the "son of a god" through the letters or interview. A little mystery in the begining holds to help hook a reader long enough to get to the good parts.

I can't remember where I read this or what author said exactly so I will try to paraphrase as best I can. Basically this author wrote a book without once describing the heroine. When his agent and editor called him out on it he asked if it had stopped them imagining the character. Instead both had imagined the character in different ways. (That's a very bastardised version and will keep an eye out for the original text but you get the gist.) So maybe description can sometimes work against the character?

However, if something is not typical - character an elf or missing limbs or 6'4 - that should obviously be mentioned. As long as the description isn't purple prose or jarring, I'm not all that bothered.

~Marie Silver~

Personally the minion would try to imply more in the scene. Like, instead of just saying "there was a puppy in his arms", maybe having him struggling to keep the puppy under control or simple petting it on the head. She'd also prolong Elgour's introduced facts, maybe showing his fame with a journalist coming to the door or recieving letters from exotic locations. Maybe even introduce the fact he's the "son of a god" through the letters or interview. A little mystery in the begining holds to help hook a reader long enough to get to the good parts.

Those are all valid points. I was purposefully trying not to alter the original text too much; I wanted the author to see how even a small change here and there could improve the text. Generally, you want to show and not tell. No one ever just holds a puppy; the puppy licks at their face and wriggles in their arms or whimpers for its mother. It makes the story more dynamic and more interesting.

This applies to all writing, I suppose, not just description. But it's painfully noticeable in description especially; lack of varied sentence openers. Take GB's example at the beginning;

He had wavy blue hair that fell past his shoulders in gentle waves. His eyes were an unusual color for one of his race, bright gold. He was rather handsome, slightly effeminate in appearance, but well-muscled. He was wearing gray pants, a brown shirt, and twin longswords on his hips....

Look at that. All the sentences begin with a subject. I understand it's really hard to get around this. After all the paragraph is describing "a subject." But there are lots of way to decorate openers without removing them. Like in the Great Gatsby paragraph, it switched subjects more than once, inserting "you" in there. Instead of stating "he had two dominant eyes," it made the eyes the subject. To emphasize the man's power it was able to add "not even" before the subject; "the effimate swank."

In doing this, switching subjects, adding adjectives and always, ALWAYS emphasizing the man's aura rather than his actual appearance, a marvelous description was portrayed PLUS admirable sentence flow.

Personally, I want SOME description when I'm reading a story. If I wanted to invent a character's appearance wholesale, I'd write or draw it myself. With that said, one or two sentences is usually more than enough to describe a character. An entire paragraph is stretching it. Also, the word "orbs" should be verboten. I don't have orbs, you don't have orbs, no one you or I know has orbs. They have eyes. I'd actually suggest trying to describe something else other than eyes -- it's too easy for an author to linger over "changeable orbs" or describe in minute detail exactly how there's a ring of amber around the pupil, etc. Also, you have to be right up in someone's face before you can make out their eye color. Are Princess Valera's ruby-colored orbs the first thing your humble blacksmith is going to notice when he glimpses her across the room? No, he's going to notice her height, her hair color, and her clothes first.

One of my favorite descriptions comes from Tad Williams' short story, The Writer's Child:

Something came out of one of the dark doors and stepped in front of them. It looked like the Scarecrow of OZ but it was'nt smiling. It had an even more skwinchy voice than Mister George like the rope hanging around its neck was too tight.

Hello clubfoot, it said. It stood right in the way.

We are seeking an oddyents with the Player King said Mister George. He was trying to be brave but he was very small.

But you have no safe conduck, it said. Why should I let you pass? Its fingers made a creeky noise like the branches outside Jessicas window when it was windy.

Mister George did'nt say anything for a long long time. Jessica wanted to run.

For love of the moon, he said then. For memory. This one is young and still unmarked.

And why should I not take her sweetness the scarecrow said and leaned forward to look at Princess Jessica. Its eyes were painted on and crooked. Perhaps that will make memory stop burning. Perhaps it will blacken the moon and I can forget.

You are not here to forget ezra, said Mister George. We all travel here to remember.

Let's break down how Tad Williams sets up this scene. It's told from the POV of a child, and so its written in a childish way with bad punctuation and spelling. The way Jessica perceives the scarecrow (actually the personification of Ezra Pound, as Mister George the teddybear is Lord Byron) is how a child would perceive him: he looks like the Scarecrow of OZ. The noose around his neck is just a rope. She equates his creaky fingers with the sound of branches scraping her window. Williams does not lump all this description into one paragraph, instead he spreads it throughout the scene. Isn't this more dynamic than:

Something came out of one of the dark doors and stepped in front of them. It looked like the Scarecrow of OZ but it was'nt smiling. It had an even more skwinchy voice than Mister George like the rope hanging around its neck was too tight. Its fingers made a creeky noise like the branches outside Jessicas window when it was windy. Its eyes were painted on and crooked.

Williams instead sprinkes a bit here and a bit there, so our eyes linger on it when we do get description. He doesn't bring the scene to a screaching halt to shove a paragraph of description down our throats. The story keeps moving. The characters talk. They feel afraid. They want to run. They threaten. They want to forget. They are brave. And all this in less than 20 sentences.

I don't believe giving a pat-down description is important in a story. In my experience, such descriptions usually get ignored anyway.

I find that it's a better idea to point out what's noticeable about a character, what impression they give. Describing a character as "large and imposing, with a large number of scars." Is far more useful then giving a complete description of what color his hair and eyes are and where he has scars and his general skin color. It gives a general impression that the reader can use, while still leaving much of it up to the imagination.

Think about it. When we meet new people, we don't usually go "he has coffee-brown skin and green eyes and is 6'6". We'd think "Tall, arab maybe? Hispanic?"

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