Describing your Characters

How thoroughly do you describe your characters? Ranging from your MC, to the most insignificent mention of the rabble runnign around in your stories? Do you find yourself describing the mole on John Doe's cheek? Or do you avoid character description all together?

In the 19th century and earlier, authors dedicated whole pages to their characters personality and appearance. Some may find this tedious to read, and others find this helpful in picturing a scene. Published authors nowadays tend to breifly describe the appearances of their characters or avoid description. Where do you stand? Do you both love reading and writing physical description? Or not?

Personally, I like to leave it up to my reader's imagination to paint their own picture of the people in my story. I might give a brief sketch, but I never go into specifics. I find it detracts too much from the plot and the conflict. Most often, I have my character's personalities describe them physically. A reader tends to relate physical characteristics to personality traits.

Anyway, I'm interested to listen to what other people have to say.

-Kylan

I can say from experience, being that I writer earlier than the 19th Century these days or should I say years - I never go into any great detail when a new character is first introduced. I offer a general outline, and slip in further clues as the story progressess. A typical general outline might be referencing to height or build, eye color, and maybe one special trait that makes them their own person. If however, a character has abnormalities such as a missing eye, grotesque scars or basically a tangible thing that should be addressed early on so readers are aware, are all presented sparsely.

I try not to go into too much physical description with characters because- let's face it- I'm a hormonal teenaged girl. Honestly. Set me on 'physical description and build' and everyone has flippy hair or ripped abs or a five o'clock shadow. Not a good idea, since I like my characters normal, pimples 'n' all.

There are distinctive things, though- Sukie's enormous glasses, or Carl's hair- that I describe, but usually I leave it to the imagination. Easier for me to avoid Mary Sue-doms, at any rate. ^_~

I'm horrible at giving physical description...as well as description of any towns or scenery or something. Sometimes I do okay with the details, but most of the time I pretty much suck at it. And there are probably a few times where I do the whole "show, don't tell" thing when describing my characters. I'd like to be able to get to a point in the middle- give enough description where it's not too much and not too little, but still leaves the reader imagining what the character looks like. I'm not quite sure I'm at that point, though.

Like Sam, one of my biggest problems is the Mary-Sue traits- but also that my characters tend to be described the same, despite my trying to make them completely different from each other, especially when they're in different stories.

I wrote a tutorial about descriptive writing, which you can find here: Histrionics: Description & Descriptive Writing

I think everyone has their own style and thus how they go about describing characters is one of those style things.

Also, don't forget about description after the initial entrance of the character. Characterization also leads to great description of character in a reader's mind.

I describe my characters quite a bit.



Ta,
Cal.

hmm...i usually try to incorporate a description of my character in dialogue and stuff. i try not to describe a character right of the bat, but kind of make it flow into the story. i'm not sure how to explain it, but that's the best I can do.

hmm...i usually try to incorporate a description of my character in dialogue and stuff. i try not to describe a character right of the bat, but kind of make it flow into the story. i'm not sure how to explain it, but that's the best I can do.

I try to do that as well.

I hate writing it, mainly because... I just can't. I'm no good at it . I just can't describe my characters appearance...

~ Shadowsun

I generally don't do a lot of character describing. Mainly because I don't like reading it all that much.

If it's all dumped the first time we meet them then I generally just get bored reading it, because frankly I don't care what they look like or what they're wearing unless it's out of the ordinary or important.

And even if it's scattered throughout, all woven in prettily, it can be quite irritating because generally by then I've got my own idea about how they look, and hearing anything to contradict it throws me right out of the story.

I don't know. It's all in the too-hard basket for me.

I like describing characters through what they think about themselves vs. what other people think about them. It doesn't matter to me much what they look like; if there are some important quirks they get mentioned in the story [a character who has long hair and plays with it a lot out of nerves, someone with poor eyesight, some feature that sets them apart from the crowd] but otherwise I'd rather let the reader fill it in themselves.

I'm quite different from most of you guys, i could be called obsessive about how much detail Ive put into my character, however that's mainly just for my own enjoyment, I'm not sure how much Will actually be included in the story/story's.
I do get sometimes annoyed when Authors include a description that is totally at odds with what i had imagined in my mind but also i like hearing about interesting but non important details like what a characters favorite song is or what he is wearing and what equipment he is carrying (which i suppose can be important).

I agree with Cal that it's a style issue.

As for myself, I try not to go into excessive detail about appearance. I like to give the brief sketch of eye color and hair color to help myself more than any reader visualize, but I tend to let personality traits dictate other physical aspects in the reader's mind and in my mind. If that made any sense whatsoever.

I love describing characters physical features, i think it's so much fun. It's a bit hard to find the words and most things are still left up to the readers imagination.

If the story is in 3rd person then i usually use it in the intro in an objective way, but if it's in 1st person i might barely touch on it. When you look in the mirror you don't really go around describing yourself so it's hard to put it in first person.

For short stories I try to avoid it completely. For novels I leave it for a few scenes and give tiny details slowly. I hate reading too much description on characters these days.

Yeah, Myth's got it right. Short stories are written for the plot, novels are written for the characters. Despite this, however, I rarely describe anything about my MCs in mon novels. The reader should decide for themselves what the character looks like. Also, personality is physical. Like I said before, a reader formulates a mental picture of a character via their personality.

Agree/disagree?

-Kylan