Young Writers Society

One of the biggest things I struggle with is description. This is both of setting and physical characteristics, including facial expressions. I've realized that I tend to have my characters do the same things: frown, smile, smile softly, shake their head...which gets repetitive.

So what I'm wondering is if anyone knows of any web sites that lists facial expressions other than those things I listed above. If not, what advice would you give for someone trying to avoid repetitively using those things?

Notice how people talk when conversing with you. Or watch how other people converse with each other. They might never look at each other. One might be preocupied with something else, one might stare into the others eyes, they might look over the other person's shoulder but never at the person, they might gesture grandly when they get excited about something, their eye might twitch, they might raise their eyebrows or look down at their feet, they might bite their lip or puff out their cheeks, etc. Maybe this list will jog your observations!

Well you don't necessarily have to stop using the same expressions, you could just phrase them in a particular way to make them seem different.

For example: "He smiled at her." This can be changed in a number of different ways, depending on the situation. For instance, it can become:

"He smiled sheepishly at her."

Or:

"He smiled at her mischieviously."

If you want to describe someone concentrating on something, you don't really need to go into big detail. You can just say, "His dark brow was furrowed in concentration."

Instead of trying to find particular words for the expressions people pull, try to find other ways of giving extra detail to the expression that will make it individual from the others.

Ps. Sorry if my explanation doesn't really make sense.

Read Stephen King's "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft". It's the most useful text on writing that I have ever read.

Be careful not to bog your reader down with description. If his mischevious smile is important to the story, use it. If she always looks at her watch in the same way, and it is important to the story, use it. If not, toss them both. A bored reader is death to a book.

Actions are wonderful and everything, but in the end, you cannot possibly describe every action the character does. So you end up describing the important actions. So instead of saying "he smiled" repeatedly, which can be very dull after a while, only say "he smiled" when it means something Big. Maybe the smile occurs after the heroine flirts with him... or maybe it occurs just before he's going to rape her. By making these actions Big, you can also make the character seem clearer to the readers... always a good thing!

Also, be aware that different characters can have different reactions! For instance, Daniel's face goes purple when he gets embarrassed. Which is an action reserved exclusively to him and his father.

And, maybe I'm just a sucker for dialogue, but I like talkative characters and I would rather see pure dialogue than dialogue interrupted by constant actions. The problem is that pure dialogue is hard to write because that puts more emphasis on the actual dialogue writing, and that can be difficult for some writers, especially since your dialogue has to be Good. But you can do it! Just separate the Good dialogue with Big actions, and everything should work out fine.

I usually talk to myself in a mirror, and watch how I change my face. I only do this when my character in in an emotional situation, though. (With someone they like, under pressure, etc.) I pretend I'm my character and see if I bite my lip, twist my hair around my finger, give a half-smile, etc.

Just make sure no one walks in on you while you are doing this, or they might send you to the insane asylum.

Some words just work. "He looked from one to the other, bemused, and asked, 'What's up?'"

See what I mean?

You could also look up a commons expression, like "smile," in a thesaurus. Whew, that's a weird word..