Young Writers Society

I like knowing what the character looks like, otherwise I have a kind of shapeless image in my head that is more difficult to follow. However, I can't stand it when the writer gives all the information about the character in one big block of exposition within the first page or two. I always skip over those parts, and consequently, the character remains a shapeless blob in my mind for the rest of the story.

I feel like in real life, the better you know a person, the more you notice about them physically and personality-wise. I think a character should be the same way, much like KazSmurf said. In that same sense, I love when the author can make me see the character one way in the beginning (because of initial sparseness of description) and give me the complete opposite opinion by the end of the story.

I describe, always, because I think it is better for the reader to be able to visualize particular characters. It is also better for me, in a way, because its not just black figures in my head but real people.

I don’t necessarily give an info dump about how they look like at the start, when they appear. Or I try not to. Well, sometimes I do, but usually its just spread…

Hm. I think I’d better go back to my character descriptions… *sighs*