Young Writers Society

I'm in the process of writing a rather long story, and my friend reads it pretty much as I write it and she just recently brought up that she has no idea what any of the characters are supposed to look like. I just can't get the physical descriptions into my stories without it seeming to stick out or without it being really awkward. Even in my story posted on this site (The Disaster) There's no physical description aside from eye color for the most part. So, how do you make your physical descriptions discrete and detailed?

Mix it up with action. I.e.

"Molly shook her head from side to side, her spiky red hair falling into her eyes."

Or

“Are you alright?” Mary asked, concern etched over her heart-shaped face.

Just briefly describe some physical attributes of character when they are first being introduced to the reader, but you don't have to go into so much detail if you don't want to. Personally, I don't like to describe characters in-depth. But it all depends on what you want to achieve.

When I read a story, usually the most I have to go on is hair color and the size of a character (i.e. brooding, heavy figure or really short or something) and then I'll imagine the rest in my mind.

What I have noticed is that your character's usual demeanor actually describes them more than a physical description.

If you have a character who is so cocky for instance, always has this arrogant smirk on his face. Or a character who is so shy, he's fumbling with his shirt or something and always looking at his feet or avoiding eye contact. Those descriptions paint better pictures of a character than "blue eyes and brown hair".

Thanks so much, I'll try that next time that I work on my story. I've been trying to be more discrete with my descriptions and when I introduce characters, and I really like your examples. Thanks a lot.

I can tell you what not to do: Don't pile up all your physical descriptions. You can do what Audy showed you, but don't put 3 or 4 of those kinds of sentences on the same page. It gets so boring, cliche, whatnot.

Also, if you're writing in first person perspective who meets a new character, you can always give "first impressions" of the new character based on his or her physical features.

I say have FUN! Describe them with interesting words like stringy, bobbling, greasy, sickly. Use different and creative words. Here's an example!!!

The girl walked past everyone, her long, greasy hair reflected the sun's light. Her scent seemed to intoxicate those around the girl. However, I felt like puking. That girl was nothing but an empty shell. The only soothing quality was her soft peach colored skin. Besides that, everything about her was fiery and cruel.
I backed away from her, hitting a wall. A grin spread across her makeup covered face. "Hello Elizabeth." Her voice was calm, but I could feel the insanity within its boundaries.
"Alessa." I replied.
She gently placed her long bony fingered hands on my shoulders. I shuttered. Feeling her freezing touch made me shake. Alessa stared at me with her narrow icy blue eyes. I felt like someone was pointing a gun at me. Looking away, I muttered. "Why are you bothering me?"
She tilted her head, making her greasy blond hair flash into my face....

So far I only described her physical looks, no clothing at all! ^_^ I hope this example helps.

Physical description is something that I get reprimanded for doing poorly. Either I've done too much, or I've done too little, or I've used too many big words or too many small; it was too wordy, it was a grocery list. Oi. And yet I don't agree with Audy, though her avatar is adorable, which probably means Audy is right. you probably want to feed it to your reader in small doses; the problem I see with this as a reader is as description tags, these things sort of get glossed over as you read, and soon your halfway through the book, paging back to the first chapter to find out what color the mc hair was. Whereas if its in a chunky paragraph it sticks better in your mind. At least, thats true for me as a reader.