Writing is like sharing a hallucination—you have to make sure your readers are imagining the same thing you are. And strong character descriptions are hard to write.
Too much description overwhelms readers and gives them no room to imagine their own details. But too little leaves characters talking to a blank profile picture with a name.
But a good description is unforgettable. Aaron Warner, Katniss Everdeen, Percy Jackson, and America Singer feel vivid and real to readers because of powerful descriptions.
So how do you do write character descriptions that sketch out a clear picture but leave enough open to the imagination?
1. Show, don’t tell.
You’ve heard this advice a million times before. But this means cutting out words like handsome, beautiful, pretty, cute, striking, attractive, sexy, hot, good-looking, intimidating or ugly. Don’t tell your readers a character is beautiful. Make them conclude that she is beautiful, based on your description.
For example, in her book Abandon, instead of telling readers that John Haden is intimidating, Meg Cabot described him to be clearly intimidating:
“What girl would be able to speak normally with someone who looked like him glaring down at her? He was so tall—six foot four or five, nearly a foot taller than me—and his biceps and shoulders so wide, he’d easily have made tight end on any college football team in the country.”
By comparing John Haden to a (glaring) football player, readers can sense his intimidating presence.
However, if a character has an unusual appearance that is critical to the story, feel free to describe them in intricate detail. Monsters, aliens, and fantasy creatures and characters need a lot of description.
For example, Laini Taylor’s book Strange the Dreamer features demigods who inherit vivid blue skin from their supernatural parents. One demigod, Sarai, describes herself in detail:
“Blue toes, blue legs, blue self reflected in the blue mirror, which wasn’t glass but only mesarthium, polished to a high gloss. The only thing that wasn’t blue was her hair—which was the red-brown of cinnamon—and the whites of her eyes. The whites of her teeth, too, if she were smiling, but she very much wasn’t.”
2. Use comparisons in character descriptions.
Similes and metaphors draw clear pictures of your character. You can compare your character to an animal (he moved with the grace of a panther), a season (she was pure summer, full of sunshine and infectious laughter), an archetype (she was like a forgotten queen, with no throne but the same regal bearing), and so on.
Once you draw a comparison, allude to it in various ways. For example, if you initially compare a character to a snake, refer to other snake-like qualities such as quick, graceful movements or soft, hissing speech.
3. Draw an egg.
How do you draw an egg? You can’t draw the color white, so you have to sketch the shadows and highlights surrounding the egg.
In the same way, you can describe a character by “drawing around them.” Show people’s reactions to the character and events surrounding the character.
For example, in her book First & Then, Emma Mills minimally describes her characters, never describing hair color, eye color, height, etc. She leaves that to the reader’s imagination. However, she describes her character Ezra Linley, a popular but reticent football player, through other’s opinions of him and his own abilities.
He wasn’t thick-necked and red-faced like some of the football guys, but he wasn’t scrawny either. Strong enough to take a tackle, but light enough to run in that way he was famous for. And he had nice bones, as my mom would say. His jaw curved nicely, and his nose had this great line to it, but all in all, as the gym class and I stood shamelessly appraising him, I felt like his face left something to be desired. The right features were assembled, but there was no shine to his eyes, and the spot on Cas’s mouth where a smile always seemed to lurk lay particularly slack on him.
4. Focus on personality clues.
A laundry list description of a character is boring and reveals nothing. (She was 5 feet, 6 inches tall; her eyes were green and her hair was brown; she was wearing blue jeans and a white blouse and white sneakers; she was holding a brown leather purse and a blue water bottle; she had many rings on her fingers; she had a wide smile with a pronounced cupid’s bow; she had thick eyebrows; she smelled like Chanel No. 5…)
This description could go on for paragraphs without telling you anything important about this character.
So, you’re probably wondering, what details should you include?
Focus on what reveals the character’s personality. Consider this simple description of Kaz Brekker in Crooked Kingdom, the deadly and cunning gang leader of the Dregs:
“His coat clung to him in perfectly tailored lines. He stood leaning on his cane, hair neatly pushed back from his pale brow, a black glass boy of deadly edges.”
This description, and others that emphasize Kaz’s scars, limp, and ever-present gloves, paint a clear picture of this ruthless, closed-off mobster (or man of businesses, as he would prefer to call himself.)
What is the most important thing for readers to know about your character? Is it courage, kindness, intelligence? Or is it a talent such as magic, science, or sports? Whatever this trait is, emphasize it with the details you choose to highlight.
5. Make character descriptions a plot device.
In C. S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth, the main character is Psyche’s older sister Orual, Queen of Glome. Because Orual symbolizes a twisted version of love who must learn to accept her “new face” and learn what love is, she is initially described as being ugly. Orual’s ugliness, and the veil she wears to hide her face, are important symbols of her distrust of love and deliberate distancing from other people.
A character should not be good-looking or ugly or tall for no reason. Make their appearance matter to the story. Does the character’s beauty routine symbolize the burden of being a woman? Or does the character’s unusual appearance symbolize his unusual magic?
Appearance should also signal a character’s growth. For example, Tris, the main character in Divergent, transforms dramatically from a shy, withdrawn Abnegation member to a bold, skilled Dauntless member who doesn’t hesitate to take a risk. Her new clothes, tattoos, and muscles reveal this change.
For more tips on how to write a character-driven plot, check out this blog post for when you have a character but no plot.
6. Use all five senses.
President Snow smells like blood and roses. Kaz Brekker’s voice has a “rock salt rasp” to it. Ebenezer Scrooge carries cold air wherever he goes.
Use sensory descriptions to make your characters 3D, and include these descriptions when relevant. Not all characters need a full catalog of the five senses (he smelled like sea salt and sandalwood and verdigris). But if a character always rides a motorcycle, it makes sense for him to smell like gasoline and have greasy streaks on his work boots.
7. Limit your character descriptions.
Readers have great imaginations. As you can tell from fanart, they often fill in the gaps as they please. Trust them to imagine your characters well and clearly. Spend less time on physical description and more on character development. Character development drives the story, after all.
8. Take your time on character descriptions.
Don’t info dump on page 1. Allow the character to slowly come into focus. Start with a general sketch and add details until a full picture forms. Some personality traits, such as quirks and phobias, can only be revealed later in the story.
Character descriptions help readers visualize your story like a movie in their minds. Take your time and have fun. After all, your character descriptions might inspire fanart and casting choices one day, so make them good.
Happy writing!
Sending love,
Anastasia xoxo