Character Description

Joe Blow is a big man. He stands 6 foot 6 inches tall. He has large hands, big enough to hold a basketball upside down in one palm. He has dark hair that is beginning to recede and a scar about an inch long just over his right eye. His eyes are brown.

We know all that stuff about Joe Blow being big is not characterization. It is how a stranger might describe him. Yet Joe's physical description can give some insight that would help the reader relate to him as a character.

The problem many writers have is they dump all the description into one or two paragraphs. They believe the reader has to know immediately everything about this guy or gal. They don't.

Take this paragraph from Elmore Leonard's Maximum Bob, for example:

Dale Crowe Junior was twenty, a tall, bony-looking kid in his dark-blue scrubs. Dark hair uncombed, dumb eyes wandering, worried, but trying to look bored.

In two compact sentences, Leonard has managed to tell us everything we need to know about how Dale Crowe Junior looks. We can easily picture him in the jail holding cell. But notice how it is lacking specifics: He's tall, but how tall? He's thin, but how thin? How long is his dark, uncombed hair? What color are his dumb eyes?

We're not told because Elmore Leonard, being the writer we wish we could be, knows we don't need to know those specifics to picture the character in our minds. I bet you had no problem forming an image of Dale Crowe Junior. Did you really need to know if Dale was 6' 2" or 6' 3"? If his eyes were brown or green? No -- because it doesn't matter to the plot.

In the short story "New Moon and Rattlesnakes" by Wendy Hornsby, a truck driver is described simply as a "paunchy, lonely old geek." As the reader continues, they'll discover this sums him up him pretty darn well.

Often, though, specifics are good. In fact, they may be necessary. In a murder mystery, one character may have witnessed a crime and needs to give the police a description. What if the suspect has long, wavy frizzy red hair? What if they were short and had a limp? These are specifics could be necessary to the plot.

But not every specific character trait or description is necessary to the plot, though they might be colorful and well worth the time.

When to provide specifics -- and which specifics to provide -- can be tricky. You may have been told by a creative writing teacher, or a book on writing fiction, that you need to be specific. The more specific, the better. Don't say Rhonda is in her mid-40's; make her 44 years old. Don't say Felix had a bad complexion; say he had scars from a million teenage zits.

And there's the paradox: Be specific only when you need to be specific. Otherwise, don't be specific.

A lot of it has to do with your "natural" writing style. Some use colorful language, and the specifics lend themselves more gracefully to their wording. In "Coyote Peyote" by Carole Nelson Douglas, the cat detective Midnight Louie (yes, he's really a cat) describes himself as having "tourmaline-green eyes," his coat "an impeccable sheen and my hidden shivs as sharp as the crease in Macho Mario Fontana's bodyguard's pants."

Now I have no idea what shade of green "tourmaline" is, but it sure sounds good. And who is Macho Mario? He's not mentioned again, so other than being a bodyguard, I don't know, but the important thing is that Douglas is giving us the information as Midnight Louie would give it -- as part of his character.

As a writer, your personal style may dictate whether our friend Felix has a bad complexion, or the scars from a million teenage zits -- both are specific, one is just more colorful.

The really tricky part is incorporating the description seamlessly into the story. If you're writing a scene and suddenly detour into an account of the protagonist's looks, the story will come to a screeching halt until you bring it back on the road.

Monica looked at Kyle with anger. Her steamy blue eyes were almost painful to look at, her long jet-black hair blowing effortlessly in the breeze, her svelte, athletic body poised in a stance of defiance and building fury.

What her long jet-black hair had to do with anything, and why her svelte, athletic body had to be described like that right then, I don't know. It is seriously out of place, as is the description of "steamy blue eyes." But that's just me. You might like it just fine.

The fun you can have with description is parceling it out in little bits -- a mention in a paragraph here, something else a couple of paragraphs later -- without dumping it all on the reader at the same time. For example, the line about the paunchy, lonely old geek in "New Moon and Rattlesnakes" is in the first paragraph. The next description, regarding his hairy paw, is in the third paragraph, and the one after that doesn't appear until the sixth:

Twice, to speed things up, she told him jokes that made his bald head blush flame red.

Monica's steamy blue eyes can be placed in one paragraph, her long, jet-black hair a few paragraphs later, and her svelte, athletic body in another page or two -- where it may fit more appropriately.

Sometimes, though, only the sparest description is needed. Lise, the main character in "New Moon," is not described at all until the fourth page, and then mainly by her clothing -- skimpy tank top, denim shorts, hand-tooled boots. Physically, only her muscular thighs and wind-blown hair are mentioned. This, remember, is the main character. Yet we are not deprived of who Lise is -- we get to know her character quite well. Hornsby, the writer, knows exactly how to give us the woman without needing to describe her in detail.

Next time: More on Characterization.

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