Some combination of re-reading my older drafts and toying around with the Freepik AI image generator spurred me to think harder on the way I've employed
character description in my own writings. I've found that my methods have changed over time as my understanding of the craft changed. I thought it'd be a neat exercise to pull up my various character descriptions to explore what worked and what didn't.
Note About AI Images
I understand that AI image generation is a controversial tool that doesn't create "real" art, but a mere copycat based on countless real artists. It is not my intention to undercut or exploit real artists--I only wanted to use AI as a tool to quickly visualize my written word, in place of me trying to sketch my characters (but unfortunately my drawing skills are extremely janky). If I get the chance, I would consider these images for marketing purposes, but for a proper book covers or published illustrations, I'd rather support real human artists.
Characters can hit very different between how they are written in the text and how they appear in artwork. It has been eye-opening for me seeing how my text can be interpreted by a machine. In the spirit of showcasing ideas behind the scenes though, I will post the AI images to go with the descriptions.
Early Attempts
My oldest writings are as off-the-cuff as they come, with me simply plopping down the details as they came to me, often in one big infodump. I'm pretty sure there are cases where I didn't even bother describing certain characters. Much of it carries an amateurish quality, but as I peek into some of the older literature I used to read, I'm pretty sure I just modelled my style off of older conventions that have since changed.
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In my first novel,
Rider of the White Horse, I barely even described the main character. As the story progresses, however, he does gain longer hair and a beard (then shaves it). His only other unique feature are his gray eyes--gray, because of his heritage as a clone. In this book, I have described other characters--here is an excerpt that describes a distinguished side character (the protagonist at this point is referred to simply as "the soldier" and has no name):
There was a man standing there. He was tall, but not as tall as the soldier, and he had hazel eyes and black hair. He was of medium build and he wore an elegant uniform; the soldier guessed that his uniform signified some important rank. Perhaps this was the warden or a Warlord, but he could not tell. He appeared charismatic, dignified, and intelligent.
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| Just your average El Presidente. |
This is quite straightforward, breezing through all the basic characteristics. The sentences are rather bland though, with too many that simply state "he was x" or "he was y." Just about all of these could be jazzed up easily, replacing "was" with stronger verbs (such as "he stood tall" or "his hazel eyes gazed"). Comparing height to the soldier is probably pointless since we have no idea how tall the soldier actually is (at least in this scene). Worst of all though, the last sentence is pure telling and not showing--all those characteristics concerning charisma, dignity, and intelligence are best left unstated, with the character's actions expressing those qualities in the story.
If you think that's bad, wait until you hear this guy talk. For whatever reason, I made his stereotypically British, like that airplane pilot from 1999's The Mummy or something. Imagine the President of the last humans strutting around like "cheerio old chap!" and it is a little goofy.
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My next novel, The Garrison, introduced its main character with the following text:
He was a paladin: a special knight trained to uphold virtue and morality in the kingdom. His name was Sir Seth Chamberlain. He was a tall, young man, muscled from long years of tough practice at arms, yet wise from long years of education. He was seen as strong, but compassionate; firm, but merciful. His cool green eyes reflected the virtue within him, and instilled peace in everyone he looked upon.
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| Wow. So heroic. |
Once again, I had hinged too much on a lot of telling and not much showing (although his actions are heroic throughout the story). It was brought to me attention much later in life that Seth's description is a little too glamorous, and I realized I had created a Gary Stu. He is described (and ultimately characterized) as flawlessly righteous and good, and it comes across as rather silly. I think the narrative voice has also shifted to a more objective standpoint, likely because I treated this story with more of a storyteller's voice (like Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon, although he had done it much more effectively).
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Other short stories and novel drafts I made have fared no better. One of the more distinctive characters I invented (but might not actually use) was in an ambitious military sci-fi novel I tried to make as a trilogy--a big epic titled
Void. This character was made distinctive by having purple eyes. The in-universe explanation was that she grew up on another world (and the insinuation is that genetics could change over generations in an alien environment). Her introduction was written like this:
“Tonight is a beautiful night, is it not?” an accented voice questioned.
“Most,” Jack replied. Turning to face the voice, he immediately froze. Before him was a woman with short white hair and purple eyes - characteristics of someone born from one of the colonies beyond Earth. Her lips were full, her face was soft, and her body was slim. Jack found her striking.
I kinda wish I described her hair more explicitly--it should have been in a bob style, like these pictures.
I also see that I described her voice as "accented," but didn't specify which one. She was likely meant to have an accent from planet Aquarii, although that doesn't exist in real life--it would have been helpful to describe that voice in some way (and it likely would have resembled a French accent to some degree). Funnily enough, I never bothered describing the main character, Jack. At least not in this draft.
When I attempted to redraft Void in 2016 or so, I described this character with the following introduction scene:
Looking up, Jack beheld a young woman with fine white hair that came down to her neck. She had a lean and slender figure beneath her black and purple uniform. Most striking of all, Jack noticed her purple irises ordaining her smooth narrow face; they gleamed with vitality, but made her appear exotically otherworldly. Checking her rank along her arm, Jack counted six bars, identifying her as a Master-Sergeant.
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| Better? Worse? I dunno. |
This text might be a grade more dynamic, but it's still plagued with some telling-not-showing details (especially describing her as "exotically otherworldly," that is two adjectives smashed together and that's pretty bad). Some time after writing this, I started to lay off of the semicolons and verbal phrases (although both are grammatically legal, I don't think they served me as well as I thought they did).
Upon re-reading some of these older writings, I found myself liking the older directions better. The purple-eyed woman, for example, was originally named Kara Storvy, but I was worried it might be a little too off or something so I renamed her to Kayla Naemora in another draft. Looking at it now, I seem to prefer the original name--Storvy. Even the original descriptive paragraph seems to read fine now, whereas the redrafted version feels more stylistically try-hard. Sometimes a simple style is all you really need.
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One of the worst descriptions I've written is the following. This was from a bizarre space-opera trilogy I attempted to put together: it was a very cringey, try-hard mess of nonsense, and for whatever reason my writing style was at its absolute worst.
One of the newcomers was a young lady named Ryla Corinthia. She was twenty-five years old with soft turquoise eyes and sandy blonde hair. She was slender and beautiful.
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| One happy...prisoner? |
This was wedged in the middle of a larger paragraph, where Ryla exits a shuttle and enters a labor camp. The AI image is a heck of a lot more colorful than I originally envisioned (and Ryla herself appears so dang happy despite the fact she was framed and her whole life fell apart).
The problem with the text is that it's so bland, so matter-of-fact, and so direct. There is no good narrative voice to this--precisely because it's a very objective type of third person before I really understood what omniscient voice should be. Calling out her exact age is a little too precise and it's not a detail anybody really needs--her being young is enough. The last sentence--slender and beautiful--seems so hasty, on-the-nose, and could be seen as another show-don't-tell violation. The more I look at this specific story, the more I hate it (although I like this character's name--Corinthia, would have been fitting for a Star Wars character, and Star Wars one of my influences for this).
My main character in this saga--Rathen Maddox--was introduced with this enthralling sentence:
Gerard looked around the mess hall like a predator. His eyes settled on a man sitting alone at the corner of the room; a big man with big muscles. He had blue eyes and messy black hair.
Rathen at the beginning is rather non-ceremoniously described in the most simplest of sentences: a big muscle man with black hair. It's as vague as can be. I likely modelled him after Guts from
Berserk, especially since Rathen starts this saga as a brute. He is a corporate scientist of some kind who was wronged though, so he has a classier background than this. Later in the story, after he escapes from prison, he gets to wear a nice suit with a gold cape...because why not? The outfit still stands out in my mind. This initial description though--it doesn't really say enough about this character, it's way too skimpy.
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| Missing from this picture: a cool diamond sword, because AI can't figure that out for some reason. |
I tried to rewrite this around 2016 or so, changing a lot of aspects of the story and its writing style. In the redraft, Ryla's introduction read like this:
Ryla spent hours turning on the cot, trying to find a comfortable position. While she was on her side, her turquoise eyes settled on her forearm. Her name was branded there in red ink, with numbers associating her with her criminal record and sentence. It looked like a tattoo made of blood. She still felt a residual stinging on the flesh, from the sentencing process. When the robot sounded out her file, she gawked at the machine and trembled. In a broken voice, she told it, “There has to be some mistake. I should be on Mitheria Sigma at the worst. But…Corjo?”
“There is no mistake,” the robot declared, before guards carried her to the cell. The unfeeling voice continued to haunt Ryla. Her crimes were minor, and she expected to be taken to a standard prison. When she recalled her sentencing, she realized that her incarceration on Corjo was no accident. Somebody purposefully arranged for her to be there. She was accused of spying on executives. Now, they made sure that she’d never reveal the few secrets she learned.
There really isn't much description to this, but later in the text she is revealed to have blonde hair. Bigger focus was on the branding on her arm, which leads into bigger details on the world-building and larger story. I was flexing more of the introspection here, to make the POV deeper, but there are still a few weak areas. One of the things that stands out to me is the line "she recalled her sentencing, she realized that..." and all of this could have been cut. It could have simply been left as "Her incarceration on Corjo was no accident." It's a bare thought, and we know it's hers, so deep POV is achieved this way.
All that being said, more description would have been welcome. It feels skimpy to me.
In this version, I gave Rathen a different intro. Descriptions are still sparse, but I was focusing on a more arresting scene with this.
The bunker contained a pit thirty feet deep, covered by a thick iron grate. At the bottom of the pit, Rathen Maddox sat alone in pitch-black darkness. His wrists were shackled, connected to chains that tied him to the walls. The remnants of his last meal cluttered the dirt floor by his feet.
In solitary confinement, Rathen appreciated the cold, damp air and the smell of Corjan soil. He rested his head against the pit’s wall, wanting nothing more than a clear, quiet mind.
It still seems skimpy, but like with Ryla's scene, I'm happier with the focus put on the introspection and atmosphere. That being said, this could have definitely used more. Even the descriptions that are used (like the "remnants of his last meal") could have been much more specific, to provide a clearer picture of this scene.
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Later Techniques
Some of the stories I tried to write in the last ten or more years have leveraged a variety of interesting characters, and as I learned more about the craft, some of the descriptions became more substantial. My style hasn't always worked, but it was an effort to stand out in some way.
For a long while, I tried to realize a dystopian sci-fi novel about a world where individuals have no independent thought--they are directly controlled by an omniscient AI. This book was called Thoughtless. I made the main character a blank slate on purpose, and in the course of the story he comes across a group of rebellious "deviants." This is one of them:
Leaving the car, Tom walked through the park. A few people walked on the stone paths and sat on benches. Children played on the grass, kicking a ball back and forth while laughing. Tom watched them in fascination. Even at their age, NORA spoke to them to make sure they were polite, made apt decisions, and could process through school adequately. Despite her presence, the children didn’t hold back from letting themselves run freely across the park and let shouts escape their lips.
When Tom looked at the few adults in the park, he realized that something was wrong. Somewhere between blithe childhood and apathetic adulthood, something was lost. He realized that it happened to him just as it had to everyone else. A part of himself was gone and would never come back. He never gave it any thought before, but he always knew that it happened. Now that he saw what was missing, he was disturbed.
He jumped in surprise when he noticed a woman standing next to him. He was even more startled when he saw how outlandish she dressed: fishnet stockings, a short black skirt, a denim jacket with patches haphazardly stitched at random places, a dirty midriff shirt that exposed her belly button with a steel stud in it. She looked to be twenty-five years old. Her face was smooth and angular, with sharp green eyes surrounded by black eyeshadow. Her black hair was slicked back with gel—spiky locks that pointed backwards.
Everything about her screamed deviancy—there was no way NORA would advise such attire to anyone. Tom’s suspicions became more and more valid when he saw the way she crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air.
Regarding the children, the woman sneered and said, “What a bunch of brats.”
Tom didn’t know what to say.
Running across the grass, the woman barged in on the game and kicked the ball away. It bounced out of the park and into a busy road. A car rushed into the ball—it rolled off its hood and continued to bounce away. The children gawked at her, their faces stricken with disbelief and dismay. Turning around, the lady walked back to Tom with a devilish smile stretched across her face.
Tom blinked rapidly. “What did you do that for?”
She shrugged and replied, “Because I felt like it. What, you got a problem with it?”
“I don’t know. It’s…”
“Ohh, I know, it’s deviant, right?” The woman smirked before rolling her eyes. “So, what? Will NORA arrest me for kicking a ball? Give me a break.”
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| Cyberpunk 2077, eat your heart out. |
This is still one of my favorite characters, precisely because I built her up as a literal punk. When I shared this text with some coworkers, one of them thought the clothing was rather risqué, but I have no plans on changing it. I was rather proud of the character's fashion choices.
I shared a lot of the scene above to demonstrate the actions and dialogue that best define the character--she's snarky. Defiant and rebellious, sure, but also irreverent and care-free. These characteristics aren't expressed with descriptors--they're shown through her actions and attitude.
Shortly after this scene, the antagonist is introduced in this scene:
Looking to the source of the voice, Tom saw a skinny figure rising up from a mattress on the floor. He was a lanky man with skinny arms and legs. Locks of messy black hair draped over his scalp, and partially covered his dark green eyes. He wore jeans and a black shirt. His sleeves were rolled up, and Tom saw that parts of his arms were bumpy and contorted—burn scars.
The figure looked Tom up and down. He turned to the woman and said, “Emilia, what did I tell you about picking up strange men?”
Shrugging, Emilia smiled innocently and answered, “Nothing.”
Few cool things going on with this scene: this is the moment the woman is positively identified by name, and the dialogue tags adjust accordingly. It might be a bit of a tropey shortcut to give a character scars and injuries to suggest a prior tragedy he endured. That is indeed the case with this guy, but I did design a backstory to explain the burn scars, which is connected to the motivation behind this character to oppose the AI called NORA. In this case, I think it would have serviced the story well. Giving the character scars without developing the backstory, however, would come across as shallow.
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These are excerpts are from my draft of
Heathen, which was penned as an experiment in genres. Feedback on this description were actually positive:
[Rook] stood up from his hiding place. Sunrays sizzled the back of his neck, and his brown leather duster felt like a hot blanket. Sweat droplets beaded on his clotted strands of black hair and dripped on his gaunt cheekbones. As he descended the slope, his steel-toe boots clomped on the hard dirt.
This is one of my first attempts to try and jazz up the style. Even though this is a mash-up between cosmic horror and post-apocalyptic fiction, the wardrobe befits the desolate Utah setting, and it invokes the western genre. One of my critiquers seemed to enjoy this detail, and I suspect it works not only because of the setting, but because Rook is a kind of rugged drifter comparable to western characters like "the man with no name." This is a case where writing what you know can be helpful--I knew what this character was supposed to be as an archetype, and I wrote to that image instinctively.
There is a backstory to this character, in which he had a daughter who became lost. To give him some kind of personal attachment to the past, I gave him a gecko keychain that she once had. But to add some (unusual) personality and symbolism, I kept harping on the lizard characteristics as a motif: Rook describes her as "his little gecko," in one scene she is described as scampering "like a gecko," and in one instance she makes a face:
She made her best impression of an unamused chameleon, her thin lips stretched and her eyes bugging out. How did she make each eyeball look in different directions like that? He had to laugh again.
In a way, I had hoped to describe this character as having a lizard-like face, although this seemed to prove weird and difficult. When she appears as an adult, I gave her the following description--whether or not this reads like she has a reptilian face might depend on how the reader envisions it, so it might not come across that directly. At this point though, giving her a lizard-like face might not be as important as, simply, describing her as a real human being.
Her wide face tapered down to a narrow chin. Her lips were thin, and the corners curled upwards as if always grinning. Locks of brown hair crowned her scalp, much of which was bundled into a spiky ponytail.
This novel has plenty of other vivid characters, probably my most eclectic cast of them (by nature of this being a piece of weird fiction). In another flashback, Rook's former wife is described with the following paragraph:
Trey Smith scowled at Gretchen, who stood in front of the TV with her arms crossed. Her platinum-dyed hair was an unkempt bob that covered one of her glowering brown eyes. Her lips were drawn into a frown across her round, squat face.
Later in the story, they gained an ally, although their initial meeting is terse. I had described this new character this way, but the AI image is decidedly a bit more badass, and chances are I'll tweak the description to match it.
From inside the cavernous substation, a single figure stepped out and aimed an assault rifle at Rook and Leigh. The stranger was a woman with puffy white hair. A pair of sunglasses covered her eyes, but did little to cover the winkles that invaded her face and stretched down her flabby neck. Her torn jeans and lightweight blouse were covered in leather patches. A heavy poncho hung from her shoulders, ordained in jagged lines and squares—some kind of Navajo stuff.
Lastly, I started a side novella for this series, in which Rook encounters a community controlled by a leader obsessed with chess. There is a bit of a whimsical Alice-in-Wonderland vibe intended with this, but the text doesn't really draw attention to it--I was purely interested in presenting the character's image as-is and letting the reader imagine how fantastic the scene could be:
Sitting at the table, the White Queen studied Rook with her ice-blue eyes. Her long white hair was tied into a large bun. Her white dress hugged her slender body, with ordered lines running down her figure. A white cape draped down her back and fluttered gently in the breeze.
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Experimenting With Techniques
Over the past few years, I've tweaked my writing style to try and deliver character description in a dynamic way that meshes with the action of the story and won't slow the pacing down. Part of this means sprinkling details between character actions and dialogue. The bigger focus, however, is that I lean heavier on the verbs. It seems droll to describe a person and their details when it's still--in life though, everything is always moving. Characters can breathe. Wind can sweep through their hair. Maybe something gets in their eye and they have to blink rapidly. Maybe they're just walking. Small, mundane moments are all opportunities to sprinkle in the essential details I like to cover: hair color, eye color, body type, height, and unique features.
I haven't received enough feedback to know if my style changes actually work, but I feel more confident in this approach than in describing static scenes. I feel that this technique can work in any POV--first or third. In first, it's a way for the character to narrate about their appearance without coming across as too out-of-place and without using the dreaded cliche of having them look in a mirror. In third deep or limited, it's still the character's narration, although slightly more detached (and therefore probably more natural). In third omniscient, it's simply the author's voice.
Here's an example of my latest writing, in a fantasy novel called Kings of Zeshala, where I've sprinkled the description with the action (and I noticed I spread the description out quite a bit):
Twenty yards away [from the sphinx], Willard Valda stood by a pair of camels, which rested on the ground and chewed cud. The overhead sun beat down on his sweaty black hair, and he pulled up his cloak’s hood. He had never seen a creature like the sphinx recorded anywhere before.
At its base, an even greater wonder walked in the sphinx’s shadow. A hot breeze fluttered the white cotton thobe that encased Emmeline’s slender body. Unfazed by the sphinx’s enigmatic origins, she explored the statue’s foundation, her sky-blue eyes scanning the rubble strewn around the sand. She looked up, and long strands of auburn hair brushed across her freckled cheeks.
She called, “Willy! Won’t you get over here?”
Keeping his eyes on Emmeline, Willard left the safety of the camels and walked forward, towards the sphinx. So long as he focused on her and kept his hazel eyes off the statue, he no longer felt unnerved. She guided him like an angel.
Honestly, I think this could use more description concerning Emmeline's face, although I kept most of the focus on keeping the story moving. This might be a case where it's wiser to let the reader fill in the details with their own imaginations, especially since I didn't have any more distinguishing details behind these characters.
Also, yes, a thobe is a thing, it's not a misspelling or typo. It is a garment that befits this setting and period of history. I absolutely had to do a few seconds' worth of research to find that word, but it's there to accurately describe the type and style of clothing, which will hopefully come across as authentic.
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Here is a scene I wrote where multiple characters are described in one big swoop. These characters appear in passing and might not be referenced again, but the descriptions serve to express the main character's disdain towards the pomp of royalty, and I wanted to use less-flattering details to villainize them to some extent. But since my main character has some sass to his narrative voice, and this was written in the style of a journal entry, this should hopefully come across as satirical.
Of course, the King’s advisor, Dolf Van Hordjen was present. Black pants squeezed his skinny legs, and with his bulbous gut nearly burst the gold buttons off his purple vest. With the fur-lined coat, he looked like some kind of disgusting fruit bursting out of a fuzzy shell. His round head protruded like some kind of pimple. The minute I stepped into the Duke’s court, Dolf’s beady eyes darted my way. When I smiled and nodded, his mouth twisted into a sneer.
Next to him was an exarch, who looked like a pale skeleton wrapped in black robes. A tall dark hat covered his scant strands of white hair, with a shawl draped from its rum down his shoulders and back. His thin, wrinkled lips were drawn into a scowl as his sunken eyes stared at me.
There were others who made it their business to stand in the Duke’s court: the treasurer, a captain of arms, some advisors. They all formed a line against the wall, in front of the Duke’s favorite tapestry—the one that showed King Krijers triumphing over the last of the Venkte tribes.
Finally, the Duke strutted into his court. His long-pointed leather shoes clapped against the marbled tile loudly. His fur-lined coat, dyed purple with red mandalas, sashayed around his lean body as he moved. When he shrugged the coat off, a servant immediately grabbed it and exited the court to hang it. In silence, he regarded all of us through wide eyes that appeared half-sleepy.
With a smack of his protruding lips, he asked, “Well?"
Character opinions can shape the reader's impression on other characters. Obviously, the above description is none too flattering towards anybody. If we switched to one of these other characters, they would likely describe themselves as handsome and Jurian as a goofy lanky stick man. If you read
A Man Called Ove, the attitude of the main character leaks into the descriptions, often assigning sarcastic nicknames to his neighbors to reflect his own intolerance. This is all the value of how you tell the story using voice.
Chronicle of Progress
Across many other novel drafts and short stories, I have dozens more characters who have had varying degrees of descriptions in varying quality.
Ultimately, the point of this post is for me to plop down my old and new text to see how far I've come. I've also been quite enamored by the AI images produced from my descriptions. No matter how interesting the characters come out (visually or otherwise), the actual written descriptions have evolved over the years. What was once a janky, unsightly chunk of exposition has gradually morphed into scattered impressions and moments that collectively build a portrait. Hopefully you can see examples of what hasn't worked in the past, and what might be working today.
Every writer handles this aspect differently, and even I might handle this differently story-to-story. In the end though, I am striving to make it as streamlined and dynamic as possible. Not only is it helpful to keep the story moving and interesting, but I also hope my characters leave a good impression.
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