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.
Just your average El Presidente. |
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.
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).
“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.
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.
Better? Worse? I dunno. |
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.
One happy...prisoner? |
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.
Missing from this picture: a cool diamond sword, because AI can't figure that out for some reason. |
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.
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.
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.”
Cyberpunk 2077, eat your heart out. |
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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