(Part One) – (Part Two)

Character description doesn’t stop with the character. We’ve looked at tone and how important details are and how expectations work, but that’s all been focused on the character and the character’s role. Character description has a part to play in the story beyond that, though. Yet it can be dangerous; exposition is always dangerous. Let’s consider, therefore, the role of character description outside of description and the dangers of exposition, finishing with a brief look at my personal style.

Not Just for the Character

Character descriptions don’t work just as descriptions of the character described. They also describe the world around them, provide a warped mirror for it. The way that Gandalf is described at the beginning of the Hobbit by Bilbo provides wonderful characterization not just of Gandalf and Bilbo but of the Shire’s perspective on such things: “Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off in to the Blue for mad adventures? …I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.” This segment of dialogue isn’t just setting up these two characters; it’s establishing the Shire-world in which Bilbo lives (and that Gandalf is a disturbing element therein).

The way a character dresses, lives, and thinks is going to be in various ways consistent or inconsistent with the way his culture, his world, works. He may be exceedingly conventional, as Bilbo is, but that conventionality speaks of what the Normal of this place actual is. He may be quite unorthodox, as Bilbo becomes, but that unorthodoxy (and how other characters view it) also speaks to the Shire’s character.

Remember, the world is composed of people and what people do. Nature also is important, but nature influences and is influenced by how people act- cold-weather clothing as character indicates at least the expectation of cold weather. Regardless, the world of your story will be characterized by how people within it live and appear. This power may concentrate in your protagonist, particularly if he’s off alone in the wilderness of Hyboria or outer space, but who the character is speaks to what world he lives in.

This effect can become quite clear in the tone of a character. Imagine Bugs Bunny in Middle Earth. It doesn’t quite work, does it? The character of Bugs Bunny goes from humorous to annoying; even the lightest merriment of The Lord of the Rings– I’m thinking Bombadil- has a groundedness that Bugs Bunny lacks. Try another transplant: put the main character of a horror novel into Bugs Bunny. The way the horror character is described changes, doesn’t it? The character is part of the world, and therefore the world and character share a certain substrate of commonality- or at least a specific relationship.

One element of character description that displays this effect quite clearly from the author side is the characterization we can accomplish via the observational biases of the viewpoint character. In third-person near or first person, the details the narrator notices are part of his character description; the way he sees the world and the person he is are intertwined and overlayered. Character description speaks to the world, but world description speaks also to the character.

Exposition is Dangerous

Exposition is a necessary part of writing. It carries the information quickly and efficiently; it allows us to set up the rest of the story and fill in the world. It tells us how far Minas Tirith is from Lothlorien, how many routes there are into Mordor that don’t involve circling around to its southeast (two-and-a-half, if you’re wondering). If you don’t include that information the story breaks.

Let’s be honest, though, sci-fi and fantasy, particularly fantasy, have a reputation for pages on pages of introductory exposition, for sprawling histories that some readers love and some hate and most vaguely skim. Even if we’re not talking genre fiction, I’m stalled out right now in a book that has that precise issue. See, exposition is usually boring. It doesn’t appeal to the reader; he doesn’t have a reason to particularly care about much of it. He likes the characters, but exposition isn’t about the characters he likes. Even when it is, it’s dry, not the living, moving figures that he cares about. Actually, exposition is a distraction from plot and character, and not a pleasant one.

Character description can easily fall into the trap of exposition. On the first meeting, particularly, we have an impulse to dump a paragraph or five of description. What color is his hair? How tall is he? What clothes is he wearing? Does he breathe softly or not? Is he good-looking? Why? Why not? We want the reader to know it all. It’s understandable, and giving in is death to the character.

See, nobody cares yet. Nobody cares what the character very technically looks like; they are just mildly interested (hopefully) in who he is. Remember how the who, not the what, of description is the most important part? We have to keep that in mind. We have to restrain the exposition and work on characterization. Sometimes that characterization comes in part through expository description, but that must be a choice for a purpose, not a default.

Here we should employ tools like indirect description- implication, particularly useful for character traits and backstory-, imagery and style, and spreading the description out through a scene, starting with a bare minimum and subtly adding drips and drabs within the action and dialogue till the portrait is finished. Using the point of view creatively is also helpful; as noted above, what a character notes is characterization for them, not just the thing they’re seeing, allowing you to turn exposition into characterization in yet another way. Even stories without involved viewpoint characters¹ can benefit from this by relaying the observations and assessments of character in dialogue and internal monologue.

Some Personal Advice

I’ve gone over principles and patterns in the previous part of the series. Now I get to briefly summarize some important elements of my own approach. This may not work for you. Different stories and different authors are going to have different approaches. My approach isn’t the best-for-all, it’s the best I’ve found for my specific stories. Further, as you’ll see, it’s not a simple, cookie-cutter thing in itself.

In reviewing the story-draft I’m currently working through, I find that my main character, besides being named in the first line of the story, is described very minimally over the first scene. Leaving aside plot, it takes about two-hundred words to find out the first detail to add to a presumed humanoid nature: he has a sword. That same paragraph hints at a touch of backstory.² If we limit character description to appearance, the first bit that is even debatably character description appears fifteen-hundred words in.³

This sparseness of detail is a product in large part of my choice of POVs. I write, as noted above, a third-person near POV (with an occasional splash of the omniscient variant). I also use multiple perspectives, but the first chapter uses only one of them. The main character pays no attention to his own appearance, and so the narrative does not. On the other hand, in those first 200 words I did spend forty-ish words, spread across several sentences, to describe another set of players in the scene, including the first brief mention of an important antagonist. It’s an in medias res opening, after all, if not so much so as Why Ought I to Die?

A more lengthy description of my protagonist will only come later, when I switch perspectives to the secondary protagonist (deuteragonist, if you wish). His third-person near viewpoint does look at the first protagonist from the outside, and thus we see him through the second POV’s eyes.

I still try to avoid description dumping, however. A sentence maybe, and then I move on, continuing the action and plot the description arrived in the midst of. Then, as the story continues, incidental details and momentary observations color the outline in. Thus I mention the secondary protagonist’s hair color seven chapters in, significantly after his introduction, in context of the primary protagonist assessing him. Thus too I emphasize certain plot-important details (and how they change). Am I perfect at it? No. Am I good enough? Hope so!

When it comes to side characters, meanwhile, I oftentimes give more thorough, more deliberate initial description. In the chapter I’m currently working on, I introduce three antagonists with each their own paragraph, one with two.⁴ These descriptions, though, I’ve taken care to make characterization and worldbuilding too, and their length is an aspect of the viewpoint character’s perspective; his reaction to them is part of the description. The description also tends to be more thorough with more inhuman characters, given their inhumanity.

Conclusion

Character description is a near-vital part of writing, and while not the most difficult part, it can be tricky. We must take care always to bear our goal, the story, in mind, not to get bogged down in the exposition only we care about, to use every bit we can to do more than one job. Character description, well done, blends through characterization into worldbuilding into plot, building a vivid, coherent image, communicating precisely what you intend and allowing the reader to paint it in the colors which carry the meaning best for him where you don’t provide the paint. It’s a powerful tool, then, and one we would be remiss to ignore.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – See this article for a look at POV types.

2 – Incidentally, I consider backstory character description, but I’m excepting current-events therefrom because they are plot.

3 – This is a second draft, and thus very liable to change. I don’t see this particular element changing much, though.

4 – ^