Character description in fiction is essential, and it should strike a balance, providing enough detail to make characters unique without overdoing it.
Characters are the most important element in fiction. We need to know who characters are and what they are like. However, over-describing characters can act as a roadblock, hindering readers’ ability to form their own mental images of the characters. It’s important to strike a balance in describing characters. There should be just enough description to make them unique, but not too much to make them sound like a catalog of descriptive terms.
William Shaw, in episode 42 of the Write Now with Scrivener podcast said, “I think half the trick of writing is to put things into people’s heads. If you over-describe, you make it harder for them, because they have to take in all the details you give them. If you say, ‘tall man, blue eyes,’ they put the rest around that.” Too much description can feel like telling rather than showing. Sometimes less is more.
Much modern fiction features that sort of character description. In Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, two characters are briefly described at the beginning of the novel. “Didn’t seem fair on the young lad. That suit at the funeral. With the braces on his teeth, the supreme discomfort of the adolescent.” And, “A cropped cashmere tank top, thin gold necklace. And black sweatpants fitted slim at the ankle. Not elasticated, she hates that. Bare feet.” Both of these descriptions say enough about the characters that readers can start forming images of them in their minds. As the novel progresses, they learn more and build on these first impressions. Just like when we meet people; we don’t catalog their attributes, we get first impressions and expand on them over time.
Character description in first-person narratives can be difficult because most characters see no need to describe themselves. But in The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler has his protagonist, Philip Marlowe, describe himself in the first paragraph of the novel:
“I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.”
A few pages later, Marlowe encounters a young woman who gives some more information about him:
“Tall, aren’t you?” she said.
“I didn’t mean to be.”
Minor characters don’t need to be described much, but a few deft traits can paint a good picture. Again in The Big Sleep, Spade encounters a butler. “He was a tall thin silver man, sixty or close to it or a little past it.” He later sees a driver outside. “The boyish-looking chauffeur had a big black and chromium sedan out now and was dusting that.”
He then meets General Sternwood, who is “an old and obviously dying man watched us come with black eyes from which all fire had died long ago, but which still had the coal-black directness of the eyes in the portrait that hung above the mantel in the hall. The rest of his face was a leaden mask, with the bloodless lips and the sharp nose and the sunken temples and the outward-turning ear-lobes of approaching dissolution.”
Character description doesn’t need to occur all at once. As Marlowe is conversing with Sternwood, Chandler drops in additional character traits that add to the earlier description. “He put his thin bloodless hands under the edge of the rug.” And, “He moved his thin white eyebrows.” And, “The pulse in his lean grey throat throbbed visibly and yet so slowly that it was hardly a pulse at all.” All this adds up to a fleshing out of the character, but also serves to punctuate a scene with dialog.
Character description goes beyond the physical; it also includes the way people speak, the gestures they use, the clothes they wear, how they move, and how they interact with others.
In The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James never describes the protagonist Isabel Archer. Instead, he builds this character from the effect she has on others and their reactions to her beauty and intelligence. Readers form an image of this character based on the social dynamics of the novel, rather than through details. In this way, it can be easier for readers, especially women, to identify with the character. Even though she is described by others as attractive and intelligent, James treats her as an archetype, a new one for its time: an independent woman, who doesn’t need to be described physically.
In a series of novels, character descriptions can be handled differently. Peter Robinson never describes his main character Alan Banks, other than a few brief statements such as, “who didn’t even look tall enough to be a policeman,” in the first novel of the series, Gallows View. But readers get to know the character through more than two dozen novels through his actions: his obstinacy, his relations with others, and his love for music, which is a key element of his personality.
Lee Child’s Jack Reacher is a tall man, about 6’ 5″, and, while Child never fully describes him, he drops tidbits throughout the series, both of his physical appearance and his habits. Explaining that he travels with just a passport and toothbrush, and never washes clothes, preferring to buy clothes from second-hand stores, says more about the character than any physical description.
Saying that a character has a specific tattoo, an uncommon hairstyle, or a distinctive way of dressing says more about someone than describing physical attributes like height, hair color, or eye color. Finding unique traits to distinguish characters also makes them memorable, even if these traits aren’t repeated throughout a novel.
When working in Scrivener, you can use character sketches to store information about your characters. You can compose full descriptions as backstory, then choose bits of that information as you describe your character in your project.
Description can provide readers with a glimpse into the appearance of characters, but it’s their actions and words that truly make them memorable.
Kirk McElhearn is a writer, podcaster, and photographer. He is the author of Take Control of Scrivener, and host of the podcast Write Now with Scrivener.