A friend and fan asked me last week what one of my characters looks like. After giving it some thought, I had to admit that I have no idea. In fact, I have only a shady idea of what any of my characters look like. I know how they think and how they feel, and I know how they view the world; but their faces? Not a clue.
My characters are more like well-defined silhouettes for me. They have no faces.
By contrast, I visited a writer’s board a few weeks ago where a writing “expert” went on at length about how to develop physical profiles for your characters, using known actors or your own acquaintances as prototypes. Until that step is completed, this “expert” argued, you can’t have flesh-and-blood characters.
Hmm. Yet another example of how different authors’ processes work, and of how there are no hard and fast rules in any art form.
I wish I could say that my characters are deliberately faceless—part of an intentional statement on my part—but that would be lying. It’s just the way it works for me. Now that I think about it, I don’t notice faces all that much in real life. I’m notorious for failing to recognize people I’ve only recently met. I don’t say this with pride—in fact, it’s embarrassing and arguably hurtful, which is never my intent—but I remember conversations and mannerisms far more readily than I remember faces and names.
In my writing, I’m a limited third-person point of view purist. As the author, I work hard to keep myself out of the story. Every scene I write is filtered through the eyes and personality of the character who’s living it. As such, it’s difficult to make any casual observations about physical attributes. They would seem out of context to me.
As I write this, I am sitting at my desk, wearing blue jeans and a blue and white striped shirt. I have a hairline that doesn’t exist anymore, and I have a graying goatee on my chin. Those are the facts, but none of those would factor into a scene I wrote about a guy writing a blog post at is computer. The POV reality would be the thoughts flowing through the character’s head as he wrote, and, because I’m channeling the characters feelings, I might include something about the temperature of the room or the comfort of his chair. But why would I work in the clothes and the beard? How would that be relevant to his world view? I suppose he could scratch the beard and reveal it that way, but unless it contributed to character or plot, that passage would likely not survive my final edit. My number one rule: Never stop the flow of the story.
In the Jonathan Grave books, we know that Boxers is huge and that Jonathan is wiry because those are observations made about them by other point of view characters. We know that Gail Bonneville is “hot” and that she’s got great legs, because that’s what Jonathan first notices when they meet. And we know that she’s got beautiful eyes. But a face? Nope. At least not on the page.
Yet I hear from people all the time who are ready to cast the movie version of the books. (No, no such movies are in the works. Dammit.) Readers assign their own faces to characters as they read. Given the knowledge of beautiful eyes and great legs, readers can plug images from their own passions, whether it’s their current squeeze, or a favorite movie star.
This is a good thing. If one person is seeing Matt Damon in their head when they’re reading about Jonathan Grave, and another is seeing Clark Gable in his prime, does that mean I’m not doing my job as a writer? Or does it mean that I’m enhancing the imaginative potential of the story?
I’m probably not the best judge for such things, but here’s the God’s honest truth: No matter how you describe your characters in your story, the effort is going to be wasted on me because faces aren’t important. What’s important to me is the character’s heart and soul. Sell me on those, and I’ll hang on your every word.
While I may think of a particular actor as my role model for a character starting out, physically I spend very little time describing the character in the story unless the story requires it. For me, this extends to a character’s manner of dress. Some writers can go on and on about the kind of lace or fabric or whatever makes up the person’s outfit. I don’t give a flying fig about that as a reader, and its not something I dwell on as a writer because I’m interested in what’s going on in the character’s head. Again, only if it matters to the story and to the character for some reason do I use that info.
Of course it probably depends on what you’re writing. I learn how fashionably uncool I am when I read a friend’s YA stuff which usually mentions the latest fashion trends and designer names.
I’m solidly with you on this, John. Detailed descriptions of a character’s appearance and physical features are the parts of the text I skip over. As a reader, I’m the one turning the story into a little movie running in my head and I’ll chose what the character’s look like. Over the course of a 4-book series, the only physical attribute my co-writer and I gave to our lead character was the color of her hair. And the only physical feature we revealed about her love interest in all four books was that his eyes were a deep blue. And yet, I can’t tell you how many emails we’ve received from female readers who say they were in love with him and could picture him perfectly. If that’s true, they’re doing a better job than me because we never described any other physical features. What we did do was let them “see” him through they eyes of our main character and through his actions and reactions.
I’m a firm believer that a reader’s imagination is a billion times more affective at projecting that little mental movie than any confined, limited description I can write of a character’s physical features.
What I do like to see is a writer tag a secondary character with one or two physical attributes that either compliment or contrast to their personality. It helps set those characters apart from the others in the story.
I thought that’s what writers do- open the door, share the vision, and let the reader in on the ride. I usually have a general idea of what my people look like in my head, but that isn’t necessarily what others would “see”. I’m like Joe, more of a “tags” person. A couple of things that instantly pop a character into mind. as you bring them on scene. Jim Butcher does that with Harry Dresden and the Dresden file characters. A couple of words and you have a character (even a place) pop into mind.
I like that readers have room to “see” things…I like that when I read, and physical attributes are definitely secondary to character and character development.
One important rule I go by is that if you give your character a distinctive physical trait, do it early so that the reader doesn’t form his or her own counter-vision of the character. If someone has conjured up Pierce Brosnan and you suddenly introduce a shaved head a la Kojak, it would be jarring.
Ironically, I think minimalist description works for Leads, but more detail works for minor characters. IMO, it’s good to describe them in ways that characterize and add to mood.
As I write, however, I want a complete visual and audio in my head. I find that when I cast the character (and get an image from, say, Google images to match) and start to “hear” the voice, the character takes on life in a way that’s original and organic.
It will be interesting getting comments on this post, John. I think there will be a split. I’m on your side. I never even tried to picture Jack Ryan from Tom Clancy’s novels until Alec Baldwin played the part in Hunt For Red October. Then I had to readjust to Harrison Ford in the same role.
But my wife and others have told me as readers, they want to know what my characters look like.
I think this may be one of those topics where you can’t please all your readers.
I’m with you and I agree with James, too, that minor characters sometimes need to be fleshed out more, perhaps because they’re “on screen” for such a short period of time.
I had dinner with a friend of mine this summer who I hadn’t seen in a couple years and at one point she asked me what Derek Stillwater, my series character, looked like. I turned it back on her, asking her what she thought he looked like. I got an interesting answer, not quite how I envision Derek, but close. And I left it at that. I provide clues and traits and I’m always mildly surprised when readers–in this case a few women–have said they have a “crush” on Derek. Well, that’s good, I think, even if it sort of puzzles me.
as a reader, i do enjoy brief descriptions of characters. i have a picture of jack reacher, for example…jack and his collapsable toothbrush. lee child has really developed that character nicely. right now, i’m in paris with myron bolitar…coben’s physical character references are woven into the story…knowing he’s ex-basketball….he “ducks to get through the door”. so now, i have a visual of him as i’m reading. i don’t need the “dark hair curling over his forehead”…or “piercing blue eyes like shards of ice”…but i do appreciate generalizations of their physical attributes. i agree with JSB that secondary characters need more details…i see that in tim dorsey’s characters….all 40 of them…even tho’ they are secondary…he does get pretty descriptive…adds to the humor of his whacky stories. kathy d.
I love this post, John. It reminds me about a loop discussion I had with some authors when I connected the dots on character descriptions. Most readers (me included) fill in the gaps of what the author writes and what they perceive in their minds. They fill in details of setting, character faces, clothes, etc. That’s the beauty of this whole process. And they filter all of this through their life’s experiences. There’s a writing process – ELLE. ENTER LATE, LEAVE EARLY that is about not writing so much detail that you slow the pace. Like the Law & Order TV shows, you don’t see the cops driving to the crime scene usually. They ENTER LATE and are shown standing right over the body with the action already in progress. And LEAVE EARLY is when they forehshadow their next clue or red herring with “We better check out the wife”. ELLE is the same process, in that the reader only needs a hint of setting or a character’s image or action to get their minds working. Like Joe said, our minds work like a movie.
I’ve written characters using real people before–and those descriptions are certainly fun and make that character pop off the page for me–but IMO such detail slows the pace and is a distraction unless the character’s looks somehow affect the story that much or the discription had an interesting literary feel.
I once wrote a story that had a gay secondary character in it. He was perfectly normal looking, sounding, and the way he looked wouldnt stand out either. The only thing different about him was his lifestyle, which was part of the storyline. But a secondary reader of mine (before I was published), saw this character as Jack from Will & Grace or her hairdresser. She wanted me to make him swish when he walked and saunter down a pier, such a stereotypical image. I couldnt get her to see how I envisioned him. Finally I gave up trying and realized that nothing I wrote would ever change her mind. That’s how SHE saw gay men.
So like you and others have said here, descriptions might not be the best use of your time when it comes to pace and what’s most important in a good story.
Hey there, Mark–I think women crush on men more for how they act and think, rather than their physical appearance–at least in books. In person, that first impression is important, but on the page, an aggregate impression over a series of scenes can build on the image the reader has in their heads. And that will either be a good thing or bad. 🙂
I can recognize faces OK, but I have a terrible time with names. And this comes from a high school teacher who routinely gets 60+ new students every semester.
You’re absolutely right – embarrassing and hurtful.
That said, I can’t imagine my characters faces either. They’re like ghosts in a hoodie. I know them, but I can’t seem to see them. I started grabbing photos of actors to fill in some blanks but I don’t know useful it will be to me since it’s not natural.
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Last night my 12 year old and I were having a bit of fun with the Redwall books he is currently reading. We read the dialogue aloud in the voices we thought it sounded like. What we found interesting is that even though we had both listened to the audio books before reading the books we still both had very different ideas of how the characters voices sounded. I think this carries over to visuals as well.
Recently someone asked me what my female protagonist from 65 Below looked like. Lonnie Wyatt is tall, shapely Korean born Alaska State Trooper. I had a picture in my mind, but could not fully describe it in detail so I searched Google images for scores of Asian actresses to compare her to. The best I could do was an amalgam of half a dozen Chinese, Korean and Japanese women but even then none of them really looked like Lonnie does in my head.
In other words, the character is an individual with looks totally her own. She is only and instantly recognizable as Lonnie Wyatt. If someday 65 Below becomes a movie then whoever gets cast in that part will become the face of that part. But to me that actress will always just be an imposter.
In my last manuscript (for which I’m still seeking representation) I described my main character as 5’10” with his boots on. This is the only physical description I gave. And yet all of my readers seem to know EXACTLY what he looks like in their heads. My wife even developed a bit of a crush on him. In my newest manuscript the protagonist is a woman. The only reason I know exactly how she looks is because I saw her in a dream, playing out a pivotal role in the story. Despite that, I’m still leaving her description very vague because I know that readers will ‘want’ to see this character in a certain way, and that it will be different depending on who’s reading the story.
The tragedy here lies with the author you spoke of in the OP. This person has taken it upon himself to force others into his way of thinking, which in many cases may be wrong. His careless words may actually damage some gullible amateurs. Imagine, after reading his advice, that a writer spends the first paragraph of his novel giving a physical description of the protagonist. Consequently, no one buys the book because the amateur placed so much emphasis on unimportant character description. Agents and editors look at the first paragraph, roll their eyes, and send out the ‘no thanks’ letter. After fifty of those, the poor schmuck gives up on the book that may have launched his career.
Very interesting.
I find that the limited 3rd person view does not lend itself to character physical description for the reasons you note. Additionally it is challenging as any narrative voice is/can be out of place. Just picked up your most recent release (on the newly released paperback kiosk front and center at B&N!) and look forward to learning from your technique(have completed first draft of first work).
That being said just started ‘Girl with the Dragon Tatoo’ and the description of the female protagonist was brilliant and really pulled me in. Alos think of the charaqcter Clete Pucell for those familiar with J.L. Burke. In some cases, when done with skill the physical descriptions can be , IMO, atremendous enhancement. As you said… no hard and fast rules.
Thanks for the thoughts
I have no idea what my main characters look like and I like it that way. Like John said, the physical is sketch, the heart and soul is what I see and want readers to see. They give my characters faces, but I never have. I do not know what Winter Massey looks like after four Winter Massey books.