The protagonist appeared in the doorway, dressed in a magnificent golden helm and with cerulean eyes shining fiercely. If something about that sounds a little cheesy to you, then you’ll be happy to hear that we’re spending this episode talking about character descriptions. Joined again by special guest David, we discuss how much description is too much, too little, and just right. We look at the pros and cons of waiting to describe aspects of a character, and what happens when you focus on one aspect to the exclusion of others. Plus Oren feels silly that he doesn’t know what cerulean is.
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Thanks, this was really interesting. I’m working on a novel where the male romantic lead doesn’t get a physical description until the point, about a third of the way through, where the female romantic lead first notices that he’s attractive. He’s an active character from the beginning but he’s her employee and she takes him for granted, so it seemed that it would be odd to draw attention to the fact that he’s handsome while she’s interacting with him in a completely platonic way. I’ve scattered a few little facts to describe him physically before that point (tall, under 30, strong) but the reader will realise that the character is intended to be attractive because a character becomes attracted to him, rather than me just telling them.
For instance, you could say a girl had fiery red hair, a widow’s peak, big, dreamy hazel eyes, a magnificent complexion white as snow, a small nose, and pillowy cheeks, OR you sum it all up by saying she looked like a barn owl.
Something like that sounds like it would work in a more comedic story (like having that first bit of description as the setup, and the next bit as the punchline). You could even follow it up by noting how, later in the scene, she ‘blinked owlishly.’
In regards to the love interest eye description trope, I just read a short story by Dan Simmons in which the male schoolteacher protagonist starts narrating the eye and body description of a sixth-grade girl. That’s a hyperloop to Creep Town if there ever was one because, unfortunately, the trope played out as expected.
In fact the whole anthology this story is a part of is making me very glad we’ve changed how we write women since 1996, when it was published.