Bonus points if the author first mentions a specific trait, physical build, or whatever else halfway through the novel and totally fucks up my mental image.
I don’t expect a biology model description for each character, but write me something brief and evocative of how they should look, you fucking dork author. I don’t even know how tall she should be, her hair colour, anything. Why are you like this, author?
Because it’s awkward and easily done in ways that can come off problematic. If you’re describing an attractive character you end up coming off horny, if you describe an unattractive character you come off mean. If you’re describing an attractive character of another race then you come off horny and fetishistic. So I guess a lot of author just opt for being vague on details.
Sorta sounds like a skill issue to me? I’m not asking for stats on the roundness of pert buttcheeks either though…
Whaaaaaat? You don’t want a sci fi author to be like “this is Eric; he has black hair and is tall, this is his buddy Paul, he’s muscular but of average height, this is Alice, she is also tall with almond eyes and has gigantic gazongas”
I believe character descriptions became a big thing in the time of physiognomy – when Balzac narrates someone’s physical appearance, he wants you to extrapolate the character’s personality from that. Physiognomy fell out of fashion and if there is no other motivation to provide a description, like signalling someone’s class position or injecting a bit of lyricism, it’s simply economical to leave it out. To provide a counter-example, Mary Gaitskill always writes exactly one paragraph of description in her short stories which you can just skip because it’s not properly integrated into the story as a whole.
This has always bothered me.
Bonus points if the author first mentions a specific trait, physical build, or whatever else halfway through the novel and totally fucks up my mental image.
This really gets my goat
I think a rule should be, if you are gonna describe, do it early ffs.
Read Raymond Chandler’s novels and you’ll get vivid descriptions of everything except what the fuck is going on
the dispossessed by ursula leguin mentions a character having fur or something similar like halfway through the book and until then i thought all the characters were humans living on other planets, not aliens. got a kick out of me
Vintage example, fuck
deleted by creator
The thing I like in her book is HILFs (Humanoid intelligent life forms) are generally all referred to as men/women/humans etc (especially given everyone shares a common Hainish ancestor). Like in the Word for World is forest the people of the colonized planets are basically green furred monkey hobbits, but they’re written about with the same dignity and respect as Terran humans.
HILF
HILFILF
deleted by creator
Very similar to the Culture series by Iain Banks: had the same reaction to almost the same description of a character having a layer of fur a good way into the book.
To be fair, I didn’t know that in the Culture most “humanoid” beings are just referred to as pan-human with a few aliens as exceptions like the 11ft tall, 3 legged, armored Idirans.
i deleted my comment above because i just said the same thing basically lol
i forgot it was “pan-human”. and as soon as that character was described with fur my brain broke and i just saw her as a catgirl for the rest of the book
I don’t care for a person’s biological appearance, but care a lot about how they dress and their idiosyncrasies.
Some of it, at least when it’s about the protagonist, is that it’s easier for readers to imagine themselves in their shoes. Which is why, even with drawn fiction, the protagonist has a generic/formulaic appearance.
Many books also lack detail in dress and idiosyncracy terms =)
Uh does that really work though? Do people actually "he just like me fr fr
" and project for the whole runtime? Is self-insert protagonist a big thing in written fiction??
I cannot imagine this being real…
Well, obviously, it’s because the writers intend the audience to find him easy to relate to.
I’ve always thought this blank-slate approach was really pointless, because whatever traits you give your blank slate will alienate someone in the audience. Kind of like a statement “YOU MUST BE THIS CISGENDER, HETEROSEXUAL, WHITE AND NEUROTYPICAL TO RIDE”, you know? I also just cannot imagine trying to project myself over what is ostensibly a character with in universe autonomy though…
It’s not necessarily the main reason, but it’s a reason. Tons of stories, I’d even argue that it’s most, don’t even venture into someone’s sexuality, race and neurotypicality. Readers generally don’t care, as long as it isn’t shoehorned in just for the sake of ticking boxes because you want to have a vibrant cast.
All these characteristics bring their own baggage with them, and thus conflict. If you’re focusing on a story about a parent choosing to move on from losing their partner and having to remarry to make ends meet, sacrifice their own desire for love for the well-being and future prospects of their children, just as an example for conflict. Then giving the character autism, or an ethnicity that’s being discriminated against in that society, or any other characteristics; then it might take away from, diminish or even undermine the story you want to tell.
In longer stories you can have different character arcs that allow for more nuanced characters and sub-plots. Weaving all of that together in a cohesive whole is a skill not many writers possess. Heck, if you’ve ever frequented fiction aggregate websites you’d know that the top user created lists are collections of stories that lack any and all romance.
Do people actually "he just like me fr fr " and project for the whole runtime? Is self-insert protagonist a big thing in written fiction??
I used to think this was utterly lame when I was younger, then I began to notice not many of the characters I read had particularly strong personalities. I much prefer characters I can’t see myself in because just like in real life you’ll have people who are majorly different to you especially in motive.
Kinda depends on your definition of “see yourself in”, but yeah I get a lot of mileage out of being in the headspace of different characters narratively
because it usually isn’t necessary for the story
Death to America
I’m pretty sure older works were very heavy on physical descriptions. And then moving pictures came around, and readers didn’t care as much about visual characteristics as they did the plot.
If you read Victorian era stuff, FFS they don’t stop describing how things look.
and readers didn’t care as much about visual characteristics as they did the plot.
Por que no los dos?
Older text was more visually descriptive. Dunno what else you’d like, comrade.
“What I’d like” is probably not good and kinda scary =)
Idk, I read a lot and this is never an issue for me. Is it really such a hassle to reconstruct your mental image of something? I’m constantly considering and imagining characters as different builds, dressed differently, sounding differently, depending on how the context of the scene paints them. And by the end of the book I have a pretty firm mental image of what the character is like, born of a thousand iterations which finally and slowly merged into a cohesive whole.
You can just tell me what a character looks like down to the specific material of the buttons on their shirt, but that loses out on a certain amount of speculation and imagination. If a character who has so far had no reason to perform extraordinary physical feats suddenly finds it necessary–and possible–to lift an immense object, for example, my mental image is like “oh wait so he’s jacked” which introduces a kind of ‘twist’ entirely in omission.
It’s not a massive hassle I guess, but I would rather have something firm to construct the mental image in my brain around, I guess. Plus sometimes context of the scene can paint characters in ways that contradict how I read them, subjectivity.
Again I’m not asking for detailed biology class models or tailor’s receipts, just more than literally nothing. I like when I can glean details from the narrative like the strength example you give, but lots of novels don’t even have that, y’know?
Usually I’m not interested in what made-up people make-believe look like unless it somehow drives the plot or develops the characters’ relationships.
Glad I’m not the only one who thinks this way. It seems to be so common to not have physical descriptions, that I was wondering if this was normal and I was the weird one for being so visual. There are some people with aphantasia, after all. I can see if they want you to use your imagination, but then you can’t just suddenly mention something half way through the book that totally messes up my mental image! Ugh. Books are basically mental movies playing in my brain while I read. It’s jarring to have to recast suddenly in the middle of the movie.
Yeah exactly!!! To me “using your imagination” is not “I’m giving you nothing so freestyle it until I contradict your mental image”, seriously.
I think it varies by genre, but I see the problem in lots of places & I hate it.
It’s a modern (like within the last 100 years trend) convention, right?
Victorian authors make it very clear exactly what everyone looks like. And if the character is anything but English, they do so very racistly.
Angloids
I find that describing more than one character in detail really kills the pacing of a scene - and even describing one character requires a moment of downtime in order to fit in. So for example, if I have three characters, I’ll describe one in detail and the other two in passing in the first scene, and then in later scenes I’ll find a slow moment to describe the other two.
Writing physical descriptions is kinda it’s own skill. I can’t do it until I’ve actually drawn/seen a picture of a character, otherwise I really struggle to visualize them concretely enough to verbalize. Tbh even with people I know irl, I’d have trouble describing them without a picture in front of me.
Modern styles tend to be more action/plot oriented with less time devoted to florid descriptions of random stuff, so some authors may feel like if they write a physical description they have to justify the attention to it. And it’s easy for things to get cringey. Like, if you give characters appearances that “match” their personality traits, that has potential to be problematic, then you’ve got the horny/objectifying types, and then there’s, like, weird/uncomfortable analogies. For example, I remember reading some Philip K Dick and seeing the absolutely horrible, objectifying descriptions of female characters, while his male characters are barely described at all. Physical descriptions not being in style could be a reaction to various forms of cringe
Is that a sort of aphantasia too?
I am getting the sense that there’s a big fear of cringe in this description thing, though. Kinda sounds like a skill issue…
I don’t think it’s aphantasia in my case. I can picture things in my mind, it’s just that it’s hard to come up with descriptions without it in front of me. It’s the same way you might take another bite or drink of something while trying to describe how it tastes. I can remember generally how a wine tastes the next day but it’s a lot less vivid than when it’s on my tongue, and it’s kinda the same way with visual images of people.
I think it is a skill issue, but like I said it’s kind of it’s own skill. I think it’s possible to be a good writer while being complete ass at describing people. I do think it’s a skill that’s possible to learn tho, so there’s not really a good excuse for it.
I vaguely remember avoiding detailed descriptions of my characters writing fanfic because I didn’t want people to think I was horny for my characters. So I went pretty far in the other direction.
Oooh-la-la, a potbelly, so sexy ~
idk man, I was a kid trying to avoid any accusation of sexuality in fan fiction.
And I was just commenting an absurd example of a character description, that might make people hot and bothered for their characters, to bring some levity
>writing fanfic
>not horny
In seriousness though, would describing your characters inherently imply awooga on your part??
People could claim that and I was very cagey. Still am, but in different ways
