~tstrangeauthor on Instagram~
Oh, to dramatically look in a mirror and discover an increasingly relevant truth about myself. If only I were the main character, but that role is taken by you. But yes! Character descriptions are needed to, well, imagine the character, and they can be very difficult especially in first person, so here are some ways to introduce descriptions and some ideas for what to include!
Mirrors. They’re valid, and they can be done right. However, they’re easy and as a reader, I can find it boring when a character is just staring at themselves in the mirror, admiring their features often in great detail because it’s usually not how people do it.
Ok, it’s first person and don’t want to just start listing hair colors. Here are some other ways that are more exciting then a mirror but do the same thing!
Storefront’s windows
Puddles/Bodies of water
Glass orbs/ornaments
Polished things (floors, boots)
Makeup mirror (still a mirror, but good for focusing on more up-close facial features like if they’re important)
Other people’s eyes ( “I imagined how he must see me, just another red-scaled draconian with a fondness for gold”)
Screens (black phone/TV/computer screens)
Facetime/zoom (cue Google Meets flashbacks)
Photographs
These aren’t the only options obviously, just ideas :)
You can also bring it up just casually. Like “She struggled to tie her short-hair back” or “I could feel my skin burning from the sun through my shirt.”
The most important thing as a reader (imo) is skin color/texture, size, and hair color/texture/length. These give me a very basic visual of a character, and tbh, most other stuff I just make up in my own head cuz I forget it and lets be honest, you don’t notice eye color on a first meeting.
*Remember to remind your readers throughout your book of your character’s physical traits
Some more unique/rememberable things to bring up in your characters appearance for a vibe
Nail polish/other makeup
Acne! (please give your characters acne or acne scars!)
Literally anything other than Smooth Baby Skin 0 People Have, and If They Do Then Lucky Them!
Clothing! Basic, but important! (Clothing helps with setting too! And character dev)
Piercings/Tattoos
Jewelry
Face structure
Smile/teeth
Body hair
Again, list is limited! Anything I missed/you wanna see, add it to the comments! Hope this helped some of you and catch you on the flip side
“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”
— Ronald Reagan
“You have to meet people where they are, and sometimes you have to leave them there.”
— Iyanla Vanzant
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”
— Nathaniel Hawthorne
Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress
You time-travel back to 1348, accidentally bringing your phone. About to take a photo, you notice: “1 available wifi network”. (x)
In the near future, the secret to time travel has been discovered - in order to travel back into the past there needs to be a ‘receiving station’ at the other end - explaining why nobody from the future has been observed up 'til now. The first such 'station’ is about to be completed. (x)
You, a young scientist have discovered time travel. You think it would be a great idea to go to medieval times, share your knowledge and become king. On your first visit, you meet a king and he introduces himself with a polite fist bump and greets, “bro you discovered time traveling too?!” (x)
In the future time travel is finally achieved, but instead of being used by preventing disasters, time travelers are known as historians, who are trained since birth to blend into environments and answer history’s unanswered questions. Maybe we can see the universe’s creation. (x)
Time travel exists. By law, every citizen is given one day they may repeat on loop until they get it right. This morning, you found your spouse looking exhausted and crying. “I can’t save you. I’ve tried hundreds of times.” (x)
Since you were young, time travelers have visited you. One of them explained that, in the future, an algorithm determined that you were the only person in the past that it was safe to visit because no matter what you do it will not change the future. You are determined to prove them wrong. (x)
Having developed time travel in secret, you find yourself stranded alone in the 1800s following your test jump. Walking amongst the crowds on the cobbles of Victorian London years later, you pass someone humming a Beatles song. (x)
In an effort to prove to your friends that time travel is possible, you tell Siri to remind yourself to travel back in time to the present day, at your current location, in 1/1/2100, if time travel has been invented by then. Suddenly, a strange capsule materializes before your eyes. (x)
A time traveller attempts to explore the far future, only to be intercepted and trapped in a time prison. The rest of the prison happens to be populated by the countless recursive instances of a single time traveller’s attempts to break themself free. (x)
A friendship between a time traveler and an immortal. Wherever the time traveler ends up, the immortal is there to catch him up to speed. (x)
–
Masterlist | WIP Blog
If you enjoy my blog and wish for it to continue being updated frequently and for me to continue putting my energy toward answering your questions, please consider Buying Me A Coffee, or pledging your support on Patreon, where I offer early access and exclusive benefits for only $5/month.
Shoutout to my $15+ patrons, Jade Ashley and Douglas S.!
Tightening your sentences and getting rid of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives does not mean writing short sentences. You can have a long sentence without any adverbs or adjectives and you can have a short sentence with too many. Tightening your sentences just means that every word has to matter.
Character development doesn't refer to character improvement in a moral or ethical respect. It refers to broadening the audience's understanding of that character, giving the character a deeper background, clearer motivations, a unique voice.
Developing a character is about making them seem more like a real person, and real people are flawed. Real people make mistakes. They repeat mistakes. They do things other people don't agree with. Real people are more than just 'good' or 'bad' and character development is about showing all of those other aspects of them.
Their interests and hobbies. The song that gets stuck in their head. The fact that their vacuum broke 3 months ago and they haven't gotten it fixed yet. All of those details help build out the character and develop them more.
And yes, characters change as stories progress but that doesn't mean they get 'better' in a strict moral sense. It means that their experiences change the way they interact in the world you've written for them. Just like real people do.
“Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.”
— Winnie the Pooh
“Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework.”
— Felicia Day
I'm just a weird girl who likes to read about history, mythology and feminism.
207 posts