How do you even make effective physical character descriptions?

Most of that is meaningless, abstract nonsense. It stinks. It's fluffy nonsense.

Wrong.

It tells me what your character looks like, but now I need to know more. What is she doing? Where is she? Why is she here? How is she interacting with other characters? What is the effect she has on the environment around her? Actions speak louder than words, even in a written medium.

Oh okay I'll rewrite it to your liking

>The girl has a young pretty face and blue eyes and her hair is black. She has big breasts. She looks really girly.

Is this more your level?

>It tells me what your character looks like
It's almost like we're in a thread about physical character descriptions.

>he doesn't plagiarize all of his book's character descriptions from other people's characters role playing games

I'm chuckling about your stubbornness here. It's not very good. No one gives a fuck about your ego and no one will give a fuck about your writing if you can't describe things in ways that don't make it obvious that you're trying way to hard.

>Looking at her produces a similar contradiction as when one runs their hand beneath hot water and thinks momentarily that it feels cold instead.

See? That's nonsense.

No, it's pottery.

Only one of those was me

>See? That's nonsense.
Have you never ran your hand under hot tapwater and it felt like it was cold? Or vice versa? This is something that happens to people who are humans.

lmgtfy.com/?q=hot water feel cold

It's okay to be jealous, wordlet.

No shit. But what kind of metaphor is it for describing a woman other than one that's utter shit that you're too blockheaded to realize and accept as such.

>But what kind of metaphor is it for describing a woman other than one that's utter shit that you're too blockheaded to realize and accept as such.

you right
how i learn write good like you

Only describe physical traits if they signify something important about a character, such as why they act or are treated a particular way. In most cases it's best to keep these descriptions short. Let the readers use their imaginations.

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts." - John Greenleaf Whittier

So this... is the power... of Veeky Forums... whoa...

Why is this long description necessary? Why do you feel the need to write in a grandiloquent manner?

Start by being less of a snarky faggot oozing with undeserved self-assurance and learn how to craft metaphors that actually make sense.

>Why is this long description necessary?
This character is an empath research subject whose first readings involve sexual fantasies her researchers have about her, and generally the story involves her being sexually desired by lots of people and her being conscious of how it feels

If you're asking why I the author wrote it that way it's partly because I'm male and I'm fascinated with pretty girls

Then in this case, the less description of her the better. Let me imagine my dream girl, don't insert yours into my thoughts. Don't hold your reader's hand.
You can tell me she has soft hair, big doey eyes and little dimples in her cheeks, but any more than that and I'm not interested anymore.

I'm not interested in catering shallowly to everyone at the expense of narrow but deep appeal. You'll just have to choose another book if you like to imagine the main character has stinky rotten feet or whatever you're into.

Fine, write a diary, but don't be surprised when no one reads it.
If getting readers is not your goal though, by all means, good luck to you and have fun.

I'm sorry, foot fetish user.
Maybe I'll write a character just for you.

Since I'm the only smart person itt: Let a female character describe him. Mention the characteristica 'by the way'. People have fairly good perception subcociously

>The one with the black hair.
>The tall one? He's cute

The perspective of your story will determine the details you mention. Say it’s 1st person and your character is gay. He’s going to view the woman he passes by differently from the guy who jerks off to internet porn every night.
Even if it’s 3rd person, the voice you write in will dictate the details you being before the reader. The genre, the context, the purpose, etc. will dictate the few details out of the possible thousands you can choose from.

Descriptions are unimportant, the most relevant thing is how the physical appeareance of the character affects the protagonist (or the characters we're trying to develop through this).

Be as descriptive as possible fren

Physical appearance is crucially important, you're a megabrainlet if you can't understand why.
Humans form all of their first impressions based on looks.

If it weren't for the commas I would be convinced this is Cormac Mccarthy's writing

Seems like a familiar idea.

>Refuses to be concealed by Mortal Kombat

Jesus fuck, user, who are you trying to impress?

Don't listen to these other faggots, you are right. That description is not good.

Just another matter of opinion. Here's some concrete pros and cons:

Descriptive
Pro:
Your characters have a known appearance which can appear in the mind's eye of your reader and resonate with them.

Con:
It is easy to lose a reader with a description that annoys or fails to appeal to them.

Vague:
Pro:
Your reader gets to make up the appearance of your characters, allowing for the reader to sculpt a notion of your characters that is more endearing to them personally than anything you could make up on your own. This is similar to the mute protagonist of video games which the player projects his or herself onto.

Con:
If your work is ever adapted into a popular medium, they will politicize or cheese up your character by filling in the blanks. To be fair they do this even when the appearance of a character is known.

Incorrect.

No.

>If your work is ever adapted into a popular medium
Solution: sell book rights repeatedly, but when they come back for the film rights, don't sell it to them

Your talent shines in the utterly invisible pastures of nowhere. You'd do better to put down the pen which you might or might not hold in the palm of your hand much like a 3 year old simpleton. Might I add that the pen is, I suppose and wager, rather slim like Kid Cudi's jeans, and writes with ink that possesses a hue much like the ocean on a warm summer day on the Ivory Coast, but not quite as blue as the sky on that very same and dry day.

Your ability to take criticism equals your skills in writing, which as I have said, are non-existent at most.

In short you suck, your descriptions suck, and using complicated language and forced metaphors won't make you a better writer. All it shows is that you're full of yourself. I knew that you're one of those "if you don't like it you're retarded" fuckbois by the time I finished reading your excerpt.

Fuck, this made me laugh really hard.
Thanks, user.

Do people like the sort of stealthy description of a character through lines that primarily advance the plot? "As he creeped round, he was conscious that his jet-black hair was easily recognised against the snow," that sort of thing.

I like those, but again it's a matter of opinion. Just do what you do best.

I already apologized that I didn't include your foot fetish. Why are you still so emotional?

I prefer quick introductions to give a general impression of a character, and if a specific trait is important or unique (or comical) enough then have it reappear occasionally

Something is banal as hair would just seem out of place unless it were important to the story

I'm not even the same person fuckboi.

.

shut up

You are so butthurt about the criticism you got not being up to your expected asslicking that at this point one can only point at you and laugh.

If you want to do that, what works best in my opinion is giving a general outline of the character, and then filling in the blanks with your method.

I don't really like your example though, because people are not really aware of their hair color. It's the same as realizing my eyes are the same color as the leaves. You just take it for granted and don't put too much thought into these things. Now if the character was wearing a hat, or if it was his black tie we're talking about, it would feel more natural.

I'm not sure if I can fully explain my views with this comment right now, but I hope you get the idea.

Hope you guys are saging.

FUCK YOU, get OUT of my thread you fucking foot fetishists. Are you gay for me? Leave me alone, I bet you can't write better than me anyway.

too verbose

This is gay

Nah, I want to give this faggot an assroast, exposing as many people as possible to his shit.

...," he typed with his keyboard that had the color of death: black. His fingers would have moved with the speed of light if it was possible, but it's not, thus what you see in your head when I say "really fast" must suffice. His breathing was heavy, as heavy as a dozen large stones and half as many smaller ones. Taken out of context, one would imagine he was the victim of horrible abuse at the hand of IS in a small town found not anywhere but in Syria. He was overweight and he carried this burden with pride, made obvious by his tits that hung onto his dust laden belly. His swollen tits were situated between his armpits, humid with sweat, as a larger-than-life depiction of an Amazonian jungle, only with quarter as many critters.

By the time he typed his post he was tired, as tired as a crossfire enthusiast who hasn't talked about his pull-ups in the 5 minutes that went by with the relative speed of time. He stuck out his arms, and so his torso and shoulders enclosed 90 degrees, not more, not less. The cold autumn wind crept into the four-walled room through its open windows which were opened and closed 2 times a day, 14 times a day. He was suddenly cold, as a man is cold in cold wind, cold wind that lacks the qualities of a warm wind. Warm wind, -he thought under his fedora as circular as a basketball's silhouette on the 2016 NBA playoffs when the warriors blew a 3-1 lead- warm wind is better, warm wind is what one experiences with his skin on a warm 20th of July on the banks of the Danube in the shade of an unknown tree with no fruits. "Yes," he said with a voice that belonged to him and no one else, "this goes into my book."
He pressed x=(24/2)-(2*5) keys to switch the tabs; soon his .txt was before him. And so he typed, really fast, and it began yet again. An act repeated many times, reflecting the regularity of his life, but not the originality of an adventurer's own.

Autocorrect killed it but it's still better than OP's shit.

Dumb phone poster

It's not. It's more important how the characters react to it. And how they perceive it. Objective descriptions are usually uninteresting.

You express yourself clearly, user. The example the other user provided would make more sense through the perspective of another character.

I forget which writer said this, but basically if you don't describe your characters at all, the reader's mind will just make something up. There are a lot of times in writing that you can avoid description to stoke the reader's imagination.

What if I only describe my characters by how gay they look?

fix'd
>>Hair like obsidian frames her young face and flows on and around her generous breasts, hardly contained by her bustier, and ends just above the shapely bow of her hips. Thoughtful eyes oppose a childish pout.
She is a threat to masculinity, that's how attractive she is.

>he looked like a cruel impression of a human made by a prepubescent boy toying with the random button in oblivion.
I use this line to describe all characters in my diary.

I don't like it

Fucking kill yourself cringy retard

Why does Veeky Forums get super jealous about superior prose like this? One day if you work hard you might be able to write something close to that, so stop being bitter like women.

I liked it

I don't really describe what my characters look like, apart from sometimes alluding to hair/skin/eye colour. I don't think it's important. Because I write 90%+ of the time in first person, I don't think it's realistic for a character to notice their friend's hair or eye colour, unless there had been a sudden change

So sick of reading shit that's trying to sound clever. All post modern literature is making this mistake. When you try to sound clever you sound like an assshole. Be honest instead. And when in doubt, compare the person to an animal.

Nothing you wrote describes what hair, skin, or clothing is like. I'm not sure you're even describing a girl. I can tell you spent a lot of time on it but why are you so afraid of pronouns?

That's all literature, and even then, you're going to have to do better than this anti-boner paragraph.

god awful

this whole paragraph is real shit

I don't know whether this is serious or not, but I'm going to treat it on good faith. This is a bad description. You should read / write more until you can tell that intuitively. In the meantime here are some specifics:

>nearly mirrorlike lustre

'nearly mirrorlike' puts the shine at a bizarre remove: it's luster isn't like a mirror, it's almost like a mirror? This description is inferior to and superfluous alongside the one you give later – see below.

>contradict...

There is no contradiction in the description: intelligence and childishness are compatible.

>superficially suggests childishness

'superficially' is holding your audience by the hand / hitting them over the head. You already alluded to a 'contradiction,' so you only need to mention the two opposed things, without having to tell us again that the impression of the second is belied by the first.

>periphery trusses

Bad phrase, axe it.

>course over milkwhite shoulders

People do not have milk-white skin, unless they're covered in full-body makeup. If this is hyperbole, the text doesn't suggest it.

>like bands of polished carbon fiber

This phrase makes the previous description of the hair obsolete: it is far superior to the awkward formulation you used first, but by now is redundant in recapitulating the color and shine of the hair. If you include this, remove the former.

>it spills around a bosom

Hair doesn't spill around breasts. I'm not sure you can spill around something: over, to the side of?

>whose size and buoyancy refuses to be concealed by mortal garments

IDK what to say about this, just get rid of it.

>girlish femininity

First, this is just a bad phrase, since it's borderline redundant. The only way to make it not redundant is to emphasize 'girlish' as opposed to 'womanly,' but you've just gone over her large breasts and curvy hips, which are not girlish features. So the 'in all,' as if this is summarizing the impression you're trying to give, doesn't work.

>as to be masculinely threatening on first glace.

Does this mean that she's so feminine she is threatening as a man is threatening? or that she threatens men in their masculinity for being so feminine? Added to the ambiguity, neither option makes any sense to me. I simply do not know what either would look like, or what they mean.

>Looking at her produces a similar contradiction as when one runs their hand beneath hot water and thinks momentarily that it feels cold instead.

What is the contradiction you're comparing the reaction to the water to? That she's both intelligence and childish [is that a contradiction]? Or is it the feminine/masculine contradiction? If the latter, she should evidence some sort of masculine features, which she does not [she even has clichéd feminized attributes, like a pout]. If you want to keep the hot/cold water comparison, fine, but phrase it better.

After reading this (long!) description, I have very little notion what the character looks like.

I don't put a lot in to physical descriptions. There will just be a sentence here about the character having crow's feet, and another there that they have graying hair, and maybe a third that they haven't shaved in five days or something.

They're boring to read so why would I write a dedicated paragraph describing how someone looks?

the only problem I have with this is that if this is just a character description, your other descriptions should be just as detailed, lest you look like a giant faggot building your perfect girlfriend in your prose

subtlety. dont go directly saying things about the character, but talk about the characters parts, and the whole of it will be what you want them to think. for example, if your character is a coward, don't say the look cowardly, say their eyes squint like they are paranoid and searching, say they peek out around corners like a rat, etc etc. give them metaphors that make them *think* coward through association.

this is bad. you want to say she's beautiful but a little threatening? this is not how you do this. you use all these wordy words that are full of syllables and letters but don't really add anything to the picture in someone's head. you want to be thinking about that picture, not fapping with words.

Her black hair shines like the summer ocean. It covers her eyes the way a kid shyly hides in a book. It drapes over her shoulders that look like the bedding in a hotel, all white and neat and clean and fresh. It drapes over her tits like opening night of a burlesque show. I want to fuck her but she looks at me and I have to look away, she's too fierce. Looking at her is like running your hands in cold water and feeling hot.

bam, fixed it for you.

I usually only need vague descriptors to make an opinion in my head of what a character looks like.

If you go describing every little feature, you lose me.

All i need is hair color, ethnicity/race, stature, body type, and one or two idiosyncrasies and I'm good to go.

i think it's very effective to introduce basic and defining ones initially and then sprinkle them throughout the rest of the story

going into some detail is fine, but make sure that if you do you do it at a characters introduction. Later, and you're reader may have come up with a specific mental image for that character.

-her hair is black. The ocean is blue. Contradicting images. Black hair usually shines in spots as it reflects light, so it's more like the shining of stars on a dark night. Small bright spots on black.
Black hair that shines - blue ocean and sunshine
Black hair that shines - dark night with stars
The latter two doesn't conflict.

-When a shy kid hides into a book her face is covered and her eyes peek out once in a while. Hair comes from the top of your head, it cannot cover your face but leave your eyes peeking out unless done on purpose. Just say that her hair covered her eyes and it gave a shy impression.
Eyes covered by hair, face shows - face covered with book, eyes show. Contradicting images.

-Her hair is black. Why liken it to white sheets? Drop the white, leave the color of sheets unspecified. Even then it's risky because hotel sheets are often white.
Black hair - white sheets. Contradicting images.

I like the burlesque show line. Curtains in theatres are often dark red, that's much better than blue on yellow, or white, as in the former instances. I'd have said her hair hangs over her breasts like curtains over the stage, but that's just my bullshit.

The pacing is good, a lot better than OPs.

If you were going for contradictions on purpose, I understand that, but that's OPs stupidity. If you hammer a description full of conflicting images the reader will start to wonder what the fuck she actually looks like. Her hair was black but there's also blue like water in sunshine and white like sheets on a hotel bed, what's up with that?
It's the same error as telling what the subject was not, instead of telling what it was. If there's no consistency in the pictures you use, the reader will have a hard time imagining what you meant.

Ironically, OP wants to project an exact idea of this woman. He wants the readers to imagine her the way he, the writer did. That's not going to happen unless you write solid similes and metaphors without conflicting images. The best and easiest way to do it when describing something so specific is stating what it is with no bullshit.

>Looking at her is like running your hands in cold water and feeling hot.

This sums up the contradiction in her looks. No need to overdo it. You already have these:

Black - shines
Childish shyness - intelligent eyes
Childish shyness - huge tits
Hot, fuckable and feminine - frightening

You can cut all that shit and these 4 points complimented by the summary will make her contradicting features clear.

All in all my advice is to think in whole images and don't try to separate their qualities. Otherwise you might end up with conflicting images.
If you write "shined like the ocean on a sunny day" the reader will imagine it all: the water, the sun, the bright atmosphere, his idyllic cliche. You can try and separate one aspect, the shining itself, but it's no good, the reader has already painted that bright picture that conflicts with everything dark and black.

I don't describe my characters in a void
>she had long black hair
no
>she said, brushing her long black hair from her face
yes

You can literally fill an entire book just with description of one character and it will still be never even close to a small resolution picture, so long winded descriptions don't make any sense, unless they include more than appearance with intelligent prose, and don't read like descriptions.

So basically a big chick that looks shy. Who the fuck needs the rest? By the next page you forgot about her freckles and voice unless it's repeated again.

>not using both perspectives to characterise your POV characters at the same time

Good post.

Also a good post although one can easy overdo it and make it sound gimmicky.

I think you fell for the bate. There is no way someone can in earnest write something so inept

"she is pretty lol"

GRRM/10.

Is still better than some long ass description as if it were a race horse. Add some shit about body type and hair color and you provided the reader with enough to let the fantasy do the rest.

This thread makes me reassured about my own writing, and also makes me feel more confident about my views regarding literature: it seems most of Veeky Forums's criticisms come from people who write like this or find this kind of writing proper.

It's not like you really compete with Veeky Forums writers who dream about writing books while writing shitposts.

This is real writing, which is to say non-photodefeatist writing. Yes cameras and paintings exist, no that doesn't mean you have to give up on producing strong imagery in your book. Ignore wordlets upset by it.

True, but this tells me I'm not at the bottom of the shit well.

>getting an ego boost reading opinions that were created to bait replies.
This is a new level of pathetic

>there are Veeky Forums wordlets who glaze over details which are crucially important to the human psyche, such as character descriptions or characters having sex, because they think doing so makes them a more 'proper' writer

Do you honestly think there aren't any honest opinions here? Then mine isn't one either and you're the one being baited.

the ocean shines with streaks that remind me of hair. its not the color im bringing attention to, but the lazy summer days that feel calming, like i imagined her beauty to make you feel.

the white i was referring to her shoulder like in the original post ("over milkwhite shoulders"), not her hair. but yeah i guess it was unclear?