How to write a character description. The Best Character Template Ever (100+ Character Traits!) 2022-11-04

How to write a character description Rating: 9,6/10 1387 reviews

Writing a character description can be a fun and rewarding task for a writer, as it allows you to create a fully realized and believable character for your story. Here are some tips for how to write a character description that will help you bring your character to life on the page:

  1. Start with the basics: Physical appearance is an important aspect of a character, so it's important to describe your character's age, height, weight, hair color, eye color, and any other notable physical characteristics. But don't just list these details - try to use descriptive language to bring your character to life. For example, instead of just saying "She has blonde hair," you might say "Her hair is a golden blonde, falling in soft waves down her back."

  2. Consider personality: A character's appearance is only one aspect of who they are. To truly bring your character to life, you'll also need to consider their personality and behavior. What are they like? Are they kind or cruel, shy or outgoing, serious or lighthearted? Try to find unique ways to describe your character's personality, rather than just using generic adjectives.

  3. Show, don't tell: It's important to show your character's personality and appearance through their actions and dialogue, rather than just telling the reader about them. For example, instead of saying "She is kind," you might show her kindness by having her help a stranger in need. This helps the reader get to know your character more intimately, and makes them feel more real.

  4. Use sensory details: To make your character descriptions more vivid and engaging, try to include sensory details that help the reader visualize and experience your character. What does your character look like? What do they smell like? How do they sound when they speak? The more sensory details you include, the more fully realized your character will feel.

  5. Use dialogue to reveal character: Your character's dialogue can also reveal a lot about their personality and behavior. Pay attention to the words they use, their tone of voice, and their body language when they speak. These details can all help the reader understand your character more fully.

By following these tips, you can write a character description that helps bring your character to life on the page and makes them feel fully realized and believable to the reader. Happy writing!

How to Write Amazing Character Descriptions (with Examples)

how to write a character description

His hat was laying on the floor — anold black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid. The dim glow behind her outlined her supple figure through the wisp of silk twisted about her loins, and shone vaguely on jeweled breast- plates. That was all for today! What are some of your favorite great descriptions? Here are some tips that will help you out! Think of me as your personal guide along the journey to telling YOUR version of the story. Do describe your characters beyond their objective physical traits. This question is very important. So you don't need to write a character description. Readers always appreciate originality, and giving a character a pithy, thematic description often feels fresh.

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The Gigantic List of Character Descriptions (70+ examples)

how to write a character description

Dickens includes physical appearance alongside tics and shortcomings, to make a character stay with us. But a potentially less common question is, how the heck do you go about introducing those fascinating characters? This is the sort of information someone could likely glean from a short conversation with your character or what the government might gather from a census. Strengths, weaknesses, and abilities are very vague terms but are quite important. Picking out a physical trait about the characters is standard for a character description, but then a narrator goes on to notice that it rarely but not never moves with her pulse. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.


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Writing Character Descriptions

how to write a character description

Do they have a button missing? She had lips that made him think of the strawberries in his garden, and sunkissed skin that he imagined had no tan lines — unknown. Give them a quirky personality and some If I write about a woman who collects buttons, which she then leaves behind on the body of every man she murders, you will probably have a very distinct idea of what she looks like. The green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals indicating two directions at once. Great character descriptions are a crucial part of any screenplay, and a meaningful way to get your leads to stick out. Reveal it through action or dialogue later.

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10 Ways To Write Character Descriptions That Hook Your Reader — webapi.bu.edu

how to write a character description

The Twits by Roald Dahl 4. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. This sort of description is brings life better to otherwise cardboard characters. You want to use description only when it makes sense. But it also illustrates a narrator with a not-so-objective opinion of him.

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First Person Character Description and How to Write Character Descriptions

how to write a character description

A walk that both belonged to and was remote from everything around it. When little direct action is taking place, recording the character's thoughts or conversations keeps the reader engaged. GENEVIEVE, a woman on the cusp of forty who wishes she spent her thirties eating, drinking, and praying instead of working as a mortgage lender. Does it have any tears or old stains, indicating perhaps this is a favorite shirt? Describe characters using action To avoid expository lumps in character description, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison does exactly this on the opening page of her novel, Jazz: I know that woman. This should also include clothing and any other accessories, such as hats, watches, necklaces, and piercings. The more details you know, the better you can pick out the unusual ones to share with readers. Sometimes she put her hand over her mouth and laughed, her eyes closed and her shoulder shaking.

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Tips for writing character descriptions

how to write a character description

Work them in there little by little where it makes sense. He hardly seemed to be breathing at all. He was my height—five feet eight and a half inches…He weighed a hundred and fifty pounds, a galling ten pounds more than I did, which flowed from his legs to torso around shoulders to arms and full strong neck in an uninterrupted, unemphatic unity of strength. Character description for Teen Fiction In teen fiction, character descriptions are everything. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms…sent its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. Body language The way that someone carries him or herself gives us an important clue about their personality. A villain needs depth and development, just like any of your more heroic characters.

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How To Describe A Character: 14 Questions To Ask Yourself

how to write a character description

Although stay away from stereotypes, especially when it comes to race, ethnicity, and other minorities. Raises a tankard in salute. Charles Dickens, Hard Times 1854 , p. Like it's complicated just for the sake of being complicated rather than being good writing. When she tucks a chunk of her near-black bob behind her ear, Kimmy really notices her scars: the tissue tight and shimmery. His appearance is nothing new to her.

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Here's How To Write Character Descriptions + Examples

how to write a character description

Here are some ideas on what those attributes might be. A man made out of coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. One question people often have about character descriptions is how do I integrate them into the narrative? None of that is needed. Not perfect by any means. Practice Makes Perfect This should go without saying, but practicing your description will go a long way to becoming a better writer.


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How to Write Great Character Descriptions (with Examples)

how to write a character description

So first of all, we're going to talk about what a Click to tweet! No way to show it right now? And I think it's just a very lovely detail. Croup likes words, while Mr. The same applies to your characters. His hat was stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall off every moment—and would have done so, very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of every now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it back to its old place again. To do this, choose a character archetype and flesh that archetype out into a full-fledged person through descriptive language.

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