Perhaps the most difficult thing for an author to do is to create a believable character, particularly the characters that appear in your book, who are the heroes and heroines, and the main focus of your whole story. As we've seen in previous lectures, these characters are very complex. They have personalities, and they change throughout the novel. The first part in introducing a character is to describe them. But just a basic physical description is very unsatisfying. And so we use different ways to describe and introduce our characters.
And then other questions as well. exactly when do we introduce our characters? Do we tell the reader everything at the beginning? Or do we slowly deliver the information over a couple of chapters or even longer This lecture, we're going to look at the various ways of describing a character to make them believable, and also interesting and memorable so that the reader can visualize them. Remember that the character doesn't exist until the author describes them. It's an obvious fact.
But it's worth noting. The reader knows just what you tell them, unless you tell them things that allow them to use their imagination to create the character themselves. We have to breathe life into them by describing them in various ways. Of course, the first level is used to describe them physically and directly. But this can turn a little flat unless you make it more vivid, using other words, adjectives and inventive phrases. It's clearly not enough to describe someone physically with flat nouns.
A man is tall and fat, and wears a brown suit. It doesn't really give a reader enough to go on to create a memorable character. Inevitably, we can use adjectives with the noun to try and make it more vivid to allow the reader to visualize the character. But even this leads us into a dangerous area. We could say a man is incredibly fat. But it uses an adjective in a way that good prose tells us is not the right thing to do.
We find ourselves writing cliches. For example, a man is as fat as a barrel the use of welding phrases is frowned upon in good prose, because the reader comes to our novel, or story, to read something new not to reread cliches and well known phrases. So descriptive adjectives should be used very sparingly, and they should be unusual or fresh, or used in unusual ways. A novel way to describe the character is to describe the objects around him instead. What kind of objects to see the character use? or prefer?
What kind of objects are in their house? Or where they live? Do they have objects of art? Or are they just purely for utilitarian reasons? practical and useful? What color are most of the objects preferred objects can show the likes and dislikes in either design color, or the way they're used.
This is a great help to describe character because it allows the reader to exercise their imagination. Empty the contents of an imaginary woman's handbag and describe what's inside it. Is it organized or is it rather messy? Did she choose a handbag with pockets or just one big bag and everything is just thrown on top of each other? Is there a diary? Is there a book full of phone numbers?
What kind of makeup is in there? Does she have trinkets or extra pieces of jewelry? You could put a man character in the situation of taking a flight. He can take one bag, just one piece of carry on luggage. Because the size of a carry on bag is limited. You can only take so many objects, what would you're carrying to choose and why?
When we are focusing on physical details of the character, we can accentuate one aspect or a feature. This will help the reader to form images visually more easily. The readers really need to see a character to feel that they are real that they know them in some way, so they can identify with them and follow them through the story. For example, instead of writing his legs were thin and weak. We could write it hardly seems possible that those legs could support him. They could simply snap at any moment.
Kind of humorous. It doesn't say that the legs were thin and weak, but it's pretty obvious. He may be a big fat man, but the indication that his legs could snap tells the reader what he needs to know, to create that image. Many authors describe the face first, and use prominent features to indicate character. Often when we meet a person in real life, we look at their face first, and then in the next second or two, we'll quickly scan down to their feet and back up again. We can use the prominent features to indicate a person's character.
What features could describe a cruel face or an arrogant man? an aristocrat a prince or a king or a queen narrative can be used for some of the features instead of describing them directly. As it becomes more difficult as more features are described. Different people have different body types and body types and the way that they move tend to be attached to certain kinds of personalities. Different people move their bodies in different ways. How does a shy person stand?
A shy person doesn't want to stand out, he'll tend to stand behind things or in the shadow of something, or try and make himself appear a little small. A very tall person may stoop a little bit, then this head down, and his shoulders may be rounded because he's a bit self conscious being so tall. Nervous type will not stand still. You look around he'll move from foot to foot. We could describe the way a person eats and the kind of restaurant that he likes to eat in. This can indicate his class, how much money he has, and other character traits, like does he eat messily?
Does she eat very slowly and very daintily taking small bites. The way we walk is another indication of our character. Every one of us walks a little differently. And not only this, some days we walk differently from the previous one, because of our mood, or because of something that's happened that's unsettled us or made us very happy. We can either drag our feet along or we can walk on air. The secret of a good description is not just Describe a physical feature.
That feature should be attached to an element of the character's personality in such a way that it sticks in the mind of the reader. In this way that feature and the attached personality traits will be remembered because it will be interesting. So the description should say something about the character's personality. He held his head high, with an expression of slight disgust, as though there was a bad smell in the room. This person may be upper class rich or aristocratic, but without a doubt he feels himself superior. Finally, Don't be in a hurry to describe your character.
It really isn't necessary to describe a character right from the beginning. Reveal character traits slowly over several seams, and many pages using the various means that we described. When we meet a person in real life, we don't understand or know him very quickly. It develops over time, and it should be the same in your story. Other ways that you can show your character include other people's dialogue, or with other people's actions, other people's reactions. For example, a man walks into a store, and several women turn to look immediately we know that this man is very attractive.
Another technique often used and somewhat cliched is to use the idea of a character looking at themselves in a mirror. Either admiring one part of their feature or two Trying to change one part of it never really being happy with the way they look.