#61: Long As Heck Character Descriptions

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Unless you have the magical touch of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of The Great Gatsby, then avoid creating long descriptions for you characters in any fantasy novel you write.  Long character descriptions may seem like the logical choice to make when writing any type of story.  After all, in most of our English classes, detailed descriptions were always the key to a passing grade.  Explanation of character actions, character arcs, and character description with the mandatory example or two added in from trusted outside information were the way to go for essays.  Why not in books as well?  The audience deserves to know how my character acts, thinks, and appears in order to better understand the story.  How could this logical thought process possibly backfire?

  The answer to that surprisingly is pacing.  When a person reads your story, it is best to present them with the juicy bits of the plot as soon as possible.  Exposition is a needed ingredient before the juicy bits of the plot, but overdoing it can create some nasty results.  If the build-up takes over three chapters or over fifty pages, depending on the story, the exposition has been overdone.  As a result the plot never has time to grip the reader.  Instead the reader is left basically reading a long, tedious character study essay that seemingly never ends.  You can guess where this feeling of boredom will lead to next.  The same goes for character descriptions.  Details need to be subtle with at most a paragraph describing the character.  Anything over that is a problem.

  Before I was taught this trick from personal experience writing short stories around the age of sixteen, this was a problem that plagued most of the content I created.  Every single character I created had descriptions that were either too long or so overloaded with details that it became a chore for anyone to read even a chapter of any story I created.  One story in particular, Monster Hunters, (which can be found on Watt Pad on my now inactive former account if you search long and hard enough), suffered from this a lot.  It was the worst in the important first chapter, where I introduced the titular overly mean main character Layla Bloom.  Looking back on it now, I still cannot believe I did not see a problem in it.

  Basically from what I remember the description went like this:  "Layla Bloom went into the sickly pink curtained shower with the scent of strawberries, ironic for her cruel behavior as the most popular girl in school, still present in her silky platinum blond hair.  Her light brown acorn colored eyes were shaded in regions of hate towards the unfortunate nerds like Frankie in her school, lust for her naturally beautiful looks passed down from her successful entrepreneur mother, and disgust that the high school she attended would not burst into sweet lava colored flames already.  Her lucky to be beautiful olive toned skin sparkled with the Dove soap she lathered on in dozens of foamy, bubbly layers.  Both of her legs were for the fortieth time not covered in must be shaved hair as by some freaking supernatural miracle Layla's platinum blond hair never was as long as Bigfoot's untidy mane of hair.  Maybe it was because Mother Nature had not made her a woman for being so darn devilish until the age of fourteen darn cycles of the Earth's naturally occurring rotations.  Layla was freaking perfect in her sin-filled, devilish, shoe shopping, low life mind of hers that would make The Heathers look like saints brought down from Heaven's Gate."  (In all truthfulness it was not that terrible, but still it was cringe-worthy from what I can recall.)

  If you want to introduce your character, do not attempt to do what the heck I wrote as a thirteen year old teenager.  (I am almost nineteen now.)  Keep the description short, but informative enough so the reader knows how they should see your character.  Having a sweet now and then is a good thing.  Having a boatload of sweets though will result in a lifetime of tooth decay.

 

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