Our characters come to life with our descriptions. Some of us are better at it than others. Frankly, every once and awhile I write something I love, but sometimes I really struggle to deliver more than hair and eye color and this is especially true with heroes. I don't know why.
So, I am not giving a lesson in this department or dropping pithy hints. Instead, I'm asking for help. I'm trying to get better. I'm trying to stretch my descriptions to include a glimmer of personality. I know how to do it, but I struggle with it at times so I thought maybe you all could copy a description from a WIP or what have you and show me how you do it. And if it's of a hero when the heroine first sees him, hooray.
To play fair, here is the last hero I described from the heroine's pov:
The second man stood a head taller than Alazandro with a loose jointed, lanky look. Mid thirties, blonde hair cut military short, angular face, shoulders out to there and back. His clothes weren't as pristine as Alazandro's or as rumbled as Peg's. Jeans and a white cotton shirt rolled up at the sleeves, buckskin vest, dusty boots. A silver buckle caught and reflected the same sunlight that had bronzed his skin. He held a disreputable hat in one hand. And his gaze, steady and very direct, made Elle flinch.
As an alternate or additional option, at the end of this I'll give you a situation and a character and through whose eyes that character is seen and you provide a description.
Okay, so either paste in a description and add anything you need to set it up or use the following or do both:
A dusty, dirty hero gets out of his truck and enters a desert café. Who waits on him? What does he or she look like?
See, this can be creative, this can be easy, it's your choice. But I hope you all do something. I always love reading examples from your books…
I can't wait!
21 comments:
Here is the heroine's description of the hero in Perfectly Good Nanny.
A good thing about Brock Hughes – he didn’t look a thing like her ex-husband. Where Perry was fair, charming, and slender, Brock was dark, secretive, and muscled. His long legs carried his slender hips and broad shoulders gracefully for such a big man.
Brock’s collar-length, black hair with gray at the temples reminded her of a professor from college. All the co-eds had drooled over the man. This man wasn’t without male magnetism. In fact, he emitted more than her senses could handle. So why hadn’t he found someone to help with the children?
I'll try your writing challenge later. Got to go feed the animals.
Paty--Brock the hunk!
THanks, Paty. I like the way you got his personality into his physical description and also her slant.
I'll try my writing challenge later, too. Right now, I'm off to have lunch with a friend.
Alice
The heroine thinks she sees her old flame, who she's never quite gotten over:
Standing at the checkout counter with his back to me is a tall, lean man. He's wearing a blue dress shirt and snug-fitting dark gray slacks. His sandy blond hair is military short. Kevin McCoffey? I’m almost sure of it. I imagine a set of sparkling golden eyes in the face I can’t see.
The Kevin look-alike and the store clerk talk in tones so low I can't make out what they say. The man nods and scribbles something in a notebook. Kevin is a detective now. Professional clothes and note taking are right in line with that.
Not the greatest. People descriptions are not my strongest area either, dang it.
Have a fun lunch. If I think about it later, I'll post a couple descriptions from Pearl S. Buck books. I think she is queen of character sketches in just a few broad strokes.
Lunch with a friend? It's not even 10 AM yet!
Okay, mine's longer. I think I'm just long-winded. ROFLMAO
She whipped back toward the door so fast she almost knocked the giant tree over and revealed her hiding place. Her heart rate shot up as she steadied the pot with shaking hands and peered through the leaves with a mixture of both fear and dread.
Frozen in place, she watched as a tall, blond Adonis stepped through the door and spoke in mumbled words to the group in front of him. Standing there, dusting newly fallen snow from his broad shoulders, his short hair glimmering under the lights of the enormous chandelier above, he took her breath away, just like he always had.
It was him. And oh, he was more beautiful than she’d remembered. His nose was straight, his eyes the same captivating smoky gray that had haunted her dreams for years. His jaw square and masculine and so totally kissable it sent a thousand butterflies to flight in her stomach.
His body hadn’t changed much in seven years – he was still strong and broad and, she was sure, chiseled beneath that spendy tuxedo like he had always been - but for some reason he seemed taller than she remembered. Bigger everywhere. Larger than life. More...alive than even she’d fantasized.
And boy, had she fantasized over the years.
BTW, I took EBO liberties and changed your date stamp. For future reference, if you post the night before - there's a link at the bottom of the posting screen that says "post options". Click that and you can go in and set whatever time and date you want your post to display. It won't delay and post at that time for you, but it makes it look like you posted then. ;)
I love describing characters, and usually don't do it in one lump. I'll stretch it out over the course of a scene for a first meeting. Personally, I don't notice everything about how someone looks at first glance. Once the conversation starts, I take in bits and pieces, like how their eyes crinkle in the corners when they laugh, or that sexy half-grin the hero gives when he's thinking something devious.
In this description, my heroine confronts who she first takes as a burglar, but quickly realizes he's the same bully kid she remembers from grade school, only all grown up.
She stopped dialing and narrowed her eyes at the stranger who was beginning to look more familiar with each frantic beat of her heart. His hair was no longer orange but a deep cherrywood red, and it was pulled back from his face in a ponytail. His pale skin had darkened to a bronze glow that could only have come from time spent beneath a tropical sun. Skinny? Not any more. He had to have bench-pressed his weight in coconuts on whatever island had given him that tan. He was Leland. Or Latham. Damn. One of those bully Coyne boys, and the nicer of the bunch.
I find that if I look for something in my character that makes me feel a certain way -- like whatever the POV character is feeling -- the description comes more naturally. I also think it needs to do more than describe physical attributes. A tall hero means what? Sexy dark eyes make her feel what? That old scar running through his eyebrow says what? It's just a deeper reflection of the impression made by the character.
I loved everyone's examples of hero descriptions.
Sneaky Alice. Way to get me to open up the WIP. And wouldn't you know it--I found something to add too. So thanks! Slowly making my way back up onto that horse and shaking off the teaching dust.
I love your description Paty, Eli, and Danita!
This is from my WIP. Heroine is at her father's funeral, and hasn't seen hero in a few years. Her description of hero gradually changes as her growing awareness of him as a man develops.
T.P.’s lack of change was maddening. But sometimes, predictability was wonderful. Like Dan. She smiled wearily and sank down on the top step. He didn’t look anything like the six year old that enjoyed destroying things with T.P. or like the ten-year old who painted his first mural--on his bedroom wall, sans parental permission, on her watch. It was her last babysitting job. She watched him walk back to the kitchen. Tall. He’d towered over her for at least 10 years and she still wasn’t used to it. Auburn Ponytail. Double hoop earrings in the left ear. Vintage camel jacket. Look past all that, though, and he was still the same Dan.
* * * Later in the same scene:
She’d endured countless hugs in the last week, all of them unwelcome, but this . . . this was almost . . .nice. It was nice. When had his shoulders become so broad? Weren’t artists supposed to be skinny and malnourished, not so . . .built? Her brain was seriously twisted--going from “gee, I wish you were my brother,” to “gee, you’re yummy.”
**** Several chapters later, she's much more aware of this attraction and description changes:
He’d obviously been sleeping--his hair fell around his shoulders, and he wore flannel pajama bottoms. And no shirt. And my, how those weights had paid off. Gen was rendered momentarily speechless by the sight of his naked chest. After the week--no scratch that--the month she’d had, it was like waving steak in front of a starving--
You guys are all great. And all different! I think we all agree with Karen that there is that first level of awareness and just as she said, as time passes, additional impressions register.
I love this kind of thing, seeing where we're all at and how our people think of their people....Paty's all sexy western, Danita with that first person slant and present tense that's so compelling, Eli with all the details and the sensual pain of long memory, Karen's play from fright to recognition to awareness, Wavy with a definite YA take and the growth from big sister to interested female , and everyone with touches of the wit and grace that make you all such good writers!
Wasn't this fun? And it got Wavy looking at her book! Hooray!
I hope Becky and Jen and Genene and all the rest who may be lingering give us an example. Thankyou to all those who did.
And EBO, thanks for changing the date thing and explaining how to do it in the future. I waited up to 12:01 to post that sucker but it took the day and time I pasted it in there to register. I am wearing a L on my forehead.
Alice
P.S. What's wrong with going to lunch at 10:00 a.m.? We went shopping, too!
Our heroine gets her first glimpse of the hero from the window of a bus:
A tall, wiry man stepped from around the front of the team [of horses]. He was patting their shoulders and flanks, gently encouraging the horses as they labored to pull the logs into the dirt road that crossed the highway at this point. He was dressed in bib-front denim overalls, a red-checked flannel shirt and black Wellingtons. A wide-brimmed felt hat partially hid his bearded face, but Cherie could make out (or imagine) Lincolnesque features including the dark brooding eyes that had so fascinated her on her visit to Abraham Lincoln's home in Springfield, Illinois, last year.
The man's posture was ram-rod straight as he eyed their bus with what seemed to be suspicion and mistrust. He did not respond to MacDonald's tirade, nor did he seem to speed up his efforts. Slowly the team and its load made its way across the road far enough for the bus to pass.
From reading the other samples given, I'm guessing this one needs more visceral response from Cherie.
Barb, it only needs to be visceral if they are close enough. With the way your setting is, I'm not sure she's close enough to get that visceral feeling. If he looks directly at her, then you could show the connection/emotions she feels.
WooHoo, Wavy! Way to open that document and get your feet wet!
Karen, scary and good.
Eli, I like the humor in this!
Danita, liked it the first time I read it and still like it. LOL
I know, Alice, I didn't get back here to get your scenario written. But now my husband is taking me to dinner for my b-day, so I guess I missed out on it! Dang!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PATY!
~~~~~~~~~~*********~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, Alice. I'm going to play with your exercise. It's 7, Jim won't be home until 8:30, and I'm fried for the day. I have a glass of wine beside me to prove it. Heh.
I'm not sure if you were asking us to describe the dusty, dirty hero, or the person waiting on him. So I'm going to use the H's POV to describe his waitress.
Hank Malone stomped his feet to rid himself of about a pound of desert sand, then snagged hold of the cafe's screen door. He yanked it toward him and the dang thing came loose of its rusty old hinges. He flung it aside and walked in.
(Sorry, but I can't help setting the stage. I can't see the characters to describe them if I can't see where they're at...)
"Hello?" he called out to the seemingly empty diner. The echo of approaching footsteps answered him.
She approached slowly, thin as a corn stalk from pa's fall harvest, but heavier on top than was normal for such a tiny girl. The top two buttons on her faded pink uniform had popped free and a deep V of cleavage threatened to pull his staring eyes where they had no right to wander. He forced his gaze up to linger on the woman's long white throat, halting at the sight of cold lips painted blue. Or was it paint? Looked pretty darn natural if you asked him. But when his questing stare reached her eyes, there was nothing natural about it. He'd never seen eyes so filled with red, like a blood blister ready to burst.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alice--this one is an adult contemporary. But maybe it should BE a YA. Only then all the sex and babies would have to go . . . . . LOL!
I love everyone's examples!
Wavy-- It's my problem, not yours. When I read your excerpt, I remembered (and read) the older babysitter situation, put two and two together and got thirteen. Please excuse my sloppy reading.
Barbara, I enjoyed your description (and appreciate your sharing it!) and thought Paty was right on when she suggested your need for a more visceral reaction might just come if he looked right at her.
Karen--loved your take on the hero entering the cafe. I am too brain dead, Paty is off having a B-day celebration (Happy B-day Paty) so you win. A hundred hugs sent your way. ANd a hundred cyber dollars. And a hundred flowers.
Alice
I'm rich, I'm RICH!!! BWAHAHAHAA! Just give me another glass of wine. Okay, got it. I suppose I should eat dinner at some point to soak up some of this alcohol, lol! 8^)
Okay, okay, and a hundred bottles of wine!
Alice
expecting an invitation....
Fun examples everyone! You're all so creative and such inspirations!
Alice-- Loved this blog post because I've been really thinking about characters and characterization lately. I went camping with my dh and kids at the drizzly coast the last few days and worked on GMC while I was there. Not character description, but helpful nonetheless.
I've attempted to take up your challenge, sort of. I'm sure I missed the whole point of the exercise, but what the hell...
Jessie sat in her usual booth at Mac’s Diner, the one with the cleanest window, and forked another bite of Mac’s famous blackberry pie à la mode into her mouth. Damn stuff tasted like heaven, was highly addictive and that’s why she showed up every day at this god-forsaken place to eat lunch.
The fact that the window in her booth was clean was on account of her botherin' to bring in cleaning supplies from home and takin' the time to clean the damn thing once a week; kinda like clock work. If it were left up to Mac to clean the damn thing, well, it’d just never get done, so, she’d clean the window as long as he kept her in blackberry pie and vanilla ice cream.
Now, on account of her botherin' to clean the window is how she happened to notice the stranger as he pulled into the sandy, potholed parking lot of this desert diner. He drove an old, beat-to-shit GMC short-box pickup, faded blue with a big white stripe down the sides; a ‘72 she guessed. A little restoration and it’d look adorable; but the door creaked and groaned as he opened it up, stepped out and slammed it shut with a bang. He didn’t venture far from the truck; instead, the stranger attempted to brush the grunge from his dust covered T-shirt and blue jeans. It was a hopeless attempt and Jessie watched his every move not daring to blink or breathe.
When he looked up from his brush job, he noticed Jessie. The cocky bastard just stood there, stretched out his right arm to the side and leaned with his hand on the open driver’s side window. He crossed his long right leg over his booted left foot and stared straight out from under his well-worn cowboy hat at Jessie. Right through that damned, clean, plate glass window. The son-of-a-bitch had the gall to go and grin at her; a shit eatin’ grin at that. The cigarette between his lips wiggled and ash broke off. It drifted down to mix with the dust-covered lot. He took one last, long drag on his smoke then pulled it from his kisser with his left hand, dropped it to the ground and mashed the burning embers out under his heel. He let out a slow exhale; smoke swirled from his nose and mouth as he walked toward the diner’s entrance. His eyes were riveted on Jessie.
He watched her watch him.
It was hypnotic.
The jangle of bells ripped Jessie out of the magnetic trance. She broke eye contact first; the outsider stepped through the door and walked up to the diner counter. Damn! What the hell had that been about, anyway? She shoved another bite of pie down her throat. The crust, now soggy; the ice cream nothing but slop. It could have been cat shit and she’d not have cared about what the hell she'd just swallowed.
This was bad. Very bad. But he looked so good. She peeked up through her eyelashes. He stood at the counter, gorgeous as you please. His ass perfection in those faded 501’s. Like a guy straight off a Marlboro billboard; all he was missing was a saddle slung over those broad shoulders.
Jessie’s breasts pulled taut. A warm current trickled down her spine. The farther it surged, the hotter it got. It seeped into her belly and pooled at the apex of her thighs until it finally boiled over and spilled all the way down to her toes. She couldn’t just sit here. Not while her entire body hummed like a formula-one racecar on the starting line. She jumped up out of her booth, slid around the side of the counter and grabbed an order pad and pencil. She hollered at Mac who stood flipping burgers or something behind the kitchen’s three-quarter wall, “This order’s mine Mac!” It didn't matter that she didn't work here. How hard could it be to take an order? She gestured for him to take a seat on the counter’s faded red, vinyl stool. Jessie gave him her best grin and cocked a teasing eyebrow up, “So stranger, what’ll ya have?” She didn't care if her question was a cliché and she didn't care if his answer was either. As long as his answer was her.
Piper--First off, welcome home from camping. Secondly, there was no right or wrong way to take the challenge. And thirdly, whoa, did you take it and run with it! What fun!
Poor Jesse, heavy breathing her way through that order taking, serving herself up like a juicy burger! I loved it!
Thanks, Alice
Wow! Awesome job, Piper!!!!
ROFLMAO, Piper. My mother would say you write like a trucker. I think I counted at least 5 swear words in that passage!
Nicely done. :)
Whoa, Piper! Nice job! And you think your writing stinks. That was hot!!!
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