Is Your Character’s Face the Window to Her Soul?
By David Corbett | April 11, 2017 |
“What do you think is the world’s most recognizable container of information? It’s the human face.” –John Chipchase, consumer behavior analyst
People don’t just recognize us over time because of our faces; from the very start, it’s the first and primary fact they use in trying to understand us. Yes, it’s mixed in with a lot of other data—sex, height, build, posture, gait, tone and timbre of voice, diction, dialect, clothing, style, complexion, general health, odor (or, hopefully, fragrance). But it’s the face that seems to capture our essence best.
And though there are certainly types of faces—a fact that often conjures that eerie sense of having seen a certain person (or her twin) before—there is also a quality about the human face that far more often distinguishes the person to whom it belongs with unique specificity. We can’t imagine anyone else looking exactly that way.
To know the face is to know the person. Our faces are the roadmaps of our lives—they reveal our lingering innocence and hard-won experience, our openness and suspicion, our capacity for laughter, our bitterness, our anxiety, our lightness of heart.
And yet the ability to describe the human face in fiction seems to be, if not a dying art, at least in a state of decline, even indifference. And given the face’s importance in our understanding of each other, this seems like a significant lost opportunity.
Why has this happened?
The ubiquity of photography and motion pictures over the last century may be at least in part responsible. The filmmaker Ingmar Bergman considered the face the most important subject of cinema, and it may be that, in light of this kind of competition, fiction simply surrendered the field (as did portrait painting).
Also, the relentless onslaught of images produced by photography, film, and TV may have quickened our ability to generate visual impressions. It doesn’t take much for us to conjure an image in our minds, and so less description is needed to conjure a human face. Elmore Leonard seldom relied on physical descriptions at all, believing instead that if he captured how a character talked, the visual representation could be capably left to the reader.
But physical description at its best is never just about the surface, and never has been. And if the novel is, as Julian Barnes contends, the one art form that best “captures the inner life – the soul, the heart, the mind,” does that mean we should just neglect the one part of the body that best reveals that interior landscape to the world?
A unique face artfully photographed can conjure layer upon layer of meaning and feeling. One of my distant relatives was the photographer Consuelo Kanaga. Edward Weston, who included one of her photographs in his Family of Man exhibit, remarked that she was almost bereft of technical skill, but no one better captured a human face. (If you want to see what he meant, type in her name at Google Images.)
I often turn to Consuelo’s photographs for inspiration for my characters, or to simply get into the right psychological and emotional space to describe someone well.
Because that’s the point: the photographs take me to a deeper place of understanding and awareness, often beyond words, that I must then attempt to conjure in words. And isn’t that the whole trick of describing people anyway?
Here’s a sample from my own just completed novel; this is a description of a former rodeo rider turned art forger named Tuck Mercer:
His face—deeply lined from the sun, gray-templed, with that chiseled roughness that speaks of the West—possessed the watchful patience of a man who’s earned each and every one of his forty-three years on this earth. And yet a wistful humor in the eyes provided the wary a reason to loosen their spines, unbuckle their shoulders, and return his smile.
If we go back to the nineteenth century—or even no further than the middle of the twentieth—we find numerous examples of exquisite skill in physical description in general and capturing faces in particular that speak not only of exterior appearance but inner character. Here are a few examples:
He had a hungry face; in it Marge detected a morphology she recognized. The bones were strong and the features spare but the lips were large and frequently in motion, twisting, pursed, compressing, being gnawed. Deprivation—of love, of mother’s milk, of calcium, God knows what. This one was sunburned, usually they were pale. They had cold eyes. They hated women. —Robert Stone, Dog Soldiers
His mouth was the very assertion of uncurbed passions and tyrannical self-will; the full lips thrust out and taut, like the flesh of animals distended by fear or desire. —Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop
Otto has a face like a very ripe peach. His hair is fair and thick, growing low on his forehead. He has small sparkling eyes, full of naughtiness, and a wide, disarming grin, which is much too innocent to be true. —Christopher Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin
Kennerly had gone astray somewhere: he had overdone it; he wore the harried air of a man on the edge of bankruptcy, keeping up an expensive establishment because he dared not retrench. His nerves were bundles of dried twigs, they jabbed his insides every time a thought stirred in his head, they kept his blank blue eyes fixed in a white stare. The muscles of his jaw jerked in continual helpless rage. —Katherine Anne Porter, “Hacienda”
He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough, and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see, but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man. He was short of his age, with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes. —Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
He was a big, hefty fellow, good-looking in a rather flashy, sunburnt way. He had the hot, blue eyes usually associated with heavy drinking and loose living. His hair was reddish like his skin. In a few years he would run to fat, his neck bulging over the neck of his collar. His mouth gave him away, it was too soft, too pink. —Daphne De Maurier, Rebecca
A more recent novel, Desmond Lowden’s Bellman and True (whose praises I’ve sung here before) has several such descriptions that I particularly love:
He was small, the back of his head was soft and rounded. But his face was pale, sharply pointed with the effort of being eleven years old.
She wore no make-up, she was strangely neutral, like a fashion model walking from one job to another, her face and hair in her handbag, and no expression for the journey in between.
The man was grey-haired. He had bacon and a suburban train-ride on his breath, and he caught the smell of whiskey on Hiller’s.
There are of course also examples of descriptions that, though purely physical, also convey something of the inner person, which is an art in and of itself. One such, from Joseph Conrad’s Victory:
He was a muscular, short man with eyes that gleamed and blinked, a harsh voice, and a round toneless, pock-marked face ornamented by a thin, disheveled moustache sticking out quaintly under the tip of a rigid nose.
I am not entirely sure why this aspect of writing has seemingly fallen into abeyance. Although I am aware of more contemporary examples, of course, I found many of them far more devoted to the surface, perhaps out of deference to Hemingway-esque objectivism. Or perhaps, as inheritors of a great tradition of photography and film, we’ve simply trained ourselves to infer the interior from what we can see.
I’m going to stop there and ask a few questions, hoping to stir some discussion:
Do you find that contemporary novels often seem to lack evocative physical descriptions? Why do you think that is?
If not, do you know of any contemporary novelists who do it well? Do they blend interior with exterior, or do they instead conjure depth by focusing purely on surfaces? (Either way, feel free to provide examples.)
Do you have a preference for descriptions that conjure the inner character from purely exterior effects (such as the Conrad example above)? Why? Give an example you find particularly insightful.
Do you have any examples of physical description from works you admire that you find particularly compelling?
Do you have any examples from your own work that you’d like to share?
Would you like to try giving a character from your current WIP a make-over, using some of the techniques suggested by the examples above?
David Corbett (he/him) is the author of seven novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, Do They Know I’m Running?, The Mercy of the Night, The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, and The Truth Against the World. He has also published the story collection Thirteen Confessions and the novella The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell.
David’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in a broad array of magazines and anthologies, with pieces twice selected for Best American Mystery Stories.
His non-fiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Narrative, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest.
He has taught both online and in classroom settings through the UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program, Book Passage, LitReactor, 826 Valencia, The Grotto in San Francisco, and at numerous writing conferences across the US, Canada, and Mexico. In January 2013 Penguin published his textbook on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character (“A writer’s bible that will lead to your character’s soul.” —Elizabeth Brundage), and Writer’s Digest published his follow-up, The Compass of Character, in October 2019.
Fascinating post, David, and thanks very much for the reminder. I love inventing how my characters look, but describing their physical attributes to a reader is sometimes a challenge for me. I prefer a description that reveals more than just the appearance. I want some aspect of the personality to show through, and I want it filtered specifically through the POV of the character observing another character’s appearance.
I’ll post something from a WIP since you so kindly extended the invitation. ;)
“He had an angular, beardless face, a sharp nose and thin mouth. His sun-browned skin was much lighter than hers, and his eyes were round and amber as an owl’s beneath straight, prominent brows.
Was this really the Green Man himself? He bore little resemblance to the big, muscular horseman who was the Lord of the Wood. And yet the Green Man was the patron spirit of these mortal wizards, issuing from them and giving them the source of their magic. And so this one too must be an aspect of Himself, the face he had chosen to show her.
Still, he looked more like a straw man in a wheat field, his shaggy hair a little too long, spilling over his shoulders, and the fringe constantly falling into his eyes.”
My apologies that it took three paragraphs. This is the kind of thing I try to do with varying degrees of success: one character’s perception of another, even if those perceptions are incorrect and possibly unflattering. As the story progresses and the characters get to know each other, I enjoy changing their perceptions.
Hi Marisa:
First rule: no apologies.
Although it takes three paragraphs I don’t believe it’s overly long. The middle paragraph might be something you could trim since some of it seems to relate to information your POV character already possesses, but the point is: This may be an illusion, a mask he has chosen to show her. Now THAT’ interesting, and as the scene progresses you could weave in the POV character’s internal questions: Why would he do that? What does that say about how he feels about me? Why this particular visage.
The fact that he’s “sun-browned” but still lighter than she is provides the kind of analysis that giving the description to another character allows. This is a twofer: we’re getting not just a description of one character but, by implication, a description of the other as well, learning what she sees as important, weighing it, etc.
You could do the same with his weight, his strength, his presence–reveal them by having the POV character register their effect on her.
But the main takeaway for me is twofold: first, this may be a mask he’s chosen just for her; second, he’s chosen one that is not as overpowering as she expected. The face itself remains somewhat under- realized. Was that intentional? As though it’s rather unremarkable and that’s part of the POV character’s surprise?
Thanks for the generous post.
In reading, I tend to find detailed character descriptions tedious and boring–though perhaps that’s only in instances where it’s done poorly. In my own writing, I very rarely do much character description at all, and since I tend to write in first or close third, my descriptions are usually less of the main character and more of the secondary ones.
Yes, long, poorly executed descriptions is a post in and of itself. But good descriptions, like all narrative, work best when they aren’t static — merely descriptive — but move toward a revelation regarding the character that its various elements reveal bit by bit.
Also, you don’t need anything terribly lengthy to make a strong point, as the Desmond Lowden examples above demonstrate.
Thanks for chiming in.
Fascinating and beautiful post.
Description of any kind is difficult for my black-hole brain. My brain just doesn’t work in that way. I can’t “see” things in my mind in wholes but only in pieces. So, say I look at a painting and immediately close my eyes, well, I can’t re-create that painting in my mind no matter how hard I try – it comes in pieces. So if it’s a woman in a painting for example, I’ll see her hair, her eyes, maybe her mouth, and not all at once.
In a room, I’ll see a chair or a couch, a table, a chair – not all at once.
So this is how I describe-something about that person or room but not in the whole. But, people seem to respond well so I must do my job. Still, what would it be like to see things in wholes – what would that open up in my fiction? I’ll never know! So I go with what I got.
Hi, Kat:
I doubt you’re alone in taking in visual information in parts rather than wholes. And it’s impossible to describe something all at once so I can’t imagine your ability to render in words what you see bit-by-bit is a terrible handicap — and, as you say, it seems to work.
I’m a firm believer in: If it ain’t broke.
That said, once the pieces are laid out, are you capable of intuiting them as, if not a visual whole, a interpretive one? Do the various impressions gel into an intuition of what they reveal about the character?
I imagine so, since, as you say, readers respond.
I wonder though — and this is something I addressed inadequately in the post — whether simply by providing enough so that the reader can picture the character vividly we haven’t done enough?
Hmm. Must go and ponder now.
Exactly – yes. I do enough so that the reader “sees” and experiences enough.
It ain’t broke :D
But, it can be frustrating when attempting to write plots – for the same thing that makes my brain how it is, makes it how it is.
Fascinating post, and wow, those are some excellent descriptive excerpts.
I’ll admit that my writing falls into the Elmore Leonard camp, where I let the reader choose their own vision of the character. Stephen King preaches a similar approach in his wonderful “On Writing.” I tend to sketch my characters in broad strokes to give a sense of their overall physicality, but seldom get into the architecture of their faces. Based on those excerpts you posted, I do see how that can be a lost opportunity.
I’m also aware that description is one of my major weaknesses as a writer, so obviously I can go one of two ways: work to improve my skill, or avoid description and play to my strengths. I typically go with the latter, but your thought-provoking post may nudge me to experiment more with the former. So thanks for the nudge!
Hey Keith:
I’m also a firm believer in playing to one’s strengths rather than agonizing over one’s weaknesses. I realize there’s a lot of terrain between those extremes, but you see what I’m saying. No writer does everything well, and it’s not only not a crime to leave some of the work to the reader, but it’s kinda the point.
The actor Peter Regret once told me: “The audience has a job to do. Let them do it.” The same is true of readers.
Often all it takes is a name, an attitude, and something distinct about the character physically to give the reader enough to visualize what she looks like.
And yet, I too look back at these kinds of examples — and modern ones too, from writers like Updike and Doctorow and Fowles — and I think: wow. I miss that.
I didn’t realize King had the same take as Leonard. Makes sense.
Thanks for commenting. Hope all is grand on your end of the continent.
Loved your examples, David. Some writers do this so well. I tend to be on the sparse side when it comes to character description.
I can think of only one time when I used an actual image as inspiration for a character, or in my case, characters. I read a newspaper article about a pair of very odd identical twins and was so taken with their photo that I clipped it out of the paper and kept it. I had no idea what I’d do with it but several years later they became a pair of witches in my novel.
As you suggested, I’m going to take a look at Consuelo Kanaga’s work and see if I can’t improve the descriptions in my WIP. Thanks so much for this.
Hi, Linnea:
I’ve found photographs very helpful in giving me something concrete to describe, rather than my own hazy imagining. One gets the feeling in many of the examples I gave that the writers were picturing real people.
Hope you enjoy my paternal grandmother’s cousin’s photos! (Some are also on display in the Brooklyn Museum of Art.)
Interesting and thought provoking post, David. I can’t tell you where at the moment, but I know I have read articles on craft that advise writers to let the reader create the characters’ faces for themselves. It had to do with not wasting time and slowing the plot as I recall. Like all advice, this should be taken only as it best serves one’s story, in my opinion. Personally, I like to share my vision of what characters look like, but I try to do it with subtlety and finesse so that it works into the plot organically. At least, that’s the goal. Only the reader can say whether it truly worked!
Hi, Linda:
I have no doubt that the modern trend is toward minimalism. And the prose of the older works I cited, the Porter and Dickens examples in particular, come from works whose pace is far more deliberative than I think modern readers will sit for.
But I can’t help but feel we’ve lost something there — as though we’re not writing novels, we’re writing something more like novelizations, or fleshed-out scripts.
Maybe that’s part of it — the pace of modern life simply rankles at the slow, deliberate attention to detail required to do the kind of thing well, and to render it on the page.
Not sure. I didn’t write this post with any particular ax to grind. It was just something that I’d noticed in my reading of late.
Oh, and I believe subtlety and finesse never go out of fashion. Or at least I hope I’m right about that.
Thanks!
David–Thanks for another post replete with spot-on examples. When you make the analogy between photography and then film (tending to render portraits of people and places obsolete) with descriptions of characters in fiction, I think that’s really what’s happened. Excepting your description of Tuck Mercer, all your examples–even the one taken from Dog Soldiers–are from earlier eras.
We grow impatient with language much more easily now. I’m sure that’s why, as both a reader and writer I place so much emphasis on what characters say, either in dialogue or interior monologue. That’s the basis on which a character’s physical self is made real for me. When a character thinks or speaks in shopworn language, I see a shopworn character retread. When the language is fresh, I am now interested in imagining this character’s physical self.
But effective descriptions are still possible, and your own description of Tuck proves it. It does so at the end in a very clever way: by showing how people react to Tuck. In this way, you distinguish your character from the cavalcade of weathered cowboys, that stock figure in both advertising and film. Not to mention a rodeo guy-turned-art forger. This ain’t no Marlboro Man, no sir, and I am already paying attention.
Thanks, Barry. yeah, I think this minimalism is a sign of the times, and something that won’t be reversed, and for no nefarious reason–technology has rendered it obsolete.
Still (and this is something I didn’t address in the post), some of the most character-centered descriptions come from film/TV or people who have worked in film — like Desmond Lowden.
Another example: In Tony Gilroy’s script for the film Michael Clayton, senior partner Marty Bach is described by his age (70), and the fact his name is on his law firm’s door. Beyond that, he’s: “Big power. Sweet eyes. A thousand neckties. A velvet switchblade.”
He was played by Sidney Lumet. Go figure.
Sidney Pollack, I think, not Lumet, but the details are what count, and they work (although “a velvet switchblade” may be stretching things a bit).
Oops. Got me. I know I should’ve checked.
Yeah. I agree. It’s the thousand neckties that nails it.
Great post, David.
I remember reading or hearing advice years ago that you shouldn’t go overboard describing your protagonist because the reader will want to be able to imagine the person in whichever way feels right to them. Personally, I like specifics, but I do feel there was an industry shift somewhere along the way. Maybe it started with Toni Morrison’s ‘Paradise’ in the late 90s and this memorable first line, ‘They shoot the white girl first, but the rest they can take their time.” You never do learn who that white girl was, though; Morrison chose to tell the story without revealing race for at least some of the characters.
Hi Therese:
That’s an important point. Some of the works I cited herald back to the age when the omniscient narrator ruled preeminent over the fictional landscape. After he was assassinated by Henry James, most characters have to be described from another character’s point of view.
For example, above, the Robert Stone example gives us the description of the protagonist, Ray Hicks, for the perspective of one of the other characters, Marge.
Desmond Lowden uses an omniscient narrator rather deftly — his description of the clerk moves slyly from exterior (grey hair, bacon on his breath) to interior (smelling the whiskey on Heller’s).
I’m not sure when the shift came, but I think it was further back than the nineties. Raymond Carver comes to mind.
That’s a really haunting opening, by the way. Thanks for sharing it.
Another reason for the decline of physical description (faces, bodies) is the theory that readers project themselves and their ideas of others onto blank canvases.
To a certain extent I think this is true even when a physical description is given. We read the description but then ignore it, preferring our own vision of the character.
As you say, the physical description tells us more about the person doing the describing than it does about the subject.
For instance, two of your examples are objective description, all visual, no judgement involved:
“Otto has a face like a very ripe peach.”
“She wore no make-up, she was strangely neutral, like a fashion model walking from one job to another.”
There’s nothing wrong with those descriptions, they’re good. But contrast them to two others which are judgmental:
“They had cold eyes. They hated women.”
“In a few years he would run to fat, his neck bulging over the neck of his collar.”
To me those are more effective. They less paint a picture and more involve us in the feelings of the narrator.
Excellent post, David.
Hi, Don:
That’s a whole subject in and of itself: using description as a way not only to describe the other character but the one doing the describing.
I might add that the two examples you cite as “objective” in fact have very subjective elements — Otto’s ripe-peach face is joined by a “disarming grin that’s much too innocent to be true.” And though the excerpt from Lowden’s description of the woman doesn’t state it, we’re implicitly seeing her through the protagonist’s eyes; he’s attracted to her, and everything about her says You Don’t Know Me, I’m Not Interested, Stay Away.
I think that the only way to give more extensive descriptions these days is precisely to root them in another character’s perception — and, more importantly, interpretation. Use the description to paint a vivid image of both the other and the narrator. Better yet, have the narrator trying to figure out what the outer appearance of the other really conveys about who this other person is.
Yes, I agree. In fact, I go so far as to say that the tool we call “description” is outdated and should be thrown away.
It’s replacement is what I call POV description, which is to say NOT how something looks (or sounds, smells, tastes or feels) as an objective observer would report it, but how a POV character experiences (in its totality) that thing.
Really, there is no objective description. Physics tells us that. Anything being measured is necessarily changed by the fact of measurement itself.
In the same way, in close POV fiction we cannot “see” anything at all objectively, but only as characters do.
This is certainly the Henry James view — the assassin who killed the omniscient narrator. (It’s one reason Conrad invented Marlowe: to create a wise but fallible persona through whom the reader views events.)
And yet, the omniscient narrator is making something of a comeback. Salman Rushdie, Kate Atkinson, Ann Patchett, Joyce Carol Oates, Don Winslow–they’ve all dabbled in the older form of narration.
Of course, omniscient isn’t the same as objective. Perhaps therein lies the proverbial rub.
I enjoy omniscient narration. The outside narrator brings a perspective too. That’s what makes it fun.
I wonder whether the term “objective narration” is actually a misnomer. Perhaps in fiction there is no such thing as objective?
What do you think? Objectively speaking, I mean.
The writers who do objective mode best tend to be former journalists: Hemingway, Didion. Hammett wasn’t a journalist but he was a private investigator and he has that same just-the-facts approach. IN the hands of a master it can be devastating.
You mentioned a Hemingway short story the past day or two, “In Another Country.” I love that story, and actually use it to describe the sly movement from objective to subjective that occurs in it. Here’s what I say:
The narrator is an American being treated for his combat wounds at an Italian hospital. The majority of the story deals with his interactions with the optimistic medical staff and his less hopeful fellow patients, especially a major, once the national fencing champion, now the owner of a withered hand. The narration gets established in strict objective mode: surfaces, actions, dialog. Only briefly does the focus move inward on the narrator’s inner life—his feelings about having medals he received only because he’s an American, in contrast to the sacrifices the Italians suffered to earn theirs. But even these impressions are described with a cool touch, as the narrator remarks on how his fellow patients invariably withdraw once they realize his distinctions are a fraud. Then we return to the exterior, and the tone is devastatingly effective because what is being described is extreme: the mutilation of young men from combat, the savage loss of their futures, their hopeless attempts at rehabilitation, crowned by news that the major with the ruined hand has lost his wife to pneumonia.
The mode could have remained strictly objective, but by deftly entering the narrator’s thoughts just long enough to suggest a poignant, shame-tinged distance between him and the men he describes, it crystallizes their suffering all the more, and intensifies the ultimate effect.
Second the notion, Don. I call POV description “experiential” description, and think it’s a great way to characterize not only the describee but the describer, as well.
David-
Interesting post. I think there might be more to it than the prominence of photography and film. I believe current writing styles are a factor.
Presenting more than a line or characteristic feature often feels as if point of view is broached. It can disrupt as it feels like author intrusion.
This is the case for me in almost all of the older examples above. Who is doing the describing and how are they able to project such extensive and detailed aspects from their observation?
In current first person and close third person writing style these wordy and simile loaded projections are a challenging fit.
HI, Tom:
You’re right. As I mentioned above in response to Therese’s comment, the Cather, Dickens, and Porter examples are from the era of the omniscient narrator. But in each the narrator certainly has a distinct perspective. Is it the author’s? That’s an intriguing question.
In Don Fry’s contribution to Writing Voice, he describes the writer’s Persona as the mask the writer assumes and which is the intercessor between the author and the reader. The Persona is a distinct personality expressed through words.
In this era of authorial self-effacement I agree that “wordy and simile loaded” descriptions feel distinctly passé. But I think that what they are getting at, a way to assess the character’s moral and emotional and psychological nature through description of the exterior, is still very relevant. It just needs to be rooted in another character’s POV.
This exchange is by itself extremely useful to any writer who takes writing seriously. Maybe “authority of voice” can serve to identify how descriptions do or don’t gain the reader’s acceptance. When a narrative voice creates an unconscious sense of command, of authority, it no longer matters whether we “objectively” conclude that there is no such thing as objective narration or description. When the reader believes, the writer has won.
“When the reader believes, the writer has won.”
That’s awesome. I almost want it on a T-shirt.
Seriously, I agree that the entire issue of what works and what doesn’t so often gets down to the writer’s authority, which more often than not results from voice.
Terrific post and helpful examples, David. To second Don’s note about objective versus judgemental (subjective) description, here’s a rancher from one of my novels as seen by a teen-age boy:
. . . he was lean, his tan skin like a tight leather glove. The gray that peppered his black sideburns made him look old to Jesse, maybe as old as forty. The dust whitening his jeans looked like it belonged there, and the sweat darkening his shirt and straw cowboy hat looked like hard work.
That’s a great power phrase at the end: “looked like hard work.” I actually smiled when I read it. Thanks, Ray.
Fascinating post, David. I searched through my WIP and realized that the primary thing in all of my descriptions is hair color.
In the descriptions below, each is when the character is introduced, and I’m now very curious why hair color is a part of each one:
1) He had an incredible mind housed in a lean, compact frame that made him look like a Formula One driver ready to leap into his race car and roar through a few laps at Le Mans. His meticulous appearance, from his burnished gold hair to his ever-present immaculate white shirts and pressed khakis, masked a ferocious intelligence that frightened me at times, and I don’t scare easily.
2) Curly black hair gave him a cherubic look at odds with his role as a ruthless business magnate.
3) The handsome young actor who’d once won raves for his Othello was still visible through the deep lines of his face and his gray-streaked dreadlocks.
4) Up close, the blend of Asian and Native American features was breathtaking. High cheekbones accentuated his deep-set, almost hooded eyes. Jet-black hair fell to his shoulders, a dramatic frame for the light mahogany hue of his skin.
3 and 4 do have some facial description. What’s also interesting to me is that 2, 3, and 4 are important secondary characters. Facial descriptions of the main characters are even less in evidence.
Thanks for writing about this. I want to go back now and see if more detailed facial description of the primary characters would be evocative and helpful, or not. Great stuff, David!
Hi, Carol:
I can’t help but notice that each of these descriptions is from another character’s POV. Is it the same character making all these assessments, or more than one?
I like the contradictions employed in #1 & #2. the contrast between the former and current face of the character in #3 is a nice echo of the Binchy description below. The POV character in #4 seems almost smitten — none of the pathos or contradiction of the first three. I wonder why that is.
Hi David,
Yes, all four of those descriptions are from the protagonist’s POV.
The difference between the first three and the fourth, is that the first three are men she’s known for years, and for whom she feels affection (to varying degrees). The third is a former lover, and they remain on good terms.
Number 4 is someone she’s just meeting, and she is both immediately jealous and mistrustful of him. His attractiveness is threatening to her, because he has a close connection with someone she cares about a great deal. A little later she will walk out of the pub with someone else because of that jealousy.
And I forgot to include two descriptions from two of my all-time favorite writers – Dick Francis and Maeve Binchy. Dick Francis did have the bad habit of having his protagonist look in a mirror or describe himself as someone else could see him (which was always nondescript), but when his protagonists looked at others, it was a bit more vivid.
“His image stood sharp and clear in my mind: a stocky gray-haired man with bright blue eyes and a fizzing vitality that flowed from him in sparks of static electricity in cold weather. He was to my mind stubborn, opinionated, rash and often stupid. He was also financially canny, intuitive, quick-brained and courageous, and hadn’t been nicknamed Midas for nothing. ”
(Dick Francis, Hot Money)
“John Ryan moved slowly, a big man with a beer belly that had grown on him sneakily during the years standing behind a bar, jowls that had become flabby at the same trade. His wedding picture showed a different person, a thinner more eager-looking figure, yet the boyish looks hadn’t completely gone. He had a head of sandy brown hair only flecked with grey and big eyebrows that never managed to look ferocious even when he willed them to, like at closing time or when he was trying to deal with some outrage that the children were reported to have committed.”
(Maeve Binchy, Firefly Summer)
Love both of those, especially the Binchy reference to the wedding picture, and Francis’ use of contradiction.
I’m later today than usual! Thanks for this post, David. Like Carol, I often limit myself to hair color, but sometimes facial expression, which of course is fleeting. I find describing someone’s voice also fascinating. I’ve taken some notes, as you’ve given me much to think about.
Thanks, Beth. Sounds like my work here is done. :-)
Hi David. Come to this late, but here’s an interesting one, that’s sort of the twofer you describe in an earlier comment, but less a physical description than a reaction to physicality (and for the reader, reaction to metaphor).
From “A Freeze-Out” by Scott Fitzgerald:
She was a stalk of ripe corn, but bound not as cereals are but as a rare first edition, with all the binder’s art. She was lovely and expensive, and about nineteen, and he had never seen her before.
She looked at him for just an unnecessary moment too long, with so much self-confidence that he felt his own rush out and away to join hers — ” . . . from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Then her head swayed forward and she resumed her inspection of a catalogue.
Whoa. The second paragraph in particular just sings.
Not sure about the “but bound not as cereals.” I realize it’s insanely presumptuous to edit Fitzgerald, but here I go:
She was lovely and expensive, about nineteen, a stalk of ripe corn, and he had never seen her before.
Thanks for this.
Well, I too am late to this excellent post. I am so scared of attempting physical description and botching it that I rarely try. Usually I single out one telling detail and hope that the reader’s imagination will fill in the rest. But even when descriptions are detailed and explicit, don’t we each have a slightly different mental image anyway? I’ll save this post and all the comments and go over them again in the hope of developing my skill.
One hint, though: it was Edward Steichen, not Edward Weston, who was responsible for the Family of Man exhibit and book. Stellar photographers both, but distinctly different. Weston has been one of my heroes for years, and it pleases me greatly that we share a birthday (mm/dd, not yyyy!).
Hoo boy. I seem to be mixing my Edwards and Sydneys today. (This may be the first time in the history of man that anyone has written that sentence.) Inexcusable, given the ease of fact-checking with the Interweb. Thanks for letting me know.
Another brilliant, challenging post, David. I love faces, and the specificity of them, and I love descriptions that give us that strong visual feeling, too. I am a very, very visual person and need to have the visuals on the page when I’m writing, but in the current world, we have to always be aware of how much is too much. How to parse in the details over a page or two. Maybe the trick is, like the examples you gave of working hard to bring in the character as well as the details.
It does seem that contemporary novels are not as visual as they once were.
This is such a great column for me personally. I’m working on a new book and just getting the descriptions down, trying to see the characters in my own mind. This is a great reminder to go deeper, work harder on connecting character and face.
Good luck with the new novel, Barbara. The thing that just continues to haunt me in all of this is that we take note of others’ faces all day every day. So why does the contemporary novel have a giant hole where all those characters’ faces should be?
It’s a great question–and maybe we, as novelists, need to revive the tradition. After reading this, I went to look at pictures of faces I really love and see if I could separate myself from the actual shape of eyes and lips and see what I see. My eldest granddaughter has a very wide, mobile mouth and high cheekbones. When she smiles, it makes her face impish–making her eyes slant upward, and she cuts her glance coyly sideways, playing that up. She’s only five, and these are permanent things about her face.
We love faces so much. And as you say, they are so precisely, incredibly unique.
Energizing to think about this more deeply. Thank you.
Benjamin Black. I am currently studying A Death of Summer. It is my favorite Quirke. I had noticed the descriptions of faces and heads because it seems so unusual these days. What Quirke sees tells me more about Quirke than it does the person he describes, like his description of Insp. Hackett as frog-mouthed. What an odd way to describe someone!
David, you’ve said several times in the post and in your replies that we look at faces all the time, but do we really? How often are we buried in our phones or tablets, instead of seeing each other? And how often do we walk past someone on the street and intentionally look past them so as not to risk contact, especially if they appear to be homeless and perhaps quite volatile or scary?
At the same time, I remember taking a class in oil painting, and when it came to our personal choice for a project, all I wanted to paint were two faces (Roger Rees and David Threlfall in the RSC production of Nicholas Nickleby). I’ve never been much of a painter, but what I’m most drawn to is faces – usually of actors in roles that I love.
I love that the question haunts you. And your post haunted me all day, so much so that I sat down and wrote a description that I’d been avoiding and hadn’t even realized it until today. In writing it, I learned something about the characters (the one doing the seeing and the one being seen) and their connection that I hadn’t known before.
Sometimes there’s just so much fear around really letting myself write…Thanks for inspiring me to take the leap beyond my comfort zone.
I really believe we register faces all day. We may not be aware of it, and yes we may allow ourselves to be distracted, and we may look away more times than we’d like to admit. But it’s our first and most fundamental connection with others.
Glad I helped with the day’s writing. Nothing — nothing — makes me happier.
David, a fun and important parameter to understand and use.
I became weary of the paragraph-long hairline to neck descriptions that were popular in the past and was aware of Leonard’s dictum early.
Here’s my take after much experimentation. Yes, we see a new person (readers are new to every first introduction) all at once, but we usually pick out one or two aspects of their appearance (and sometimes what that might indicate about their personality). EG: aftershave and ketchup stains. And in the beginning of a relationship, those are the markers we use. As time goes on we see more: the fan of her crow’s feet; the asymmetry of his mouth; the raw lip that she nurses by chewing on it. etc.
So what I am experimenting with is revealing the characters’ appearance and behaviors this way, a little at a time as the story unfolds, going deeper, reflecting the POV character’s attraction to or dislike of the subject or even of some other aspect of the POV’s distraction at the moment.
If, on the other hand, the characters are old friends when we readers meet them, the way they “see” and reflect on each other is different from the above. Often we stop looking at people we know in exchange for solidifying them in our opinions. Then suddenly see them in a certain way. And I try to make my narration and inner dialogue reflect both of these trends. It speaks to the mind of the viewer, which is very like many others have expressed above.
Thanks for the thoughtful post.
Wise approach. I’d add that, even with people we know well, we may or may not notice something unique or different that specific moment they show up … on the page.
What a timely post for me, David. I’ve just been studying Walter Mosely’s _Fear of the Dark_. During my first–enjoyable–read I’d noticed that he took care to describe almost all of his characters, if only briefly. It seemed so unusual to me that, like you, I began wondering if such descriptions had become passé.
Mosely’s narrator, Paris Minton, owns a bookstore and spends most of his time reading, so his language tends to be a bit high-flown. I thought that perhaps that was why Mosely could get away with so much description. Looking at them now, though, I see that he only sometimes describes facial features; other times he goes with clothing, posture or behavior.
Here are some descriptions I especially liked. In the first one, Sir and Sasha are a couple.
Sasha was born to be a queen and Sir was just a pawn. He was medium brown, middlebrow, and five eight in street shoes. His forehead was low, but he had a long skull from front to back. His eyes were crafty and his smile ever present. He was a union man from the first day he got a job at the Long Beach docks and he voted Democrat without even a glance at the candidate’s name.
(The photo) was of a stunningly beautiful woman. She had medium brown skin, straight or straighened hair, eyes filled with knowing suprise, and parted lips that could teach you how to kiss a Greek goddess.
Mr. Twist looked nothing like his name. He was short and stout with googly, watery eyes that most often seemed to be gazing somewhere above your head. His lips were like those I’d imagine on Edward G. Robinson’s grandfather. All in all he looked like and uncomfortable cross between a man and a frog. He was good with a stick, better at business, and had the air of danger about him. he was one of those men—like Cleave and Fearless—who lived outside the rule of law.
That’s the ticket. I absolutely love those. Thanks so much for citing them. I need to find that book!
Thanks for this post – again, I apologize for being late to the party. I’m heads down on the next book but I wanted to comment. I am struck by the awesome images of your relative Consuelo Kanaga, they are most revealing. Thank you for sharing them with us. I agree that much of contemporary genre fiction lacks the interesting physical descriptions of people and place that I adore in literary fiction. You suggested posting a physical description from a work I admire. I am a Hemingway fan, so here’s one from Old Man and the Sea and I also think this example conjures the inner character. “The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert. Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.” As for a physical description from my novel, The Sleeping Serpent, I decided to paste here a description of the antagonist, as observed by the protagonist when she first sees him in a crowded restaurant. “She allowed the wine and music to transport her, until something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. An attractive man stood next to the reservation desk texting on his cell phone. The greeter, a pretty young woman, apparently knew him, since she kept leaning in closely and touching his arm. But, intent on his phone, he kept his head down, ignoring a thick forelock of layered dark hair curtaining his eyes. Perfectly ripped jeans revealed the tanned olive skin of his muscular thighs, while a half tucked in, tight-fitting, black T-shirt revealed a large, silver dragon’s head belt buckle, accentuating his nice package below. A well-worn, vintage black leather motorcycle jacket slung over his shoulder with one hand completed the captivating image.
Another example is the character of Sofia. I use fashion and brands frequently to reveal what a character is about. “Luna was at her desk when she heard the tippity-tap of high heels in the hallway. Looking up, she saw Sofia peeking in the door.
Intently scrolling the Santa Fe website, Luna waved for her to come in and sit down, then looked up to give her full attention. Sofia tossed her golden mane, causing it to cascade over half her face, and brandishing her wrist at Luna, announced, “Look what Nico gave me for my birthday!”
She didn’t have to say the bracelet was Ippolita. Being in fashion, the brand was well known to Luna.
“Ooh…the blackened silver. It’s one of my favorites.”
Here is another character description: “Erin never competed with her product—whether it was the agency or her client’s brand. Today she wore a black Prada jewel neck dress and platform high heels. Just like her design sensibility, the dress was simple. A wide, knit headband held back her black, angular-cut hair, and her makeup consisted of only a soft peach lip gloss and a light application of eyeliner to highlight her distinctive grey eyes. Leaving her team to make social niceties with the client, Erin left the conference room quickly and headed straight to her office, where she grabbed her Céline black trapeze bag holding, among other things, her yoga clothes.
An hour later, Erin pulled her black Jaguar into the Amaru lot on Ventura, parking far at the back. Before stepping out of the car, she checked her eye makeup. The liquid liner was cool, making her appear more youthful. She knew she didn’t look anywhere near her age, but Nico was twenty years younger, after all.
From my current WIP: He still wore the nasal cannula and the oxygen monitor was beeping loudly which was disconcerting, but the nurse had assured her they would attend to him if the rate dropped too low. Standing over him, apart from the unfavorable aspect cast by the room’s florescent lighting, she observed his warm olive complexion slowly returning. His dark locks spilled across the plain white pillowcase in curlicues resembling the mythological Medusa. Even in sleep his full lips pursed seductively, beckoning to be kissed, as they did the first time he played guitar and sang a Spanish love song to her.”
Thank you for this great post – The comments were great, so for that I am glad I was late. Thank you for the opportunity to share a few of my character descriptions. As always, your valuabel post will get placed in your folder for future reference.
best,
Luna