Do You Like Character Descriptions?

[Kumquatqueen]

I would never...

Yes you would. Kumquat's Law strikes again. As usual...

 

[samhasstories]

I tend to describe my female characters in erotica because... I want to. I have a solid picture of them in my mind and the main male character's attraction to their physical assets* is part of the story. Less so in my non-erotica - maybe a quick note about anything important, like whether or not they cut an imposing figure, if they're small and mousey and unimpressive, etc. I don't pay as much attention to their skin or hair or eye color, or their physical assets* in those cases, assuming the reader will generate their own image of what they want to picture.

When reading, I don't mind either way so much, as long as the characters aren't over described. I don't need a page-long treatise on the angle of a man's jaw, or a woman's heart-shaped face (I don't know why, but I hate the heart-shaped face).

One particular pet peeve is when a character isn't really described, but then some particular physical characteristic is referenced later. Like a man strokes his beard thoughtfully, and I had a picture in my mind of a beardless man. That's jarring.

* read: boobies

 

[StillStunned]

* read: boobies

Preferably in Braille.

 

[samhasstories]

Preferably in Braille.

Amen.

 

[SimonDoom]

Don't be lazy. Describe your characters physical appearances. You are the one telling the story, not the reader. Do your job and tell it all. Otherwise you're just taking a weak stab at trying to recite the reader's own fantasy back to him and not really making any serious attempt at writing an actual story.

It's not lazy. It's a matter of style and emphasis. An author may choose to provide no description, or a minimal description, because the author wants to focus on something else. Many accomplished authors provide little or no physical descriptions. I cannot recall the lack of description ever diminishing my enjoyment of a good story.

Sometimes I provide descriptions, sometimes I don't. It depends on what type of story it is.

I sometimes find that a useful style of description is to use a few words to describe the effect the character gives: is the character imposing, or meek? Does the character have a coiled, taut demeanor or a loose, shambling one? In many stories it adds little to tell the reader that the character has brown eyes, for example, but describing the manner of the character can be helpful.

 

[OffNSFW]

I write really detailed descriptions of my main characters in my notes--short backstories, physical descriptions, even the crude porny stuff like penis size. What I don't do is put all that stuff into the story. For me, it's important to have a consistent understanding of what these people are like, so that I can draw upon it when necessary.

Putting in the whole shebang would just clutter to the story with useless trivia. I think it's more important to include one or two evocative details that will hopefully remind the reader of real people they know, or help them to create their own version of the character in their mind. They don't need my version of the character.

 

[AG31]

Hi guys,

I'm curious what other authors think about physical character descriptions - that is appearance specifically, not mannerisms or personality.

I don't write them because I don't even know what my characters look like (I don't visualize mentally). I think I want to know if the characters I'm reading about are attractive or idiosyncratic physically. I like to know if they're tall or short, etc. But I don't require much detail.

On the other hand, it always comes down to what the author is trying to do and whether or not they do it well. So I doubt that the answers you get will be of much help to you in your writing efforts.

 

[KeithD]

Physical descriptions? Yes, folded in with other stuff, as possible. Extensive, just dumped there, descriptions? No.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Judge Dredd, the man in the iron mask, v for vendetta, the mandalorian... ANY horror film, just think about how boring the monster becomes once it is revealed, the focus then shifts from the fear of the monster and onto the actions of the other characters.

The SAW movies; the threat of Jigsaws machinations is so much worse than watching the actors trying to act out having their ribs broken. An exception to this is Toni Colette in Hereditary.... can we get her an oscar, please?

The unknown is thrilling, nothing is as scary or as tantalizing as our own imagination.

Those aren't erotica, and as for those characters, they are actually very well described for their purpose of combat and action.

But if you're sharing a fantasy where the appearances of a person or a scene has no bearing on the story, then coax the reader into making their own image.

There are few instances in erotica where physical appearance has no bearing on the story. The story is about people and bodies after all.

And No, you never coax the reader into their own images. It's your job to provide the image. Would you give much leeway at all in describing Boba Fett? No, you would not. People love Boba Fett because of precisely how cool he looks in his suit and helmet. Boba Fett in particular has been beloved for decades and has had no personality traits whatsoever until the recent movie. He more than any other character in the history of cinema is beloved for his very specific physical description alone. My little brother and his sci-fi nerd friends have gone berzerk over how cool thus guy is for decades before he was ever given any personality.

 

[AlexBailey]

The detail and focus of your character descriptions should depend on the perspective of the narrator.

Who is telling the story and who are they telling it to? If you're telling a bunch of drunk buddies about a girl you have a crush on it’s going to be a very different description than you'd tell you mom when she asks about your new friend.

What would your narrator notice? If the narrator is a horny ripped alpha male he just might be thinking in bra sizes. If your narrator is a feminist lesbian her description would be very different, and could be every bit as accurate even about the same person.


Here's a description from my nonbinary main character who is into surfing and has spent time in Hawaii:
---------------

"You'd look cute in that," a salesgirl says, startling me.

Quite pretty, she's a native Hawaiian girl, probably in her mid-twenties. Long dark-brown hair with natural reddish highlights curls it's way down her slim shoulders and back. Her complexion is like a good mix of coffee and coconut milk. Her friendly, deep-brown, intelligent eyes sparkle with lots of energy. She's wearing cheap flip-flop sandals and has several traditional tattoos showing from under her store logo t-shirt and flower print sarong.
-----------

That same sales clerk could be described very differently by a guy who just wanted her number for a hookup date.


There is also the matter of what kind of story you are telling. If it's deep into fetish or kink you may want to dwell on the most tantalizing details, explain every stitch of what they're wearing.

 

[vagrantx]

Those aren't erotica

Are you being purposfully facetious here? No, they're not erotica, because you brought up Salma Hayek, Megan Fox and Zooey Deschanel, you brought up mainstream movies and how we wouldn't watch someone whose face we cannot see.

The only thing about your posts that's tugging on my strings is that you keep saying "it's YOUR job" and "you NEVER do this and that". I would have liked for you to understand that not everyone enjoys the same things, but I'm just going to drop this sisyphean stone of an argument and head off.

 

[UnquietDreams]

It depends, which is sort of a cop out, but not really. If I am writing first person, I almost never describe my character other than when it is required by what they are doing. Most people don't stand in front of a mirror, cataloging themselves.

If I am writing something more visual, or sex-scene focused, I tend to more descriptions.

And I like if it can serve more than one purpose. In my latest story, I describe a character's eyes as looking "the color of a long pour of Hennessy," which tells you something about her, but also about the person doing the describing.

 

[AlexBailey]

I almost never describe my character other than when it is required by what they are doing.

If I am writing something more visual, or sex-scene focused, I tend to more descriptions.

And I like if it can serve more than one purpose. In my latest story, I describe a character's eyes as looking "the color of a long pour of Hennessy," which tells you something about her, but also about the person doing the describing.

Right.

Do you ever fully catalog someone’s appearance at first glance? The pace of your narrative doesn’t have to be everything up front all at once, you can be patient and wait until the narrator would naturally take notice.

Also, the narrator’s perspective is key. If someone is “big” that’s a comparison, not an objective fact. How “big” they are depends on perspective and you can use that comparison to describe more than just the character at the center of the focus.

————-

His breath catches and his body tenses for a moment—but he settles back to steady breathing, slow and deep. The mere sound of his breath reflects how much bigger he is than me, a full foot taller and nearly twice my weight, with his well-defined muscles, and his beautiful surf-tanned body dwarfing my small frame.

——————-

I use this to help describe both characters and how they fit together rather than just objective reality.

 

[yowser]

To me it seems like the nature of the story will often dictate the approach. Most readers (I include myself) like something in the story as a pace to hang my hat. Doesn't necessarily need to be extensive, maybe a cocked eyebrow, the way someone's fingers look while holding a wineglass, their posture while standing in an elevator. Many here say less is better, let the reader fill in the blanks, but then don't give enough dots to make a picture.

If you wish to immerse the reader, it is necessary to bring them into the story by 1. helping them visualise the scene, 2. identify with the character(s), or 3. having a story so compelling that description doesn't matter much. Most stories here do poorly on 1., by either over or under-doing the details. An overly thorough physical description is off-putting and usually detracts the story's movement. If First person POV, a physical description isn't necessary but requires something to help the reader (not a height measurement, more 'she had to reach up to kiss me' sort of clue.

No. 3 of course, is the Holy Grail.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Are you being purposfully facetious here? No, they're not erotica, because you brought up Salma Hayek, Megan Fox and Zooey Deschanel, you brought up mainstream movies and how we wouldn't watch someone whose face we cannot see.

The only thing about your posts that's tugging on my strings is that you keep saying "it's YOUR job" and "you NEVER do this and that". I would have liked for you to understand that not everyone enjoys the same things, but I'm just going to drop this sisyphean stone of an argument and head off.

I'm not being facetious at all, although I certainly can be on occasion. I've simply shown the flaw in your examples of action heroes comparable to erotic characters, in particular the Mandalorian.

It's your stone. Drop it wherever you like.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Do You Like Character Descriptions?​

I’ve done the polar extremes and many points in between.

My early stories have appearance info dumps aplenty. But, even then, I framed it. My first story had what the FMC (some bitch called Emily) thought about her appearance as a major plot point. So I had her miserably looking in the mirror enumerating her woes (yes I have done that IRL).

At the other extreme, while I describe other characters’ appearance, I don’t think I ever refer to what Eden Baker looks like, apart from being slim.

In my recent, OF-based story, the FMC describes herself as part of a sales pitch.

In general I probably take a more impressionistic approach to appearance nowadays. But I don’t view it as verboten.

Emily

 

[MyBareTorso]

I think it boils down to the quality of the story itself. I've read great stories (here and elsewhere) that have plenty of physical description, and equally great stories that have none at all. There's no right or wrong. It's what you like and what works. Also, side point, I instantly get uncomfortable when someone uses the term "job" in relation to writing here on an unpaid website where everyone is happily doing their thing for free. Please don't tell me what my "job" is as a hobbyist writer creating erotic fiction for myself and (hopefully) the reader. There are no rules except those put in place by the site itself. These are my stories, and it is not my "job" to do anything with them that I don't want to do.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Here's the main physical description of the love interest from one of my more successful stories:

I'd just handed over to the next shift and sat down to enjoy the last ten minutes of the lunch break when a rumpled-looking woman approached me with a suitcase in tow.

Some folk really struggle with the idea that their preferences might not be universal and that other writers aren't obliged to cater to them personally. By all means, if there's something interesting about their appearance, describe it! But it's not the only way to make a character interesting.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I think it boils down to the quality of the story itself. I've read great stories (here and elsewhere) that have plenty of physical description, and equally great stories that have none at all. There's no right or wrong. It's what you like and what works. Also, side point, I instantly get uncomfortable when someone uses the term "job" in relation to writing here on an unpaid website where everyone is happily doing their thing for free. Please don't tell me what my "job" is as a hobbyist writer creating erotic fiction for myself and (hopefully) the reader. There are no rules except those put in place by the site itself. These are my stories, and it is not my "job" to do anything with them that I don't want to do.

That someone would be me. No need to dance around it. Go ahead, call me out.

Sure, you're a hobby writer and and you can do as you please, and if that includes never taking the craft that seriously, that is totally fine too. Like I already said here.

Of course the challenge is to do this smoothly and naturally while avoiding the dreaded info-dump. It's not always easy. It depends on the nature and the length of your story and how it all fits into the style and I'm sure a myriad of other factors. It's not necessarily supposed to be easy. Anyone who just wants to write easy hobby stuff, that's cool - there's nothing wrong with singing in the shower - but you'll never really improve and certainly never be great by making weak excuses to cop-out on physical character descriptions in your erotica.

As for it being your job, if you take your craft seriously yes it is totally your job. On a site like this it is not your occupation, so not not in any literal sense, but in the relationship between writer and reader, describing what is going on and who is doing the going on is the writer's role, his job. The reader sits back and reads. Certainly there are techniques that you can use to engage the reader's mind more and make them more active in the process but you should not be making them do grunt work like figuring out for themselves the physical appearance of an erotic character.

Physical descriptions of erotic characters is not high level stuff. It's basic bones and sinew for erotica. Whiff on it at your own peril.

 

[Rob_Royale]

I keep it pretty general. A beautiful full figured brunette. I might add a height by saying "in her heels we were eye to eye on the dance floor" and an eye color by saying "I was lost in her blue eyes."

Outside of that, I let the readers imagination plug in their favorite full figured brunette.

 

[EroticFriction]

I prefer to read (and write) character descriptions that help me form a picture of who I'm getting to know, and the best examples in my opinion come when the details are tightly woven into the story and into the sex. Something, not too much but maybe a nice sketch at the introduction, and more bits as they are revealed in the story.

I've read single sentences that get me where I need to go, and paragraphs that don't.

I'm not usually a fan of more generic character descriptions, but it really depends on context and the kind of story I'm reading. Still, lack of description more often than not leaves me with a feeling that something is missing and I'm losing out.

 

[MyBareTorso]

That someone would be me. No need to dance around it. Go ahead, call me out.

Sure, you're a hobby writer and and you can do as you please, and if that includes never taking the craft that seriously, that is totally fine too. Like I already said here.



As for it being your job, if you take your craft seriously yes it is totally your job. On a site like this it is not your occupation, so not not in any literal sense, but in the relationship between writer and reader, describing what is going on and who is doing the going on is the writer's role, his job. The reader sits back and reads. Certainly there are techniques that you can use to engage the reader's mind more and make them more active in the process but you should not be making them do grunt work like figuring out for themselves the physical appearance of an erotic character.

Physical descriptions of erotic characters is not high level stuff. It's basic bones and sinew for erotica. Whiff on it at your own peril.

I often include physical descriptions in my stories, I enjoy it. I just don't like being told what my "job" is here. Implying that authors don't know what they're doing, or that they're being lazy, merely because it doesn't align with your own opinions is a little unfair. Same old argument...no right or wrong, just different. There have been plenty of thoughtful, interesting posts in this thread - including yours - that seem to prove that.

 

[mirafrida]

I like a few quirky descriptive details. Beyond that, in general, my personal preference would be to avoid spending too much time itemizing physical attributes.

Broadly speaking, however, Lit readers seem to want description. When I've included more details, I've sometimes gotten comments along the lines "I liked the description of..."; and when I included less details, I've sometimes gotten comments like "good, but I like it when you include more description..."

Of course, as always, if you're going to include details, this raises the issue of doing it artfully. Often I try to spread the description out into a few different parts of the story, hopefully in places where it fits or is natural to introduce. I have to hope readers don't mind waiting a while, and then finding out something about how the character looks, because that's often what seems necessary.

 

[RachelPost]

When I start writing fiction (erotica or otherwise), I sit down and create a character profile. Their name is sometimes a reflection of the character. The shy and naive young woman named Scarlett doesn't work, but Hannah certainly does. I create an entire "reality" for my characters. Even though many "facts" don't make it into a story, they help bring my character to life. It's my job to bring that life to the page.

As for physical characteristics, I tend to allow the reader some room for their imagination. Some descriptions come out, but some things just don't add much to the story. Does it matter if she has short or long blond hair? Maybe not. So it depends on what I need to reveal about the characters.

 

[Bramblethorn]

As for it being your job, if you take your craft seriously yes it is totally your job. On a site like this it is not your occupation, so not not in any literal sense, but in the relationship between writer and reader, describing what is going on and who is doing the going on is the writer's role, his job. The reader sits back and reads. Certainly there are techniques that you can use to engage the reader's mind more and make them more active in the process but you should not be making them do grunt work like figuring out for themselves the physical appearance of an erotic character.

Physical descriptions of erotic characters is not high level stuff. It's basic bones and sinew for erotica. Whiff on it at your own peril.

When people issue diktats like this, I always find it interesting to check their own writing and see how they apply those principles to their own work. Sometimes it helps me understand their point of view. Sometimes it just makes me think "maybe this isn't a person who should be giving writing advice".

https://www.literotica.com/s/dark-bush

As mentioned previously, I don't usually visualise characters when I'm reading, but since the author is extolling high-visual writing, I'm going to make the effort to do so for this one.

The room was thick with incense as she had been smudging since morning. The haze hanging in the air caught the lamp light more than the faint glow of a setting sun unseen through the tangled wood and heavy sky outside the cottage window. Her eyes were as dark and shiny as obsidian from beneath the hood of her cloak. The black linen wrapped about her body, naked and pale, the sash cinched by her fine-fingered rune-inked hands about her slender waist.

This immediately trips me up on figuring out how she can be "naked" when she's wearing a cloak "wrapped around her body" and a sash. After re-reading a couple of times to see if I've missed anything, I'm going to assume that I'm meant to visualise her as being naked under her cloak, and pale aside from the ink on her hands.

"Re-reading a couple of times to see if I've missed anything" is not a good reaction for me as a reader. Every time it happens, it breaks whatever momentum the story might have built up, and snaps me out of the story to think about the author's intentions.

She undid the sash of her black robe and it fell open, showing him a strip of milky flesh down the middle of her chest to the dark wild bramble in her crotch, above which was more paint like that on her hands, a four-petalled blossom in dark red.

And now I have to revise the mental image that "naked and pale" created earlier, because you've just added a great big detail of body paint that wasn't in the original description. This also confirms that she was wearing clothing that covered most of her body up to this point, so why was that "naked and pale" in the earlier description at all?

I also have to figure out whether her "robe" is the same thing as the "cloak" mentioned earlier. A "cloak" is a sleeveless garment; robes are usually sleeved. There are a few cases where one garment might be described as both, but nothing in the intro suggests those kinds of designs, so I visualised a typical cloak. However, the story seems to be treating them as the same garment, so I now I need to revise my visualisation of "cloak".

All this creates the same problem that you were talking about in other writers, forcing readers to visualise something and then contradicting that visualisation.

She gave him a look of mock inquisition, then simply pushed the robe back from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor in a heap at her bare feet. With both hands resting on the edges of the door frame, she posed. Under each of her arms were tangled boskages as unruly as her dark bush below. His chest heaved as he drank her in, her dark eyes enticing him, her black hair shiny and unkempt falling past her collar to trace upon her bosom

...and she's also wearing a collar? Or are you using "collar" to mean "collarbone"? I might have guessed at just "neck", but another passage mentions her washing the guy's "neck and collar", so I guess these are two distinct body parts.

His youthful shape and blonde colors faded into clarity, the righteous face of a novice.

I'm not sure what "faded into clarity" is meant to look like, and "the righteous face of a novice" creates further confusion. Presumably you're using it in the specific meaning of one preparing to become a monk, rather than the more general meaning of somebody new at something. But does this mean that he is a novice, and that somehow she can tell this? Or merely that he looks like novices she's seen?

Because the story opens in medias res, and pays much more attention to describing his appearance than telling us who he is (not even a name), or why he's in this wood without being aware there's a resident witch, this makes me pause to figure it out. Momentum broken again.

His cock bobbed there before her eyes, jutting out from his auric nest

One of the perils of high-description writing is that it becomes hard to avoid repetition or thesauritis. Having mentioned three times that the guy is "blonde", using it a fourth time for his pubes would be overkill. Instead, you've picked a word that's extremely obscure to those who haven't studied Latin or chemistry.

This one's particularly problematic because even if a reader were to look it up, they'd find different definitions depending on which dictionary they used. For instance, Collins defines "auric" only as "of or containing gold in the trivalent state" (a specifically chemical meaning); Oxford Languages defines it as "relating to the aura supposedly surrounding a living creature". Wiktionary has two definitions similar to those and also an obsolete "of, or pertaining to the ear". Some others do include a simple "of or related to gold", but there's no guarantee your readers will go to those particular sources first.

If you really wanted to invoke a comparison to gold, and were confident in your readers' ability to recognise that "aur-" stem, "aureate" might've been a better option here. But it would've been easier just to cut down on "blonde" earlier on to save yourself one for use here.

Some passages relevant to his clothing:

[after removing his cloak and belt]

She tugged at his tunic, urging him to lean forward so that she could pull it from beneath his buttocks and then lift it.
...

[She takes off his boots and breeches, they have sex, and then flee a fire. He puts his breeches and tunic back on.]

"Hurry! Hurry!" he clambered as he struggled with his tunic.

...He hopped over the ledge and stumbled, falling at her feet in the muck, his uncinched breeches slipping to expose his buttock.

...Struggling to his feet, he left his boots, his cloak, his sword in the sticky mud and staggered to follow.

A "tunic" is typically knee-length or longer, and you've already established that his is long enough to sit on. So it's not clear why his buttocks would be exposed here.

With a fire to run away from, it seems like a peculiar choice for him to put his tunic on before boots or belt. Both of those are important to getting away; the tunic isn't. If he feels the need to cover his torso, faster to throw on the cloak. Again, not the sort of thing you want readers stalling to figure out in a scene that's meant to feel urgent.

If you want to write high description and make it work, it needs to be consistent.

But for me, my biggest issue with this piece is that despite all the visuals, it does almost nothing to flesh them out as personalities. Who is this guy? Why is he wandering through the forest with a sword? At the end of the story, about all I can say about him is that he's the kind of guy who doesn't like the idea of burning to death, and does like the idea of fucking an attractive woman, which is 90% of guys on the planet. Similarly for her, apparently she likes doing witchy things and fucking dudes she finds in the forest and laughing an eeeeeevil laugh, but I've got no real feel for what she's feeling here. Is she fucking him because she's bored? Or because she needs sex magic to power some ritual? Or because she and her forest-witch girlfriend really want a baby witch? I have no idea what her investment is in all that.

Without that, for me, this story falls just as flat as low-visual-description stories do for you. Because being able to relate to at least one of the characters in a story is as important for me as being able to visualise them is for you. That doesn't make you a lazy writer with no interest in the craft; it just makes us different people with different preferences, and it'd be great if you could comprehend that your preferences aren't universal.

Speaking of "craft", though:

she lifted it from it's mount

placed beneath the orb in it's altar stand

"You're dirty," she nodded at him.

Somebody who's tripping up on "it's" vs. "its" and on how to punctuate untagged speech probably shouldn't be getting too high-and-mighty about lecturing others on "craft".