How to describe a character

How to Describe Someone’s Character and Personality in English

Adjectives are used to describe someone’s character and personality.

Most people would consider the character traits described by the personality adjectives below to be “good” or positive. This is generally true, but remember that words are often used subjectively. For example, “determined” is shown here as a positive personality adjective, while “stubborn” is listed on the negative personality adjectives page, yet the meaning of both can be very similar. The choice of word sometimes says as much about the author as about the person being described.

Words for Describing Someone’s Character and Personality

It was brave of you to speak in front of all those people.

I tried to stay calm and just ignore him.

Arthur was a very gentle, caring person.

The staff are always courteous and helpful.

You’re so creative! I could never make my own clothes.

Those behind the proposition are a group of hard-working volunteers who want to improve Tucson.

I didn’t mean to be rude, but I had to leave early.

The old man looked cross and unfriendly.

We could ask our neighbours to feed the cat, but they’re a little unreliable.

He felt too lazy to get out of bed.

She’s too stingy to give money to charity.

Companies that are insensitive to global changes will lose sales.
…

How to Describe People in English: Appearance, Character Traits and Emotions

Learn how to describe people in English including appearance, character traits and emotions.

How to Describe People in English

An adjective is a describing word, the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified.

In this lesson, we will learn useful Adjectives to describe people in three ways:

1. Describing someone’s appearance

2. Describing someone’s character and personality

3. Describing someone’s feelings & emotions

How to Describe a Person in English

1. Describing Someone’s Appearance

Appearance is defined as the way someone or something looks.

This is list of adjectives to describe a person’s appearance:

2. Describing Someone’s Character and Personality

Character traits are qualities or characteristics that describe what a person is like. It’s important to be able to describe your own personality or someone else’s.

Here is a list of English Adjectives to describe someone’s personality.

3. Describing Someone’s Feelings & Emotions

Sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly how you feel. This vocabulary list helps you narrow down exactly what word best expresses your current emotional state.

How to describe: Writing clear places and characters

Learning how to describe places and people lucidly is a vital skill for all fiction authors. Effective descriptive words show mood and character in addition to appearance. The best descriptions draw us in and keep us rapt with attention, placing us in a scene. Here are 5 tips for writing memorable places and characters:

Learning how to describe places and people lucidly is a vital skill for all fiction authors. Effective descriptive words show mood and character in addition to appearance. The best descriptions draw us in and keep us rapt with attention, placing us in a scene. Here are 5 tips for writing memorable places and characters:

1. Use great (not merely ‘nice’) adjectives

The word ‘nice’ itself is a good example of a nice adjective. It’s nondescript, the opposite of descriptive. If a friend went on vacation and described the Colosseum as ‘nice’, you wouldn’t be any wiser as to how it felt to stand in an ancient, enormous arena.

Writing a novel is an opportunity to play, experiment, find the fresh and precise image.

Great adjectives do extra work. If the traveler said ‘you’ve got to see it, it was awe-inspiring, really towering’, you’d have a sense of both the feeling the Colosseum evoked and a sense of its scale.

When you’re describing a place or a person, think about the specificity of the describing words you choose. You could say, ‘The man was short’ yet readers might ask themselves ‘how short?’ If you said ‘the man was minute’, this suggests not only that the character is especially small in size but also registers a sense of surprise or shock (given the strength of the descriptive word).

One way to get the most out of adjectives is to look up their etymologies. The origins of words often explain additional connotations that we’re maybe dimly aware of but don’t think about. For example, ‘short’ (from Old English via Old High German) means ‘to cut’, with the notion of something cut off. ‘Minute’ (from Latin minutus) means ‘chopped small’. Already a much more visceral image – one of little pieces – underlies this more expressive describing word.

2. Use describing words that show more than appearance

Aspiring authors, when introducing characters, often describe people by their eye colour alone.

This is ineffective as description for two reasons: Eye colour doesn’t give us any information about a character’s personality (although red eyes may suggest a character has been crying and red irises are a clichéd sign of supernatural malevolence).

The second reason why eye colour by itself isn’t effective is that this aspect of physical appearance lacks substantial variety (unless you examine eyes from inches away).

Whether you’re describing a ramshackle old building or a vivacious, sprightly character, use descriptive language that conveys nature or character along with appearance. Here, for example, Donna Tartt describes the Greek lecturer Julian at Hampden College in The Secret History:

‘His eyes were kind, frank, more gray than blue.’

Although Tartt includes colour, the emphasis is on what Julian’s eyes say about his personality, not only his appearance.

Similarly, Tartt conveys plenty of character in writing about place. Here’s her description of an opulent, sprawling country home:

Walking into the library, I took in my breath sharply and stopped: glass-fronted bookcases and Gothic panels, stretching fifteen feet to a frescoed and plaster-medallioned ceiling. In the back of the room was a marble fireplace, big as a sepulchre, and a globed gasolier – dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading – sparkled in the dim.(p. 89)

Tartt’s description conveys the character of the house acutely, contrasting the dim of its vastness and uninhabited mood with its splendour (light fittings ‘dripping with prisms’).

Write better description

Get a comprehensive workbook with videos and exercises on how to write character description.

3. Practice how to filter place and character description through a character’s viewpoint

One of the important functions of description in narration is that it gives us information about the viewpoint character doing the describing.

A fearful character entering a crowded house party might describe the noise and action in terms that suggest being overwhelmed. An extrovert, on the other hand, might describe exactly the same scene as exciting and energy-giving.

These differences become important in multi-perspective novels where there are multiple characters’ viewpoints. Showing the same scene from different character’s viewpoints would mean making different descriptive choices.

As an exercise write a 500-word scene, for example a student protest on a campus. Describe the scene from the viewpoint of one of the active protesters, then describe the same scene from the viewpoint of a jaded academic watching from the sidelines who is skeptical. Think about how each might describe their surrounds and bystanders or participants.

Filtering description via characters’ viewpoints gives you a way to sketch in and develop characters’ personalities and outlooks without explicitly telling the reader what a character thinks or feels. Subtly showing characters’ inner worlds through their description of the world around them deepens how real characters appear.

4. Build descriptions over the course of your story

To give your writing descriptive power, build on your descriptions. If a house looks abandoned and neglected from the outside, describe further signs of this abandonment on the interior. Create a novel that has strong resonance and links between places, images and ideas. Connection adds cohesion.

Similarly, if you describe a striking detail about a character at first introduction, bring the detail back when relevant. In The Secret History, Tartt first describes the overbearing character Bunny thus:

‘He wore the same jacket every day, a shapeless brown tweed that was frayed at the elbows and short in the sleeves, and his sandy hair was parted on the left, so a long forelock fell over one bespectacled eye. Bunny Corcoran was his name, Bunny being somehow short for Edmund. His voice was loud and honking, and carried in the dining halls.’ (p. 18)

The details about Bunny’s clothes are an early clue to Bunny’s character, as it later emerges that although he claims his family is wealthy he perpetually borrows money from his friends. The loudness of his voice suggests an unconscious character. Tartt builds on this detail later when she describes Bunny’s friend Henry trying to avoid him:

The next morning, around ten, I was ironing a shirt in the kitchen when there was another knock at the door. I went into the hall and found Henry standing there.
‘Does that sound like Bunny to you?’ he said quietly.
‘No,’ I said. This knock was fairly light; Bunny always beat at the door as if to bash it in. (p. 155)

Like his ‘honking’ voice, Bunny’s way of announcing his arrival is described as brash and invasive. Through building character description over time, Tartt shows in Bunny a character who is invasive and unreflective. This descriptive building deepens our awareness of the character. The reader can almost predict how Bunny will behave in a given situation.

5. Build a rich vocabulary of words to describe people and places

Actively expand the set of descriptive words and synonyms you have in your toolkit.

For example, characters can be divided into four simplified types. Sanguine (cheerful), melancholic (sad), phlegmatic (easygoing) and choleric (quick-tempered). Here are adjectives to describe each type, with the origin in brackets:

Sanguine character type:

Joyful (from Latin gaudere, ‘to rejoice’).
Vivacious (from Latin vivax, ‘lively, vigorous’).
Excitable (from Latin excitare, ‘stir up, arouse, awaken, incite’).

Melancholic character type:

Glum (from Middle English gloumen, ‘become dark’).
Despondent (from Latin despondere, ‘to give up, lose, lose heart, resign, to promise in marriage’).
Sorrowful (from Old English sorgful, ‘sad, anxious, careful, distressing, doleful’).

Phlegmatic character type:

Even (from Old English efen, ‘level, equal, like, calm, harmonious’).
Stable (from Old French estable, ‘constant, steadfast, unchanging’).
Placid (from Latin placidus, ‘pleasing, peaceful, gentle, quiet, calm’).

Choleric character type:

Reactive (from Late Latin, re- ‘back’ + agere, ‘to do, perform’).
Vociferous (from Latin vociferari, ‘to shout, yell, cry out’).
Fiery (from Middle English fier, ‘fire’).

This list shows how each adjective trails a list of subtle associations behind it. If you describe a ‘glum’ character, for example, you could pair this with describing words that intensify the root image, ‘to darken’:

In the darkening evening he slouched towards the town centre, glum, hands thrust in pockets. A passing suit gingerly crossed to the other side of the street at his approach (as though fearful of some encroaching chasm).

As an exercise, take all the adjectives in a paragraph of your writing and find their origins in a dictionary. Are there synonyms that are stronger or have more effective connotations or associations? Find more of our best articles on character description on our character writing hub.

Learn how to describe characters and places more acutely with the help of Now Novel’s tools and guides, and get feedback on your descriptive writing from the Now Novel community.

Character Descriptions: How To Write Them (in 3 Steps)

Character descriptions — those key passages that describe what a character actually looks like — are almost as crucial to a written story as the characters themselves. If you’re writing a novel, you’ve probably created an awesome, vivid protagonist in your head: motivated, quirky, maybe even memorably named. But how do you convey all that to a reader without depleting the magic?

Writing strong character descriptions actually requires quite a bit of finesse. If you skimp on descriptive passages, you run the risk of leaving your readers with forgettable characters. But if you get too descriptive, you wind up leaving no room for the reader’s own imagination.

So what does it take to strike the right balance? We’ll tell you! Here are three cardinal rules on how to write character descriptions without falling off that tightrope.

1. Choose your words carefully

When writing character descriptions, it’s easy to get ahead of yourself. After all, this is the first time you’re introducing a character you’ve created from the ground up.

But just because you know everything about them, doesn’t mean the reader needs to. Character descriptions aren’t about doling out every detail in lavish language — they’re about succinct characterization. Here are a few tips on how to achieve just that.

Be descriptive in your language

We’re talking about character descriptions, after all — it’s quite literally in the name. When describing a character that you see clearly in your mind, it’s easy to simply give a laundry list of attributes: she had black hair, brown eyes, and freckles. But that tells us nothing about the character and is frankly a waste of words.

Sure, your protagonist might have brown eyes. But so does half the world’s population! And characterization is all about showing what makes a character unique.

Sometimes, this can be done through word choice alone. Take this example from Huckleberry Finn:

“There warn’t no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man’s white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body’s flesh crawl – a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white.”

From this passage, we clearly understand how Huck’s father looks, as surely as if Twain had simply written, “He was white.” But through the use of figurative language and excellent word choice, another image sticks in our head: that of a sickly, grotesque drunk. Bonus points for the use of “tree-toad” and “fish-belly” — descriptors that match the tone of the adventure novel.

Use adjectives sparingly

Another problem with a sentence like “She had brown eyes” is that brown simply isn’t a very interesting word. When it comes to describing something, the same is true for many adjectives; which are to descriptions as adverbs are to verbs. In other words, they may appear to be more descriptive, but they often just bog down your sentences.

Same goes for verbs. Much has been made about the banality of the verb “to be” in literature. Which would you prefer: “She had brown eyes,” or, “Her brown eyes pierced through my own”? Use forceful verbs to illuminate more about your character. When it comes to character descriptions, every word counts.

However, keep in mind that overly descriptive words like these can easily turn cliché. Ultimately, a phrase like, “He had a prosaic, pedestrian face” may pale in comparison to a more simply but potent description, like this one from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated:

“He did not look like anything special at all.”

Use descriptions themselves sparingly

When introducing a character, it’s best not to dedicate three whole chapters to an exhaustive physical explanation and backstory. After all, this isn’t Moby-Dick.

So as you’re painting a picture of your character, do two important things: 1) focus on a few key characteristics at a time, and 2) make sure to spread your descriptions out across the book. If we’re told every detail of every character’s face all at once, they’ll all end up blending together. But if we’re distinctly told about the woman with ears like a rabbit or the man with a slightly larger left nostril? We’ll remember them for the whole novel.

Also keep in mind that word choice is important, but so are the things you’re describing with those words. Hair, skin, and eye color — these are all characteristics that, ironically, don’t really say anything about what characters are like. That’s why, next up, we’ll discuss what characteristics you should be covering in your character descriptions.

2. Be specific

Remember, we don’t need to know every single physical detail of every person in a book. In fact, since reading is a non-visual medium, many readers prefer to fill in the blanks themselves.

Good descriptions tend to be brief but evocative. So choose two or three distinct, specific attributes to describe and leave the rest to the reader’s imagination. Here are some ideas on what those attributes might be.

Facial expressions

Facial attributes are one thing: anyone can have a big nose, so that tells us nothing substantial about a character. On the other hand, facial expressions speak volumes. Like this example from Lord of the Flies:

“His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness.”

The way they carry themselves

Body language is key to understanding other people, so it stands to reason that it’s key to understanding characters, too. Take this description from Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which describes a character through posture and mannerisms alone:

“Mama BekwaTataba stood watching us — a little jet-black woman. Her elbows stuck out like wings, and a huge white enameled tub occupied the space above her head, somewhat miraculously holding steady while her head moved in quick jerks to the right and left.”

Their stuff

(Source: Picador)

In his popular novel American Psycho, Bret Eaton Ellis showcases Patrick Bateman’s vapidity and narcissism through descriptions of the titular character’s designer clothing. You can tell a lot about a person from their possessions — whether it’s clothing, cars, houses, or merely the contents of their purse. “He was a superficial sociopath” succinctly describes the extent of Patrick Bateman’s character development in the novel, but a passage like this shows it so much better:

“But there are also things that the average person would think are nice that I’ve done to celebrate the holiday, items I’ve bought Jean and had delivered to her apartment this morning: Castellini cotton napkins from Bendel’s, a wicker chair from Jenny B. Goode, a taffeta table throw from Barney’s, a vintage chain-mail-vent purse and a vintage sterling silver dresser set from Macy’s, a white pine whatnot from Conran’s, an Edwardian nine-carat-gold «gate» bracelet from Bergdorfs and hundreds upon hundreds of pink and white roses.”

Just be sure extensive descriptions of clothing don’t fall into the bad fanfiction category. (Although, there is good fanfiction too.)

Their actions

You know how actions speak louder than words? That’s truer than ever when it comes to describing your novel’s cast.

In one sense, actions can illustrate physical characteristics in a pretty basic way: “She ran her hand through her hair, accidentally revealing the mole on her forehead she’d always kept hidden behind her bangs.”

But you can also learn as much about fictional characters from their actions as you can about real people. Toni Morrison displays clear knowledge of this in her novel Jazz, introducing the character Violet by recounting a story about her, rather than simply telling what she looks like.

“I know that woman. She used to live with a flock of birds on Lenox Avenue. Know her husband, too. He fell for an eighteen-year-old girl with one of those deepdown, spooky loves that made him so sad and happy he shot her just to keep the feeling going. When the woman, her name is Violet, went to the funeral to see the girl and to cut her dead face they threw her to the floor and out of the church. She ran, then, through all that snow, and when she got back to her apartment she took the birds from their cages and set them out the windows to freeze or fly, including the parrot that said, ‘I love you.’”

3. Don’t always be specific

Yeah, okay — the irony here isn’t lost on us. But while giving distinct details is important to character descriptions, so is knowing when concrete descriptions aren’t needed. Words, after all, are not limited to describing physical things. So don’t limit your prose, either.

Be abstract

(Source: William Morrow)

Feel free to stretch the boundaries of what you’re describing and how you’re describing it. Rather than simply pointing out concrete characteristics or actions, feel free to describe abstractions, like this passage from Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere:

“Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing alike.”

Or, describe physical characteristics in an abstract way — that is, use similes and metaphors. In Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Dickens does not describe Scrooge as a Christmas-hating miser. Instead, Scrooge in this Christmas book is:

“Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

Be biased

Whether you’re describing yourself to a friend or a friend is describing you to someone else, it’s very unlikely either of you would give a painstaking, perfectly objective account. Biases exist in every aspect of life, so it’s okay to be biased in character descriptions, too.

If a first person narrator is describing themselves, they might comment on their own attractiveness, like Humbert Humbert in Lolita:

“I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male; slow-moving, tall, with soft dark hair and a gloomy but all the more seductive cast of demeanor.”

Or you could have one character describe another, which illuminates the attributes of the latter and the perception of the former. Take, for example, this particularly scathing description of one person by another from Jodi Taylor’s The Nothing Girl:

“The only talents he possessed were delusions of adequacy.”

This sentence succinctly describes a not-quite-self-aware underachiever. But it also illustrates a narrator with a not-so-objective opinion of him.

Show, don’t tell

Yup. The golden rule of writing applies here as well. At the end of the day, no matter what you decide to reveal to your audience, the most important aspect of character descriptions is how you reveal it. Regardless of how special, unique, or honest-to-god awesome your protagonist is, a reader forced to trudge through page after page of intensive description will find any character boring.

Instead, think of how we learn things about other people in real life. Very rarely does the color of our eyes or the shape of our nose describe who we are. We don’t tell everything there is to know about each other — we show it, through our expressions, perceptions, actions, preferences, and even our stuff. Apply that same rule to your character descriptions, and your characters (and readers) will thank you for it.

Are there any character descriptions that stand out to you? Leave any thoughts or questions in the comments below!

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How to Write Amazing Character Descriptions (with Examples)

A good character description is walking a fine line between too much and too little information. Not only that, it’s how you deliver the information to the reader that can make or break a good description. So whether you already have a vivid picture of your characters in mind or you don’t know where to start, you’ve come to the right place. Read on to explore character description.

Table of contents

What is a Good Character Description?

A good character description isn’t just about describing how a given character looks. It’s also about describing the character through the world around them and through their actions. When these factors come together, you can create a vivid description that not only tells the reader a lot about your character’s personality but also sparks the reader’s imagination. That, after all, is what reading is all about.

And while we’ll mostly be discussing character description in prose, we’ll also be discussing how character description is important when writing your character profiles. Since character profiles are best utilized before you write your novel, we’ll start there.

Descriptions for Character Profiles

Creating a character profile can help you when it comes time to write. It can ensure that you know your major characters intimately before you start writing. These profiles are about more than just character description, but for the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the physical attributes, as they’re the building blocks for writing descriptive prose.

Think of a profile as a character sketch. You’re not trying to get every single detail down, as it’s always good to leave room for spontaneity when you’re writing your novel. But when it comes to the basics of how the character looks, it can help to nail down the details.

This includes things like eye color, facial expression, height, weight, build, hair color, skin color, any disfigurements or scars, and things like tattoos or birthmarks. This should also include clothing and any other accessories, such as hats, watches, necklaces, and piercings.

You don’t have to get fancy with the profile. Just get the information down so you can refer to it later. If you want to go the extra mile, you can write down some varying descriptions of your character as if you’re writing the novel. It’s often easiest to focus on one physical attribute at a time until you’re comfortable. These practice descriptions can lend inspiration when you start writing in earnest.

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Description in Prose

Description in your book is a bit different than in your profile. A good description can give the reader a glimpse at the character’s personality traits as well as their appearance. There are many different ways to write a great character description, but they all have one thing in common: they’re creative and anything but boilerplate.

Many new writers opt for the list-style of description, thinking that less is more. They often look like this:

“He had piercing green eyes, sandy blond hair, and stood a stocky and solid six-foot-two. He had a slight limp and the musculature of a man who works hard for his living.”

While this may be fine for a minor character, it falls a little flat for a major character that you want the audience to know intimately. So for ideas on how to write character descriptions, let’s look at some examples from some masters of the craft.

Character Description Examples

This description, from Dave Hutchinson’s Europe in Autumn, is a great example of how to describe physical appearance. Neither the man nor his dog is a major character in the story, but the description tells you a little about the K9 and its owner in a few concise sentences.

“He did not look like anything special at all.”

This one-sentence description in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated is an excellent example of “less is more.”

“When he did appear his eyes were as brown as I remembered, pupils flecked with gold like beach pebbles.”

This description is from Sub Rosa by Amber Dawn. It’s a compelling use of simile to create a picture of a character’s appearance in the reader’s mind. Note that she doesn’t use tired and worn-out similes such as “eyes as blue as the summer sky” or “hair as red as autumn leaves. Getting creative with figurative language can work out very well.

“He smiled understandingly — much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced — or seemed to face — the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.”

This description, from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, focuses on the character’s actions to tell the reader about him. Or, rather, on a single action: a smile. At the same time, the writer is telling the reader something about the POV character, giving insights into how the narrator sees the character while describing him.

Tips for Writing Character Descriptions in Prose

Most writing teachers and authors will tell you that if you want to write, you need to read. And the descriptions above should be shining examples of why that is sage advice. Reading how the authors you love write character description is key. But I’ve included some tips you can use when it comes time to write your own masterpiece!

1. Start With a List

This is where the character profile comes in handy. Not only does it keep you on track (there’s nothing worse than realizing you switched a character’s eye color halfway through a book) but it also allows you to keep a picture of your character fresh in your mind’s eye.

So keep a list handy. Even if it’s just the basics, like “black hair” or “brown eyes” and the like, it helps.

2. Edit it Down

One of the most oft-quoted pieces of advice from Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style is “Omit needless words.” For writers old and new, this advice is sound indeed for writing character descriptions. We’ve all read a book where the description of a character goes on for pages and pages and we find ourselves asking, “When will we get back to the story?”

This is something to avoid at all costs. So edit your descriptions down as much as possible. Don’t use flowery language for its own sake. Instead, try to get your point across to the reader in as concise a manner as possible. You don’t have to get into a character’s backstory with the description if it will interrupt the flow of the story.

Remember that you want to create a vivid character in the reader’s mind, but that doesn’t mean that you want to take all of their imagination out of it. Leave something for the reader to interpret, if at all possible.

3. Get Creative With Surroundings and Movement

Description isn’t all about a character’s physicality. It’s also about how the character interacts with the world around them. The way a man sits on a couch or a woman drives a car or a child eats an ice cream cone can all add to the character’s description. A sentence about what a couple does while waiting in line at the movies can tell the reader more than a paragraph of straight description.

The way a character walks, the way they gesture when they talk, the way they squint when they’re thinking. These are all great ways to add to a character’s vividness and depth through description.

4. What Is and What Isn’t

Describing a person, fictional or otherwise, can be done by looking at what is there and what isn’t there. In fact, sharing what isn’t there — what’s missing — can be a great way of describing a person. As a writer, this can also help you develop your craft and keep your prose fresh. Whether this is a missing limb, a shirt pocket that has been torn off, or the lack of seeming intelligence on a vacant face, the absence of things can say a lot about a character.

5. Adjectives Can Help or Hinder

As a rule in fiction, it’s best to limit your use of adverbs. And the use of adjectives in character descriptions is no exception. Like adverbs, adjectives can become a crutch that holds back more concise and creative writing. This is not to say that you shouldn’t use them on occasion. Sometimes an adjective is just the right kind of word for character description. Just keep in mind that overusing them can lead to reader fatigue and overly flowery language.

6. Practice Makes Perfect

This should go without saying, but practicing your description will go a long way to becoming a better writer. When you consciously sit down to write a compelling character description, you can really think about what you want to say and how best to say it.

To do this, choose a character archetype and flesh that archetype out into a full-fledged person through descriptive language. Try writing several descriptions of the same character type, focusing on a few different tributes each time. You can try writing one where you focus on appearance. One on movement. One on how she/he interacts with the world around them. One on clothing. And one on what’s missing (if anything). These practices can help you get your head around how best to describe a character in any given situation.

7. Description Can Help Reveal the Narrator

Description can also tell the reader about the POV character or narrator. And if your narrator is also your protagonist, this can be very important. This is because, short of having your character stand in front of a mirror and describe herself, there aren’t many easy ways to describe your POV character without taking the reader out of the story. So, a great way to enlighten the reader is to use the way your narrator sees other characters. This can often be in the form of physical comparisons that the narrator makes or insights that they glean from watching/interacting with another character.

Not only does this add to the main character’s believability, but it also provides an opportunity for character development as the story progresses. Perhaps your POV character has a bad habit of comparing himself to others he learns to break. Or perhaps he focuses too much on physical attributes to the detriment of seeing who other characters really are.

Conclusion

Whether you’re writing a short story, novella, or a 1,000-page tome, you’ll want to get familiar with character descriptions. The best way to start this is with a character profile. This will help you with your character analysis, which is great for fleshing out your main character, villain, and even secondary characters that need brief but compelling descriptions.

Once you have the basics of your character down, you can start experimenting with description. By focusing on one major character trait at first, you can develop your own style of description. Then you can incorporate more attributes, sharing only a couple at a time as your novel progresses.

Be concise, creative, and don’t forget to look for what is and what isn’t there. Use movement, interactions, and gestures to make vivid and crisp character descriptions.