ADDING DETAIL TO YOUR CHARACTER DESCRIPTIONS

Getting to Grips with Character Descriptions

How to avoid the hackneyed 'reflection in a mirror' trick. Show your characters through the eyes of others or through dialogue or action. Here are some examples from my books:

Someone prodded me in the small of the back. I turned sharply, ready for an argument. The prodder was a woman. Small, middle aged. Round face, round eyes bright with recognition, faded curls below a yellow beret. A dumpy body buttoned tight into a brown tweed coat. A small pink mouth furrowed in disapproval. (I Knew It Was You.

The words are those of the main character, a middle aged accountant)

At the table on my right the interviewer is a young woman, pleasant faced and smiling, but at the moment she's trying to pacify the traveller sitting opposite. He's about fifty, overweight, flushed to the colour of a cranberry and in danger of exploding like a shaken up bottle of fizz. He's dressed as I imagine an affluent middle class guest on a cruise to dress: navy blazer, cream trousers pressed to a knife edged crease, a blue and white striped shirt. And a cravat. His wife, quiet but obviously tense, wears a button-through beige linen dress with hair and complexion to match.

'Now look here, young lady!' The man is practically spitting at the interviewer. 'I don't know what this is about but if it's part of the holiday cruise I shall be demanding a refund. This is disgraceful treatment!' 

Three characters described briefly by the main character, a stroppy young woman.

The barman who fetched my beer was a mountain of a man with a greasy ponytail and a tightly stretched tee shirt stained with sweat at the armpits. He took an age to reach my table and I watched the foaming liquid slop over the edge of the glass with every heavy footstep, until when he finally reached me more than a third had escaped. 

Here's an exercise to try. Describe a middle aged man standing outside the gates of a primary school -
a) through the eyes of a child in the playground
b) through the eyes of a teacher on playground duty
c) through the eyes of a mother waiting to collect her child
d) through the man's own thoughts