TAKE THREE OLDIES

WHO'S DESCRIBING THE CHARACTERS IN YOUR BOOK?

The way an author describes a character can depends very much on the viewpoint character. A child, a younger adult, a contemporary, each will see/hear/note different aspects. Here are three examples.

TOMMY, AGED 5, MEETING HIS GRANDFATHER FOR THE FIRST TIME:

He thought Grampa looked interesting. He looked like a nice apple, small and round and rosy, and his hair was white and wispy. The top of his head shone through like pink china. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy and when he saw Tommy watching him, he wriggled them like caterpillars. For a moment he looked quite fierce but then he held out his arms and smiled. THE FAMILY ON PINEAPPLE ISLAND)

THIRTY-ISH MANAGER OF A RETIREMENT HOME, DESCRIBING ONE OF THE RESIDENTS:

Art is Patrick's thing. In his room he paints exquisite miniature watercolours of miniature birds - wrens, robins, blue tits. You'd never suspect it to look at him, such a large man, over six feet tall and heavily built. A plain man with a florid boozy complexion and coarse red hair now faded to the colour of stale cornflakes. It's always struck me as odd that he should choose to paint such tiny pictures. (ME, DINGO AND SIBELIUS)

Sometimes a mix of dialogue and action work well.

ELEVEN YEAR OLD DANNY AND HIS MOTHER'S SEVENTY-ISH CLEANER:

Up on the first floor I can hear Mrs Maggs, our cleaner, thumping her broom against skirting boards, bellowing out 'Land of Hope and Glory'. Nobody tells her to be quiet, even though it's only half past eight in the morning. I think they're all afraid of her. She appears at the top of the stairs with a cardboard box full of cleaning cloths and brushes. She is wearing fuzzy pink slippers with holes cut out for her bunions.

'What you doin' there?' she asks me.

'Waiting for my Uncle Frank.'

'Hmmph!' She shuffles down, muttering something about persons who have nothing better to do than sit on the stairs getting in other persons' ways and swipes a damp smelly cloth across my face as she passes.

She pulls a duster from her overall pocket and glares at the life sized statue of Mercury beside the front door.

'Some persons,' she grumbles, 'don't know they're born! Some persons just don't know when they're well off, living in one of the best mansions in Bristol, full of statues and stained glass, instead of a Council flat in St Pauls with compensation running down the walls. It's all right for some,' she grumbles, 'but what about them that has to work? Eh?' (THERE'S A LION IN MY BED!)

WHEN TO BREAK THE RULES OF WRITING

SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO USE A MIRROR!

Most of us writers try to avoid the use of a mirror in describing a character's appearance. Too hackneyed, the sign of a poor writer, unimaginative, we're told. In fact, it's almost a rule.

But occasionally, as in my current book (working title: ME, DINGO AND SIBELIUS) it seems like the best, most effective way.

Charlie, the main character, is the 'ugly duckling' in a family of beautiful females. Now 32, she's the only one who resembles her beloved Dad, who drowned when she was 16 and whom she still grieves for.

In describing her as she glares at her reflection in the hall mirror, I'm therefore describing two people, Charlie and her father. As the book is written in the first person, I'm also trying to convey her frustration and despair that she is the odd one out, the one who's ignored, the one who's still a virgin.

Here's the relevant section:

In the hall mirror I glare at my reflection in disgust. No one else in the family has inherited Dad's genes. The hair, uncontrollable without half a pot of gel and half an hour of blow drying. The snub nose and wide mouth. The golden brown eyes that practically disappear when I smile. The lack of height.

Georgie and Rosie have blue eyes and slender figures like Mum. They also have Mum's long golden locks, like Rapunzel in the fairy stories It's too soon to tell with Daisy, only ten weeks old and still bald as a coot. At the moment she looks like Harry Hill without the spectacles but no doubt she'll metamorphose into something blonde, slim and elegant like the rest of the Churchill clan.

I turn away from the mirror. What's the use? I'm stuck with what I am. The ugly duckling. The runt of the litter. The one that's nearly but not quite.

I'm always conscious of potential criticism but sometimes it just feels right to ignore the rules.

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