September 7, 2005
I was posting on Eric Mayer's blog when it occurred to me that what I had to say would work fine on my own, so I promptly copied it here. Eric was posting on Mr. Potato Head (Or is it potatoe? Oh, never mind). Anyway, he was talking about using Mr. Potato Head as an initiator for character descriptions, and I had this to say:

Physical descriptions are an oddity, I think. I suspect too much description is pretty much wasted, and quickly forgotten or skimmed over anyway. I also suspect that the, "He had brown curly hair, angular features, wore a yellow golf shirt and worn blue jeans," to be descriptive but useless. I've always thought Ross Thomas put a spin on physical descriptions that was worth copying. This is from "Out On The Rim." It wasn't the description I was looking for, but it's one of hundreds that just pop, so here it is:

Tomguy had a square and too honest pink face and not very much gray-blond hair whose sparseness he wisely made no attempt to conceal. From behind rimless bifiocals, a pair of wet brown eyes, slightly popped, stared out at the world's perfidy, as if in chronic amazement. Still, it was a face to inspire confidence, what with its stairstep chin, purselike mouth and an aggressive Roman nose that was altogether reassuring. A perfect banker's face, Stallings thought, if only it could dissemble successfully, which it seemed incapable of doing.


Ah, well, there were reasons Thomas was so good, and that's one of them. He's not really giving us a physical description, is he? He's giving us a character description. I'm more inclined to keep it to a shorthand. Like: "She was tall and blond and as dangerous as broken glass." Or in the piece I'm working on, I have a primary character who is an Hispanic woman working for a caterer, and the main character gives her a lift in. I find I described her several different times over 2 chapters, but here's how it starts, with her calling out, "Hey, amante. Que pasa?"

Michael turned with a smile. "Amante? What's that mean?"

The speaker was a woman, Maria Sanchez. She worked for the food service at the Resort's International Center. Working in the International Center and all over the Resort for the last six months Michael had gotten to know Maria, pretty much whether he wanted to or not. Maria Sanchez was in her twenties, with large liquid eyes, black curly hair and a vivacious smile. She was a flirt and Michael Gabriel knew exactly what amante meant in Spanish.

She wore her uniform for the day--a black skirt that stopped an inch or so above her knees, a white blouse, hose and heels. "You make that uniform look illegal, querido," he said.

Anyway, the point is, we can do a bit more with physical description than describe the furniture.

p.s. It occurs to me as well that in the larger view of pacing, character description has to bow to pace. If you're trying to slow things down or lead up to a surprise, detailed description might be a good thing. If you're in the midst of things trying to keep the pace moving, you'd want to keep your descriptions sparse. The difference between these two bits:

1. She had long curly blond hair, a shade lighter than pure gold, that framed high cheek bones that had made Sofia Loren famous around the world, a neck as a graceful as a swan's, perfect round breasts, a wasp waist, swelling lush hips and legs that were very man's fantasy. Then she jammed the stiletto between his ribs and none of it mattered any more.

2. Bullets flew past her. Sprinting around the corner, she caught just a brief eyeful of her curly blond hair in the mirror before a hail of gunfire shattered her image into a million shards of broken glass.

Best,
Mark Terry