That was my first encounter with Dr Ruth Galloway, the protagonist of my mystery series set in Norfolk. No other character has appeared to me in quite such a dramatic way. Yet creating people is one of the most important jobs for an author, perhaps the most important. Without Ruth there would be no books; all the action – crime-related and otherwise – comes from her being who she is. Character is plot, I tell my creative writing students, and plot is character.

So how do we create complex characters? Sometimes your protagonist does materialise in front of you but, in most cases, you will have to do the alchemy yourself. And you will have to do it over and over again because you don’t just need a protagonist, you need an antagonist and all the characters in-between. A friend used to work for the long-running TV series Midsummer Murders (top tip: don’t go to an English village, especially if there’s a fete on) and she was told that, at the end of an episode, there needed to be four people still standing who could have committed the murder. That’s a lot of lives to fabricate. So here are some things to consider:

Determine their Names

When you christen your character think why they are called that. Is it a family name? A saint’s name? Who decided on it? Do they like their name or do they always use another? Do their parents insist on calling them James when they prefer Jim? In a crime novel, this could be a sneaky clue, because who would link jovial Jimmy to sinister Uncle James, mentioned only in chapter one? But, even if it’s not crucial to the plot, a name is instant backstory. A student told me that he and his brothers were all named after kings because their mother thought it meant they would be successful in life. Another was named after a football ground, presumably for the same reason. My real name is Domenica de Rosa which tells you that my family were Italian and Catholic, also that they had run out of inspiration after three daughters and so called me after a day of the week. Instant backstory. 

Remember you have to live with them

Jane Austen famously said that, in Emma, she was creating a heroine ‘whom no-one but myself would much like’. I think ‘but myself’ is significant. 90,000 words is a long time to spend with someone you dislike. Remember, also, that readers don’t have to like your characters but they do have to feel something for them. If you follow your character’s feet, you are following their life’s journey and so are the readers. Tension comes from caring if someone lives or dies. If readers don’t have any connection to your characters, your books will have no suspense, no matter how clever the plotting. 

Beware the German Funk Trap

I’m indebted to screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce for this phrase. In short: never give your character interests instead of personality traits. Throwing a lot of quirky hobbies at a silhouette does not mean that it becomes a human being. For instance, where a character’s feet takes them in a story is in itself a unique quality. Musical taste is another unique quality. Could you sustain an interest in German funk for thirteen books? Choose a quality that you can relate to. I made Ruth a Bruce Springsteen fan for a reason. I never have to look up one of his lyrics because they are all written on my heart.

Remember their backstory

Kazuo Ishiguro said, ‘Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.’ Make sure that you know what happened to your characters before you met them. It doesn’t matter if you never use this backstory, your book will be richer for the knowledge.

Do the math(s)

Who would have thought that writing books required so much maths? I feel like I’m always subtracting a person’s birth date from their death date and coming up with -3. Make sure that your character is old enough to do the things necessary for the plot: marry, have children, drive a car etc. If you’re planning a series, it’s worth thinking about the age your protagonist will be at the start. This is not to say that you shouldn’t write about older characters. I’ve just written a book (The Postscript Murders) where many of the cast are over eighty. These people have lived a long time, they have lots of backstory.

Follow the feet

I didn’t know where Ruth was going so I had to follow her. When you have given your character a name, look down at their feet. Are they wearing stilettos or trainers? How far have they walked that day? They are going somewhere. Follow the feet. 

ELLY GRIFFITHS is the author of the Ruth Galloway and Brighton mystery series and the stand-alone novels The Stranger Diaries and The Postscript Murders. She is a recipient of the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Mary Higgins Clark Award, and the CWA Dagger in the Library Award. She lives in Brighton, England.

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But Wait, My Book Is About…

Yep. That’s the first thing many writers think when we start talking about portraying race in fiction. It’s okay and necessary to have a diverse cast of characters in your book. Writing characters or even a main character with a race other than your own can be difficult and has many possible literary traps to fall into. While our works may not be inherently racist, we still need to edit racial bias on a few levels. Here’s how to do it.

Tell Your Own Experiences

First, ask yourself if the story you are telling is really yours to tell. This all comes down to the experiences and emotional journey of the character. If you could easily switch the race of the character to your own and the experience would read the same, then your use of race is likely not a problem or something that will offend many readers (though there will always be a few).

Avoid Racial Stereotypes & Tropes

When changing the race of a character would make less sense for a reader, it can lead to tension because you may be relying on a racial stereotype or literary trope. While this may seem okay because “it’s been done before,” I challenge you to be more imaginative and break those stereotypes. This is part of being an ally to change. 

Overt Racial Bias

Next, we look at our sentences to determine if our wording is relevant, necessary, and/or overtly racist. Using racist terms or ethnic slurs (called ethnophaulisms) can shock or trigger readers in ways you might not intend. Instead of typing out these terms, find other ways to portray hate or bias your characters might need to experience to move their emotional journey forward.

Secretly Racist Terms

Editing the characters, tropes, and even sentences of your manuscript to better portray race and equality is important. But there are some everyday terms we use that have very shady origins. Unintended racism can still affect those who encounter it. Terms such as “ghetto,” when used in reference to Black culture, equate race with poverty and racial isolation. Even seemingly innocent phrases such as “he gyped me,” evoke negative feelings in reference to the Roma ethnic group commonly known as Gypsies.

So, How Can I Refer to Race in My Book Without Being Racist?

It won’t be the easiest road to edit our biases out of our work. After all, we need conflict to create a compelling story. But if that conflict is based on learned or historic bias, then you must tread lightly and examine your true motivations for your literary choices. It’s going to take practice to recognize, question, and find these characters, tropes, and words that until now many writers have toyed with without consideration—all in the name of literature. 

But we can be the change when it comes to racist and racially biased literature. We can start a revolution for equality and visibility for Black and other unheard voices. Changing the way race is portrayed in literature can drastically change what the children of this world learn as they read, learn, and grow. Questioning yourself and your portrayal of race in your writing is the only way to create this equitable future.

Jeanette the Writer is an editor, coach, and freelance writer who wants to help others demolish their editing fears and finish their manuscript. As a former scuba instructor turned entrepreneur, Jeanette knows about putting in the hard work to pursue your passions. She has worked with authors, speakers, coaches, and entrepreneurs—empowering them with the right mindset, knowledge, and tools to help them tackle their editing goals. You can learn more about Jeanette by visiting JeanetteTheWriter.com.

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I’m writing a novel in the first-person perspective, and one of my critique partners just pointed out that they don’t know what my character looks like. Is character description important? If so, how do I describe a character from their own perspective without having them look in a mirror?

Sincerely,

Wondering

Dear Wondering,

People used to believe that character description didn’t matter much to “experienced” writers. Orson Scott Card even says in his 2010 book Characters & Viewpoint that physical description is the last thing you should consider sharing when you’re writing. “If readers know a character’s actions, motives, past, reputation, relationships, habits, talents and tastes, they can often get through a whole story without ever knowing a character’s eye color, and they’ll still feel as if they know the person.” This idea still holds some weight in the writing world today, but with one big caveat.

Why Character Description is Important

Nowadays, due to a greater awareness of the need for diversity and representation in books, it has become more important to be specific about the physical traits of all your characters. When you consider who your readers are, you also have to consider how important it is for people to see themselves—or characters they identify with—on the page.

The book industry has, throughout its history, been dominated by white people (and for a large portion of that history by white men). What that means is that the dominant perspective in publishing has been white. As the publishing industry (and society as a whole) has become more self-aware, and hopefully more inclusive, movements like “We Need Diverse Books” and “Own Voices” have emerged to call attention to the need for more equal representation in book characters, and for less appropriation of diverse stories by those who can’t claim them directly.

The issue of characterization and unequal character description is not a new one. It’s been shown that the default assumption for characters who are not described in the text has been that they are white. Even as more diverse characters have appeared on the page, this has raised the issues of “othering” and “exoticism” for characters who are described, versus ones who are not described. In order to normalize diversity in writing, all your characters should have some sort of physical description to help characterize them and help your readers see themselves in the story more clearly.

Challenges of Perspective

But that raises the problem of how you can convey that physical description without coming off as utterly cliché (i.e. the “standing in front of the mirror” technique) or culturally insensitive (i.e. using food metaphors to describe ethnicities other than white). From a first-person perspective, this can seem even more challenging. First-person perspective means that we see everything through the eyes of the main character, as if we were that character looking out at the world around us. And unless seeing their reflection, your main character probably can’t see themself in such a way to notice descriptive features about themself.

Five Points to Remember About First-Person Character Description

Here are five helpful points to consider as you work through showing your characters and the diversity of your fictional world to your reader:

1) Exceptional details are worth mentioning

What makes your character stand out? Do they know about it? Is it something they would bring up in conversation with those around them, or that others would bring up to them? If it’s not exceptional, it’s really the last thing you need to squeeze in about the character. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually have people sitting around talking to me about my eye color (hazel) or the size of my waist (Seriously though. Don’t ask).

2) What the rest of the world looks like is important

Sometimes a clever way to convey a character’s appearance is through observations they make about those around them. They may notice a character of the same height or build that they have, or with hair similarly styled. Perhaps they’re travelling and see someone who they identify with culturally or otherwise. Or maybe they notice how everyone around them looks completely different, and compare their own physical traits in that way. This may seem like a surface-level technique, but feeling as though one fits in or stands out is important characterization and world-building.

3) Character insecurities offer contrast

Sometimes a character’s appearance can be conveyed through their insecurity about how they look compared to others. The socially awkward teenager may believe that the head cheerleader’s physique is the perfection she strives for, and think about how far she is from achieving that “dream look”.

4) Info dumps don’t leave a lasting impression

Just as with other aspects of characterization and world-building, you want to avoid dumping all the details about your character in one lump for your readers. This is what makes “looking in the mirror” so cliché. In one fell swoop you take in all the character’s physical traits, so that may seem efficient. But they’re not important in the moment, and so the reader is less likely to retain those details for later. Sprinkle in the details throughout, remembering to SHOW not TELL, so that your reader has a reason to connect the details about the character with something else significant about the story world.

5) Avoid stereotypes as much as possible

Remember that the characteristics of one person do not apply to a whole culture or category of people. When writing about characters you do not have a shared culture and history with, it’s important to be as aware of your own biases as possible so that you can avoid perpetuating those on the page. This will require asking for outside perspectives, because none of us knows what we don’t know yet. As much as possible, ask others to critique your work and to be especially aware of any stereotypes or cliched descriptions.

The need for diverse perspectives and a clear understanding of who a character is and how they fit into their world are the two most important takeaways here. Describing a character’s physical traits is just one way of showing that to the reader. As they say, practice makes perfect, so keep working on those first-person character descriptions. Don’t be afraid to get it wrong a time or two before you get it right. That’s what your critique partners are for!

How to “Ask the Editor”

Send your questions to ekauffman@writingrefinery.com. Limit yourself to a few paragraphs to introduce yourself and the problem at hand. “Brevity is the soul of wit,” after all. And keep an eye out for opportunities to send in longer submissions for critique.

Elisabeth Kauffman is a freelance editor in California. Her favorite genres are YA fantasy, sci-fi, and romance. She regularly obsesses over board games, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter. Come share your ideas with her on Facebook and Twitter and on the web at www.writingrefinery.com. Also, check out her author website and her author page on Facebook.

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Have you ever walked into a park and people watched? How about the beach, or Target? What details did you notice about them? Did they have smooth or wrinkled faces? Was there a mother holding her child’s hand, or talking on her phone? When it comes to writing character descriptions, writers usually take two stances:

1. The complete description. There should be a full description of the character, controlling the picture in the reader’s mind. Think Dickinson or Melville.
2. The minimalist description. Only mention the essential details (readers are going to make up their own picture anyway, so why limit them?). Think Frank Herbert or Stephen King.

Whatever option you choose, great physical description does more than create a visual in the reader’s mind. They perform “double duty”, describing a character in a way that defines the mood and elucidates the tone of the scene. This is great writing. This creates memorable characters. But, how can we do this?

Let’s Talk Books

Objective

Write or revise a description for a supporting or opposition character to define the mood or tone in your scene.

Think Questions

• How can I write character descriptions that do double duty in my novel?
• How can I make my character “jump off the page”?
• Do my characters sufficiently contrast?
• Do my descriptions enhance this contrast?

Resources:

Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult

Reading Assignment

Jodi Picoult’s character description for Ruthann in her novel Vanishing Acts.

At this point in the novel, the protagonist – Delia – has learned her father kidnapped her as a child, and that her birth mother, who she believed dead, lives in Arizona. So, when her father is transported to an Arizona prison, Delia and her daughter Sophie follow. Naturally, Delia is caught in a whirlpool of emotions. She’s heartbroken and anxious as she takes her first thousand steps into the Arizona deserts. She’s on edge. Enter Ruthann…

Passage (Page 130):

“No hable inlges.” She hurries back inside her trailer, and pulls shut all the curtains so that we cannot peak inside.

I would drive to Eric, but he hasn’t told me where he is. Before I know it, I’ve made a full circle through the motor home community, and I’m back on the driveway that leads me to the main road. The old woman is still standing there, and she smiles at me. She has the lined maple skin and moon face of a Native American; her short white hair is twisted into a red scarf on top of her head. Every one of her fingers is decorated with silver ring, something I notice when she flashes us by pulling aside the lapels of her coat. Underneath, she is wearing a T-shirt that says DON’T WORRY, BE HOPI, and various items are anchored to plastic loops sewn into the satin lining of the jacket – rusted silverware, old 45s, and about ten Barlining dolls. “Garage sale she says. “Extra cheap!”

Sophie’s face lights up when she sees the dolls. “Mommy –”

“Not today,” I say, and I smile tightly at the woman. “Sorry.”

She shrugs and closes her coat.

Lecture:

Over the years, I’ve heard it go both ways. Mention the color of a character’s hair or eyes or skin color, or even the color of an outfit. Don’t mention color, unless, let’s say, it’s important to the story’s plot. Think about how powerful it was when we finally learned why certain characters cared that Harry Potter had his mother’s green eyes! Personally, I think both can work. But depending on the context, one way usually works better than the other.

When it comes down to it, character descriptions are only as strong as their ability to perform double duty. Picoult gets this, which is why when describing Ruthann from her protagonist’s perspective she minimally mentions the old woman’s physical aspects, but serves a buffet of unique descriptions about her attire and actions.

But she mentions “maple skin”.

Yup.

She mentions “white” hair.

Sure does.

She mentions the “red” scarf!

Yes, she does all of these things.

But…don’t they take away from the tone and mood?

Not at all. They perform double duty.

How does Ruthann’s character descriptions perform double duty?

Ruthann is an “old woman” with “maple skin” and “moon face of a Native American”. These create visuals of Ruthann’s physical appearance that make her real. But it’s the description of her clothes and the way she greets Delia and Sophie that toast a mood of uneasiness, skepticism, and edginess.

Ruthann is invasive in the way she “flashes” the inside of her coat, anchored with “plastic loops…rusted silverware” and “Barlining dolls.” Everything about this encounter rustles Delia, making her feel even more uncomfortable. She judges Ruthann on impact and so, naturally, the reader does too.

This is essential. Without this, Ruthann’s decision to help Delia settle into the trailer next door would lack shock appeal. And like Delia, it wouldn’t make the readers realize that people, like life itself, aren’t always what they appear. Ruthann’s descriptions set us up for later in the novel. It keeps us on our toes, and intensifies the novel’s circumstances.

What makes Ruthann jump off the page?

With the right spices, authors can cook character descriptions that give major payouts. Picoult’s novel, for instance, would lack intensity without a character like the Hopi Native American Ruthann, who looks down to nobody, who breathes, lives, and builds relationships on her own terms.

Details, like Ruthann’s unavoidable t-shirt and cheap junk hidden under her coat, exemplify this. Which is why when Delia can’t find the trailer she’s instructed to stay at (at the end of the scene) we’re all thrown for a loop when Ruthann steps in…one of many actions Ruthann will do that surprise us.

Does Ruthann contrast with the protagonist?

This one is easy: yes, yes, and yes!

Ruthann is a Hopi Native American who holds nothing back. Who doesn’t give a cactus about what others think about her. Delia, on the other hand, struggles with her identity. Yet, she’s quick to judge Ruthann based on appearance and actions. The woman sells, de-limbed, and then rebuilt Barbie dolls. Hence, Delia’s tight smile when she turns down Ruthann’s sale…and her detailed observation of Ruthann prior to this rejection. All of this makes us identify with Delia’s situation, Ruthann’s character, and the novel’s mood and tone.

Pretty sweet, Picoult. I’ll be reading more of her books! How about you?

Bonus: Writing Exercise

Write or revise a characters description from your prose that performs double duty. Don’t forget to share in the comments section for feedback and extended discussion!

Having trouble getting started? Try some of these exercises from James Scott Bell’s Revision and Self Editing to jump-start your revisions:

• Make a list of all the physical traits of your character.
• Make a list of the moods you want to create, the way you want readers to feel as they progress through the story.
• Now, connect the traits with the mood words, and find ways to tweak them so they’re consistent with each other.

Now I want to hear from you!

Think Ruthann’s description created a different mood/tone than me? Do your character descriptions perform double duty? Do they make them jump off the page? Share your descriptions and comments using the hashtag #LetsTalkBooks – and have fun! I can’t wait to read it!

 Abigail K. Perry is a commercial fiction writer living in Massachusetts where she teaches creative writing and film production. She received her B.S. in TV, Radio, and Film from Syracuse University and her Master’s in Education from Endicott College, and has worked as a creative production intern in for Overbrook Entertainment and as a marketing and sales intern for Charlesbridge Publishing.

In addition to writing, Abigail plans to teach screenwriting at An Unlikely Story (the priceless local bookstore owned by Diary of a Wimpy Kid’s Jeff Kinney) in Plainville, MA. This class is in development and will launch soon!

Abigail is a member of the DIY MFA street team and a loyal follower of Writer’s Digest. You can read more about her work on this website or follow her on Twitter @A_K_Perry 

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