Characters Physical Appearance

What do your characters’ appearance look like?

Physical features may explain your characters personality. If you plan to have your character as a roughhouse, put a scar on his face. That scar will have a story to tell. That scar is a back story for you to use throughout your novel.

What about your female characters? Is she shy? That’s because she may have a physical anomaly she’s ashamed of. What horror stories can she tell the torments from her days in public school? She may interact in a negative way to your other beautiful female characters. Her back story shows her emotional scars. Those emotional scars will dictate how she acts.

10 Tips for Writing Physical Descriptions of Your Characters

“Today Charis is wearing a sagging mauve cotton jersey dress, with a fuzzy grey cardigan over top and an orange-and-aqua scarf with a design of meadow flowers draped around her neck. Her long straight hair is grey-blonde and parted in the middle; she has her reading glasses stuck up on top of her head.” -The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

“You don’t have to give all your description of a character when he or she first arrives on the scene. Instead, scatter brief descriptions throughout multiple scenes. No doubt many of your favorite writers do this.” More…

MASTER LIST of Physical Descriptions!

“Don’t rely too much on attractiveness or ugliness to make me as a reader like or dislike a character. If I’m reading a romance, for instance, it’s great if the hero is physically attractive, but I’m going to need him to be smart or kind or funny or something to get interested. And if you keep talking about how ugly the villain is, I’m going to start to think that you, the writer, might be a mean person, which makes me enjoy your story less.” More …

Need more help to create a great plot? More…

Don’t forget to edit your character’s story. Are you using the right words to describe them? More …

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