August 6th, 2009 / 4:44 pm
Snippets

how important are physcial descriptions of characters and do they ever work?  it seems like whenever someone describes a character, i have less of an understanding of what they look like.  and when someone doesn’t describe the character, i just supplement with my own understanding.

74 Comments

  1. pr

      i like them. Flannery does it well. So does Gaitskill.

  2. Sam Pink

      i think sometimes i just go, “alright, this person, i will envision as the woman who works at the deli by my apartment. and this guy will look like my gradeschool science teacher.”

  3. Sam Pink

      i think sometimes i just go, “alright, this person, i will envision as the woman who works at the deli by my apartment. and this guy will look like my gradeschool science teacher.”

  4. ryan

      i think as long as your not describing every characteristic it works. i try to narrow it down to a couple distinctive aspects and let that tell you something about the character, i think everything else inherently fleshes out that way. but that’s just me.

  5. pr

      that can work…many a writer doesn’t do exact descriptions and that’s cool as long as the story’s good- but don’t you change it up a bit? Or do the characters look exactly like deli lady? I find that fascinating.

      I hate it when I see a movie based on the book- even a fucking trailer- and then my imagined images of them turn into Kristen Scott Thomas or whatever.

      I am a sad person today. I woke up to a dead cat. It’s 5pm. I’m going to drink now. Keep distracting me Sam.

  6. ryan

      i think as long as your not describing every characteristic it works. i try to narrow it down to a couple distinctive aspects and let that tell you something about the character, i think everything else inherently fleshes out that way. but that’s just me.

  7. Nathan Tyree

      sorry about the cat. My backyard is a cat graveyard. I am a master of gravedigging. What happened to your cat?

  8. Nathan Tyree

      mostly a think a few details (he was tall, his face looked like a badly folded map of hell) works well enough. Too much description bores me.

  9. Nathan Tyree

      sorry about the cat. My backyard is a cat graveyard. I am a master of gravedigging. What happened to your cat?

  10. Nathan Tyree

      mostly a think a few details (he was tall, his face looked like a badly folded map of hell) works well enough. Too much description bores me.

  11. pr

      He was 17 years old. We just took him to the vet a month ago because he started peeing – he was always a peer- vast bathtub amounts of pee. Like, on our clean laundry. Anyway, the vet ran all sorts of tests and found nothing but mild hyperthyroidism. We started him on meds. My other old cat has been on them for two years. Anyway, we woke up and found him. I think it was a stroke or a heartattack. A few months ago, he fell down the stairs and twitched a lot. Then he got up and was fine, but it looked stroke like to me. He was the last cat I patted last night before going to bed. I have three others. Anyway, sad sad day. And thanks for your condolences. I know I just went on too long. I’m like that when I’m grieving.

      Here’s a Flannery description that I love-
      “…a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears.”

      I love innocent as a cabbage-

  12. krammer abrahams

      cats can be cool
      when i was six i woke up to a cat having a stroke
      ruined my cereal and cartoons
      was thinking the other day when i saw a blind guy and his dog, “cats would suck at being seeing eye animals”

      sam,
      it would be cool if you wrote a story and basically told the reader, “Umm, this is a story about Cornelius. She looks like the deli girl at the local market who weighs my potato salad on thursdays when i treat myself to potato salad for lunch…” or something like that. I think I would like that more than, “Ummm, this is Cornelius. She has brown hair shaped around her brain to hide her ears because once a man at the deli said ‘your ears look like these pork chops.’

  13. krammer abrahams

      cats can be cool
      when i was six i woke up to a cat having a stroke
      ruined my cereal and cartoons
      was thinking the other day when i saw a blind guy and his dog, “cats would suck at being seeing eye animals”

      sam,
      it would be cool if you wrote a story and basically told the reader, “Umm, this is a story about Cornelius. She looks like the deli girl at the local market who weighs my potato salad on thursdays when i treat myself to potato salad for lunch…” or something like that. I think I would like that more than, “Ummm, this is Cornelius. She has brown hair shaped around her brain to hide her ears because once a man at the deli said ‘your ears look like these pork chops.’

  14. sam pink

      This is the totally true story of the woman who works at the deli at the Jewel Osco by my place. (here name is Latonya):

      Latonya looks like the lady who works at the deli by my place. She looks like her because she is her. The first time I bought food from her I said please and thank you and she started adding “baby” to everything she said to me. I still say please and thank you and she still adds “baby” to everything she says.

  15. sam pink

      sorry about your cat pr.

      one of these

      :(

  16. sam pink

      This is the totally true story of the woman who works at the deli at the Jewel Osco by my place. (here name is Latonya):

      Latonya looks like the lady who works at the deli by my place. She looks like her because she is her. The first time I bought food from her I said please and thank you and she started adding “baby” to everything she said to me. I still say please and thank you and she still adds “baby” to everything she says.

  17. sam pink

      sorry about your cat pr.

      one of these

      :(

  18. pr

      He was the ruler of the house. The God of four cats. The other three just don’t know what to do yet. Sigh. Sigh. sigh.

      My butcher calls me baby. “What can I get you, baby.” and so on. I am huge on please and thank yous. He’s a sixty-five year old, clogged arteried, white haired Italian man.

  19. Brad Green

      The reason that Flannery’s descriptions work so well is that they are all character revealing and often put into motion. Plus those odd visual pairings really make them stick as well. The most successful physical descriptions often work through imagery or metaphor. All a reader really needs is one or two character evocative details.

  20. Brad Green

      The reason that Flannery’s descriptions work so well is that they are all character revealing and often put into motion. Plus those odd visual pairings really make them stick as well. The most successful physical descriptions often work through imagery or metaphor. All a reader really needs is one or two character evocative details.

  21. Brad Green

      Um, yeah, what Ryan said just below me two hours ago.

  22. Brad Green

      Um, yeah, what Ryan said just below me two hours ago.

  23. reynard seifert

      i agree with you, sam. i think physical descriptions, unless very basic, do more to confuse my own mental vision of the character than they do to assist it. it’s not like i envision no one when they speak or do things; their actions do much more to inform me of what they might look like if they were in a movie or something, than knowing that they have, say, blonde hair and blue eyes that suggest something of the sea.

  24. reynard seifert

      i agree with you, sam. i think physical descriptions, unless very basic, do more to confuse my own mental vision of the character than they do to assist it. it’s not like i envision no one when they speak or do things; their actions do much more to inform me of what they might look like if they were in a movie or something, than knowing that they have, say, blonde hair and blue eyes that suggest something of the sea.

  25. mark

      Oh, no! pr, I’m so sorry to hear that. Cats are observers, and yet they always seem to be looking through or beyond the object of their contemplation, which makes them great spirit animals for writers. Have mixed feelings about descriptions of people, but descriptions of cats, in fiction, are usually welcome: “I’m empty or I’m full … depending; and I cannot choose. I sink my claws in Tick’s fur and scratch the bones of his back until his rear rises amorously. Mr Tick, I murmur, I must organize myself. I must pull myself together. And Mr. Tick rolls over on his belly, all ooze.

      “I spill Mr. Tick when I’ve rubbed his stomach. Shoo. He steps away slowly, his long tail rhyming with his paws. How beautifully he moves, I think; how beautifully, like you, he commands his loving, how beautifully he accepts. So I rise and wander from room to room, up and down, gazing through most of my forty-one windows.”

  26. mark

      Oh, no! pr, I’m so sorry to hear that. Cats are observers, and yet they always seem to be looking through or beyond the object of their contemplation, which makes them great spirit animals for writers. Have mixed feelings about descriptions of people, but descriptions of cats, in fiction, are usually welcome: “I’m empty or I’m full … depending; and I cannot choose. I sink my claws in Tick’s fur and scratch the bones of his back until his rear rises amorously. Mr Tick, I murmur, I must organize myself. I must pull myself together. And Mr. Tick rolls over on his belly, all ooze.

      “I spill Mr. Tick when I’ve rubbed his stomach. Shoo. He steps away slowly, his long tail rhyming with his paws. How beautifully he moves, I think; how beautifully, like you, he commands his loving, how beautifully he accepts. So I rise and wander from room to room, up and down, gazing through most of my forty-one windows.”

  27. pr

      Thanks Mark. I’m sniffling into my bourbon right now. I have no idea where that Mr Tick comes from??? It sort of reminds me of Nabakov. tell me-
      here’s part of a red house painters song about a cat- kozelek wrote many songs about his cat –

      she’s got big green eyes
      And a long Egyptian face
      She moves across the floor
      At her own pace
      When I’m here in bed
      She’ll jump up on my chest
      And when we lock eyes there’s so much love
      I wanna cry

      She comes in near
      When I scratch under her ear
      And she lifts her head
      When I kiss around her neck

      Won’t go to sleep
      When she falls along my side
      And two green eyes fade
      To a porcelain marble white
      And somehow when I sleep
      She’ll end up at my feet
      And if I roll and kick her out
      I might knock her to the ground
      But she’ll come back anyhow

  28. Brad Green

      A wonderful quote from my favorite Gass story of all time. That story is my favorite piece of his.

  29. Brad Green

      In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. William Gass.

  30. Brad Green

      A wonderful quote from my favorite Gass story of all time. That story is my favorite piece of his.

  31. Brad Green

      In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. William Gass.

  32. pr

      thanks Brad- I don’t know that story. Now I want to read it.

  33. pr

      thanks Brad- I don’t know that story. Now I want to read it.

  34. BAC

      Sam Pink took off his army jacket. He spit in his hands and slicked back his mohahk. He sat crossed leg on a milk crate. He blogged some shit on the computer, which is a box filled with electricity that my dad looks up porn with.

      blag, blah, blaagy.

  35. BAC

      Sam Pink took off his army jacket. He spit in his hands and slicked back his mohahk. He sat crossed leg on a milk crate. He blogged some shit on the computer, which is a box filled with electricity that my dad looks up porn with.

      blag, blah, blaagy.

  36. JW Veldhoen

      Our psyche does a serious work-out when it doesn’t have a body to work-out, besides its own. When a writer describes the other, placing characteristics onto an imaginary self, we learn more about the body of the writer, and our own bodies. For its size, I like ‘The Body Artist’ for this. The character is a ghost, neither tall, not short, nor innocent cabbage.

  37. JW Veldhoen

      Our psyche does a serious work-out when it doesn’t have a body to work-out, besides its own. When a writer describes the other, placing characteristics onto an imaginary self, we learn more about the body of the writer, and our own bodies. For its size, I like ‘The Body Artist’ for this. The character is a ghost, neither tall, not short, nor innocent cabbage.

  38. Brad Green

      Another stunning passage from Gass’s story. Here he sets the character for a town and through the town’s characterization also reveals the narrator as well:

      For we’re always out of luck here. That’s just how it is–for instance in the winter. The sides of the buildings, the roofs, the limbs of the trees are gray. Streets, sidewalks, faces, feelings–they are gray. Speech is gray, and the grass where it shows. Every flank and front, each top is gray. Everything is gray: hair, eyes, window glass, the hawkers’ bills and touters’ posters, lips, teeth, poles, and metal signs–they’re gray, quite gray. Cars are gray. Boots, shoes, suits, hats, gloves are gray. Horses, sheep, and cows, cats killed in the road, squirrels in the same way, sparrows, doves, and pigeons, all are gray, everything is gray, and everyone is out of luck who lives here.

  39. Brad Green

      Another stunning passage from Gass’s story. Here he sets the character for a town and through the town’s characterization also reveals the narrator as well:

      For we’re always out of luck here. That’s just how it is–for instance in the winter. The sides of the buildings, the roofs, the limbs of the trees are gray. Streets, sidewalks, faces, feelings–they are gray. Speech is gray, and the grass where it shows. Every flank and front, each top is gray. Everything is gray: hair, eyes, window glass, the hawkers’ bills and touters’ posters, lips, teeth, poles, and metal signs–they’re gray, quite gray. Cars are gray. Boots, shoes, suits, hats, gloves are gray. Horses, sheep, and cows, cats killed in the road, squirrels in the same way, sparrows, doves, and pigeons, all are gray, everything is gray, and everyone is out of luck who lives here.

  40. bill faulkner

      LOL!

  41. bill faulkner

      LOL!

  42. Vaughan Simons

      I prefer – both in reading and writing – to have some of the description of the character left up to the imagination. One of my favourite authors is Ian McEwan, but as much as I like his novels, in recent years his tendency towards incredible amounts of character description have rather bored me. And the problem is that if he describes one character in exceptional detail, I begin to notice if he glosses over another with only a cursory portrait.

      Far more important to me is to get a fully rounded picture of a character through their actions and statements.

  43. Vaughan Simons

      I prefer – both in reading and writing – to have some of the description of the character left up to the imagination. One of my favourite authors is Ian McEwan, but as much as I like his novels, in recent years his tendency towards incredible amounts of character description have rather bored me. And the problem is that if he describes one character in exceptional detail, I begin to notice if he glosses over another with only a cursory portrait.

      Far more important to me is to get a fully rounded picture of a character through their actions and statements.

  44. Chase

      Every workshop I’ve ever been in demanded physical descriptions. Does it really matter if he had long fingernails? Characters I see in my mind are usually amalgams of celebrities and random cousins.

  45. Chase

      Every workshop I’ve ever been in demanded physical descriptions. Does it really matter if he had long fingernails? Characters I see in my mind are usually amalgams of celebrities and random cousins.

  46. Shya

      Am I the only person who doesn’t picture characters? When I read a book, the farthest thing from my mind is some little movie playing out. It comes in language, and stays that way–abstract, nebulous–so I measure the value of physical description in the same way I measure the value of any kind of text: the beauty of the language and the insight it affords.

  47. Shya

      Am I the only person who doesn’t picture characters? When I read a book, the farthest thing from my mind is some little movie playing out. It comes in language, and stays that way–abstract, nebulous–so I measure the value of physical description in the same way I measure the value of any kind of text: the beauty of the language and the insight it affords.

  48. +!O0o(o)o0O!+
  49. +!O0o(o)o0O!+
  50. pr

      very interesting. i just read the bit online…

  51. pr

      very interesting. i just read the bit online…

  52. Ryan Call

      i like how you said this shya. i think the words should determine what or how the character appears, not some mental imagine ‘you’ have in your head. i dont know if that makes sense.

  53. Ryan Call

      i like how you said this shya. i think the words should determine what or how the character appears, not some mental imagine ‘you’ have in your head. i dont know if that makes sense.

  54. Peter Markus

      The physicality of a character means nothing to me. The physicality of words…. That’s another story. Give me heft within a sentence. I don’t need to know, as Baxter seems to insist, “the expression of a character’s face.”

  55. Peter Markus

      The physicality of a character means nothing to me. The physicality of words…. That’s another story. Give me heft within a sentence. I don’t need to know, as Baxter seems to insist, “the expression of a character’s face.”

  56. John Madera

      Hey Shya,

      For me, ideally, both things happen, although an uninterrupted movie is not what happens in my mind, it’s more like a montage, more like a fragmented series of images and “presences.” However, what’s far more important, as you write, is the “the beauty of the language and the insight it affords.” I wonder if you’d point to some examples, some of your favorite passages that, or writers who, consistently accomplish that. Thanks.

  57. mark

      Heard Baxter deliver the faces essay when I lived in MN. I remember the argument being complex and interesting — reducing it to Baxter insisting on facial expressions divorced from any heft within the sentence probably does it a disservice. Not sure if this made it to the published version, but he singled out for particular praise a passage from Paula Fox’s The Widow’s Children, which I’ve reread many times since then:

      “The two Spaniards looked at Clara. Beneath their scrutiny the pain she had felt at the mention of that other girl, whom she’d never met, who, like herself, was no longer a girl, began to fade as though exposed to an obliterating light. She had the impression of two eagles swooping toward her. Oh — let them turn away! Yet, they were neither beaked nor birdlike, not with those massive northern Spanish heads. But she was pinioned by their gaze, its force doubled by their physical similarity, the same deep-set eyes beneath massive lid folds, the same large noses.”

      Only offers a bare sketch of what the men actually look like, yet somehow captures all the fraught emotion of the characters trapped in the little room — huge amount of velocity in those sentences.

  58. mark

      Heard Baxter deliver the faces essay when I lived in MN. I remember the argument being complex and interesting — reducing it to Baxter insisting on facial expressions divorced from any heft within the sentence probably does it a disservice. Not sure if this made it to the published version, but he singled out for particular praise a passage from Paula Fox’s The Widow’s Children, which I’ve reread many times since then:

      “The two Spaniards looked at Clara. Beneath their scrutiny the pain she had felt at the mention of that other girl, whom she’d never met, who, like herself, was no longer a girl, began to fade as though exposed to an obliterating light. She had the impression of two eagles swooping toward her. Oh — let them turn away! Yet, they were neither beaked nor birdlike, not with those massive northern Spanish heads. But she was pinioned by their gaze, its force doubled by their physical similarity, the same deep-set eyes beneath massive lid folds, the same large noses.”

      Only offers a bare sketch of what the men actually look like, yet somehow captures all the fraught emotion of the characters trapped in the little room — huge amount of velocity in those sentences.

  59. +!O0o(o)o0O!+

      If it works, it works: eg, the first paragraph of Nabokov’s Pnin is pretty much all physical description: “The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin. Ideally bald, sun-tanned, and clean-shaven, he began rather impressively with that great brown dome of his, tortoise-shell glasses (masking an infantile absence of eyebrows), apish upper lip, thick neck, and strongman torso in a tightish tweed coat, but ended, somewhat disappointingly, in a pair of spindly legs (now flanneled and crossed) and frail-looking, almost feminine feet.”
      http://books.google.com/books?id=A171LVf0WSoC&pg=PP1&dq=Pnin#v=onepage&q=&f=false

  60. +!O0o(o)o0O!+

      If it works, it works: eg, the first paragraph of Nabokov’s Pnin is pretty much all physical description: “The elderly passenger sitting on the north-window side of that inexorably moving railway coach, next to an empty seat and facing two empty ones, was none other than Professor Timofey Pnin. Ideally bald, sun-tanned, and clean-shaven, he began rather impressively with that great brown dome of his, tortoise-shell glasses (masking an infantile absence of eyebrows), apish upper lip, thick neck, and strongman torso in a tightish tweed coat, but ended, somewhat disappointingly, in a pair of spindly legs (now flanneled and crossed) and frail-looking, almost feminine feet.”
      http://books.google.com/books?id=A171LVf0WSoC&pg=PP1&dq=Pnin#v=onepage&q=&f=false

  61. Brad Green

      All of Baxter’s essays about fiction are extremely worthwhile. The one above is particularly good.

  62. Brad Green

      All of Baxter’s essays about fiction are extremely worthwhile. The one above is particularly good.

  63. darby

      I get 74 units of importance for the physical description question. Is that what other people are getting too? I’m not sure my math is right.

  64. darby

      I get 74 units of importance for the physical description question. Is that what other people are getting too? I’m not sure my math is right.

  65. Brad Green

      PR –

      I just realized that the Gass paragraph I quoted contained a line that was inappropriate considering the circumstances set forth earlier in this thread. I’m very sorry. No disrespect was intended at all. That’s just the first passage that comes to my mind when Gass is mentioned. And if you didn’t notice it, I’m triply sorry for bringing it up. I don’t know how to cover the bases here except with another I apologize.

  66. Brad Green

      PR –

      I just realized that the Gass paragraph I quoted contained a line that was inappropriate considering the circumstances set forth earlier in this thread. I’m very sorry. No disrespect was intended at all. That’s just the first passage that comes to my mind when Gass is mentioned. And if you didn’t notice it, I’m triply sorry for bringing it up. I don’t know how to cover the bases here except with another I apologize.

  67. pr

      no worries Brad! You’re a good guy. I didn’t notice anything in appropriate. I was too wrapped up in my grief and blabbling endlessly about it, which is the really imnappropriate thing.

  68. Janey Smith

      His face looked like a butthole, opened wide enough to fit multiple hands into it. (In other words, I agree with you Peter Marcus.)

  69. Janey Smith

      His face looked like a butthole, opened wide enough to fit multiple hands into it. (In other words, I agree with you Peter Marcus.)

  70. Morgan Fryer

      Charles Baxter had a great essay on this called “Loss of Face” in the eighth issue of the Believer.

  71. Morgan Fryer

      Charles Baxter had a great essay on this called “Loss of Face” in the eighth issue of the Believer.

  72. Morgan Fryer

      Crud. Should have read the thread more closely. And I’m very sorry about your cat, pr. I’m very close to my animals myself and have had similar things happen.

  73. Morgan Fryer

      Crud. Should have read the thread more closely. And I’m very sorry about your cat, pr. I’m very close to my animals myself and have had similar things happen.

  74. HTMLGIANT / Late Night Synthesizer

      […] A while ago, Sam Pink asked: how important are physcial descriptions of characters and do they ever work? it seems like whenever someone describes a character, i have less of an understanding of what they look like. and when someone doesn’t describe the character, i just supplement with my own understanding. […]