chat @hexbear.net ashinadash [she/her] @hexbear.net 5 mo. ago

Why are so many books utterly and totally lacking in physical descriptions of characters?

Bonus points if the author first mentions a specific trait, physical build, or whatever else halfway through the novel and totally fucks up my mental image.

I don't expect a biology model description for each character, but write me something brief and evocative of how they should look, you fucking dork author. I don't even know how tall she should be, her hair colour, anything. Why are you like this, author?

42 comments

Because it's awkward and easily done in ways that can come off problematic. If you're describing an attractive character you end up coming off horny, if you describe an unattractive character you come off mean. If you're describing an attractive character of another race then you come off horny and fetishistic. So I guess a lot of author just opt for being vague on details.
- Sorta sounds like a skill issue to me? I'm not asking for stats on the roundness of pert buttcheeks either though...
  
  Whaaaaaat? You don't want a sci fi author to be like "this is Eric; he has black hair and is tall, this is his buddy Paul, he's muscular but of average height, this is Alice, she is also tall with almond eyes and has gigantic gazongas"
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- Vintage example, fuck
  
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- The thing I like in her book is HILFs (Humanoid intelligent life forms) are generally all referred to as men/women/humans etc (especially given everyone shares a common Hainish ancestor). Like in the Word for World is forest the people of the colonized planets are basically green furred monkey hobbits, but they're written about with the same dignity and respect as Terran humans.
  
  HILF
  
  HILFILF
  
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- Very similar to the Culture series by Iain Banks: had the same reaction to almost the same description of a character having a layer of fur a good way into the book.
  
  To be fair, I didn't know that in the Culture most "humanoid" beings are just referred to as pan-human with a few aliens as exceptions like the 11ft tall, 3 legged, armored Idirans.
  
  i deleted my comment above because i just said the same thing basically lol
  
  i forgot it was "pan-human". and as soon as that character was described with fur my brain broke and i just saw her as a catgirl for the rest of the book
I don't care for a person's biological appearance, but care a lot about how they dress and their idiosyncrasies.

Some of it, at least when it's about the protagonist, is that it's easier for readers to imagine themselves in their shoes. Which is why, even with drawn fiction, the protagonist has a generic/formulaic appearance.
- Many books also lack detail in dress and idiosyncracy terms =)
  
  Uh does that really work though? Do people actually "he just like me fr fr " and project for the whole runtime? Is self-insert protagonist a big thing in written fiction??
  
  Pulp fiction and fantasy? Yeah.
  
  Do people actually "he just like me fr fr " and project for the whole runtime? Is self-insert protagonist a big thing in written fiction??
  
  I used to think this was utterly lame when I was younger, then I began to notice not many of the characters I read had particularly strong personalities. I much prefer characters I can't see myself in because just like in real life you'll have people who are majorly different to you especially in motive.
This has always bothered me.

Bonus points if the author first mentions a specific trait, physical build, or whatever else halfway through the novel and totally fucks up my mental image.

This really gets my goat
- I think a rule should be, if you are gonna describe, do it early ffs.
because it usually isn't necessary for the story

Death to America
Read Raymond Chandler's novels and you'll get vivid descriptions of everything except what the fuck is going on
I'm pretty sure older works were very heavy on physical descriptions. And then moving pictures came around, and readers didn't care as much about visual characteristics as they did the plot.

If you read Victorian era stuff, FFS they don't stop describing how things look.
- and readers didn't care as much about visual characteristics as they did the plot.
  
  Por que no los dos?
  
  Older text was more visually descriptive. Dunno what else you'd like, comrade.
I believe character descriptions became a big thing in the time of physiognomy – when Balzac narrates someone's physical appearance, he wants you to extrapolate the character's personality from that. Physiognomy fell out of fashion and if there is no other motivation to provide a description, like signalling someone's class position or injecting a bit of lyricism, it's simply economical to leave it out. To provide a counter-example, Mary Gaitskill always writes exactly one paragraph of description in her short stories which you can just skip because it's not properly integrated into the story as a whole.
Glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way. It seems to be so common to not have physical descriptions, that I was wondering if this was normal and I was the weird one for being so visual. There are some people with aphantasia, after all. I can see if they want you to use your imagination, but then you can't just suddenly mention something half way through the book that totally messes up my mental image! Ugh. Books are basically mental movies playing in my brain while I read. It's jarring to have to recast suddenly in the middle of the movie.
- Yeah exactly!!!! To me "using your imagination" is not "I'm giving you nothing so freestyle it until I contradict your mental image", seriously.
  
  I think it varies by genre, but I see the problem in lots of places & I hate it.
  
  It’s a modern (like within the last 100 years trend) convention, right?
  
  Victorian authors make it very clear exactly what everyone looks like. And if the character is anything but English, they do so very racistly.
Idk, I read a lot and this is never an issue for me. Is it really such a hassle to reconstruct your mental image of something? I'm constantly considering and imagining characters as different builds, dressed differently, sounding differently, depending on how the context of the scene paints them. And by the end of the book I have a pretty firm mental image of what the character is like, born of a thousand iterations which finally and slowly merged into a cohesive whole.

You can just tell me what a character looks like down to the specific material of the buttons on their shirt, but that loses out on a certain amount of speculation and imagination. If a character who has so far had no reason to perform extraordinary physical feats suddenly finds it necessary--and possible--to lift an immense object, for example, my mental image is like "oh wait so he's jacked" which introduces a kind of 'twist' entirely in omission.
- It's not a massive hassle I guess, but I would rather have something firm to construct the mental image in my brain around, I guess. Plus sometimes context of the scene can paint characters in ways that contradict how I read them, subjectivity.
  
  Again I'm not asking for detailed biology class models or tailor's receipts, just more than literally nothing. I like when I can glean details from the narrative like the strength example you give, but lots of novels don't even have that, y'know?
Usually I’m not interested in what made-up people make-believe look like unless it somehow drives the plot or develops the characters’ relationships.
Writing physical descriptions is kinda it's own skill. I can't do it until I've actually drawn/seen a picture of a character, otherwise I really struggle to visualize them concretely enough to verbalize. Tbh even with people I know irl, I'd have trouble describing them without a picture in front of me.

Modern styles tend to be more action/plot oriented with less time devoted to florid descriptions of random stuff, so some authors may feel like if they write a physical description they have to justify the attention to it. And it's easy for things to get cringey. Like, if you give characters appearances that "match" their personality traits, that has potential to be problematic, then you've got the horny/objectifying types, and then there's, like, weird/uncomfortable analogies. For example, I remember reading some Philip K Dick and seeing the absolutely horrible, objectifying descriptions of female characters, while his male characters are barely described at all. Physical descriptions not being in style could be a reaction to various forms of cringe
- Is that a sort of aphantasia too?
  
  I am getting the sense that there's a big fear of cringe in this description thing, though. Kinda sounds like a skill issue...
  
  I don't think it's aphantasia in my case. I can picture things in my mind, it's just that it's hard to come up with descriptions without it in front of me. It's the same way you might take another bite or drink of something while trying to describe how it tastes. I can remember generally how a wine tastes the next day but it's a lot less vivid than when it's on my tongue, and it's kinda the same way with visual images of people.
  
  I think it is a skill issue, but like I said it's kind of it's own skill. I think it's possible to be a good writer while being complete ass at describing people. I do think it's a skill that's possible to learn tho, so there's not really a good excuse for it.
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I vaguely remember avoiding detailed descriptions of my characters writing fanfic because I didn't want people to think I was horny for my characters. So I went pretty far in the other direction.
- Oooh-la-la, a potbelly, so sexy ~
  
  idk man, I was a kid trying to avoid any accusation of sexuality in fan fiction.
- >writing fanfic
  
  >not horny
  
  In seriousness though, would describing your characters inherently imply awooga on your part??
  
  People could claim that and I was very cagey. Still am, but in different ways

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