Logo

How do I write a character’s physical description without it feeling unnatural and clunky? I’m able to describe their hair and body relatively easily because my writing puts emphasis on small movements and fidgeting, but I can’t describe faces.

13.06.2025 01:38

How do I write a character’s physical description without it feeling unnatural and clunky? I’m able to describe their hair and body relatively easily because my writing puts emphasis on small movements and fidgeting, but I can’t describe faces.

But if the story is mostly about what goes on inside the characters, and their physical appearance isn’t really that relevant… why mention it?

Why? Because it’s completely irrelevant to the stories that Kafka and Melville want to tell.

Do you feel it’s absolutely necessary to tell the reader what characters look like?

What are the pros and cons of living in Male, Maldives?

So, does this really need to be a problem?

The book opens with Amina waiting for her husband to come home after a night on the town, and she is described as looking slender and still beautiful, whereas he is extremely well-groomed and also very overweight—because he doesn’t need to bother to keep in shape, since he has an extremely obedient and, indeed, subservient wife, who gets up every night at midnight, and waits up for him to come home around 1am, so that she can tend to his needs (i.e. take his socks off, among other things) and make sure he goes to bed in comfort.

What’s it got to do with the story?

How do you have intercourse with a girl who can remember you for a long time?

Case Study #1: Thomas Wolfe

Is the story set in a world where visible ethnic differences matter? Is it about sexual attraction? Then physical appearance may well play an important role, and could be worth mentioning.

I would echo Rachel Neumeier’s question in her fine answer:

The biggest binoculars we've ever tested: Celestron SkyMaster 25x100 hands-on review - Live Science

One is that Wolfe is determined to tell you what the person looked like, and so the story grinds to a standstill while he does that.

If I think of classic novels that I admire, like Kafka’s The Trial, or Melville’s Moby-Dick, in neither of those novels do I ever find out what the protagonist looks like.

(Donoghue went on to write the award-winning novel Room, which was later made into a 2015 movie of the same name, for which Brie Larson won the Best Actress Oscar, and Donoghue was nominated for the Oscar for her own screenplay.)

Could Patriots cut Stefon Diggs and owe him nothing? It’s complicated. - NBC Sports

This is because Amina’s submission to her husband is one of the themes of Palace Walk, and indeed the trilogy as a whole. He is a complacent and immensely confident philanderer, whereas she lives as though he is her faithful and wonderful husband, and her role is to treat him as though he’s perfect. She overlooks things like the obvious evidence that he’s been drinking wine all night, which is frowned upon for someone who claims to be as good a Muslim as he is, because she thinks he’s flawless.

The other problem is specific to Wolfe himself: the reason why he was determined to tell you what his characters looked like is that they were based on people he knew—family members, friends, neighbours—and he was heroically but idiotically determined to render them in fiction with as much completeness and detail as he possibly could.

In the Irish novelist Emma Donoghue’s second novel Hood, the protagonist and narrator, Cara, is supposed to be rather on the large side, but the only way we know this is that she talks about how she habitually sweats and chafes, and gets red in the face, whenever she has to do even minimal exercise, plus (iirc) a couple of casual remarks by her deceased lover. Donoghue never actually tells us what she looks like.

Celebrity breast cancer announcements highlight rising rates in young women - NBC News

Please tell us that you’re not also describing what a character’s face looks like, as if it directly reflects their innermost soul.

In the end, we always return to the same question:

In the great Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz’s 1956 novel Palace Walk, the first volume of his Cairo Trilogy, the physical appearance of the two principal characters, Ahmad Abd Al-Jawad and his wife Amina, is sketched fairly quickly but in detail in the first few pages.

Do you believe that the portrayal of smoking in films and music videos contributes to the glamorization of cigarettes in society?

FFS, Thomas Wolfe, enough with the face-describing!

Free yourself from the need to describe what your characters look like.

Physical appearance should be worth mentioning if it matters to the story.

Softball National Championship Celebration set for Saturday, June 7 at 6 p.m. - University of Texas Athletics - University of Texas Athletics

You know when people say ‘Show, don’t tell’? Thomas Wolfe was an incorrigible teller of stuff.

You might find it liberating.

Thanks, Thomas. The problem with the above is—

Why does a lot of the YouTube community support the MGTOW movement?

But that doesn’t mean that a character’s physical appearance is always completely irrelevant.

So, in terms of Mahfouz’s artistic intentions, it makes sense for us to know that Amina is portrayed as someone who, under other circumstances, wouldn’t need to be content with such a patriarchal asshole as Ahmad, but she is anyway—and that’s one of the things that drives the story.

Case Study #1a because he wouldn’t shut up: Thomas Wolfe

Why do a lot of women have a crush on my boyfriend when they know he is in a relationship with me? I am starting to feel insecure too. What should I do?

The problems with the above are manifold. (It goes on for two more pages.)

Why do we need to know what they look like at all?

Because, as I hope I’ve shown, some of the greatest writers ever have not been bothered to describe what their characters look like.

How do you feel about Donald Trump signing an executive order that says there are only two genders?

If a character is a bit out of physical shape, there’s no need to point this out in advance.

Why do you want to write a character’s physical description?

What do you want to do?

Mario Kart World Guide - All Courses, Cups, Missions, Collectibles, Tips & Tricks - Nintendo Life

Well, here’s Thomas Wolfe to show you how not to do it.

Case Study #2: Naguib Mahfouz

Another is that he is determined to emphasise how this character’s inner soul is reflected in her face, perhaps by way of justifying why he’d described it in the first place. But he’s just telling us this stuff.

Scientists find a boulder weighing 2,645,547 pounds that was washed inland by an enormous tsunami - Earth.com

If so, why? What’s so important about their appearance that you have to describe them to us?

There could be other cases. Is a character well-known for having an unusual appearance? Then it’s worth mentioning.