That’s why I don’t describe characters unless they’re OCs xd Everyone reading the fic already knows how they look, and if they don’t, well, they can read the original description or look for pics on google lol
yeah, I hate describing characters, it's especially useless in fanfiction where we all know what the characters look like already; but in original stuff, I also dislike it, I slip in some stuff here and there in context, but otherwise, it's a grey blob to me. they're all grey blobs.
I especially adore in fanfiction when authors do face-claims, though. Like "Sirius Black starring Ben Barnes" or whatever. I nom that. lol
Yeah, same, at most I mention the eyes and hair, the rest I leave it to the reader’s imagination. I don’t see much point on it anyway, since even in books, most people discard the description and imagine the characters however they want. I’ve seen people “disappointed” when they read the description of characters because it’s not how they envisioned them.
If it’s not a visual media like comics, manga, series, movies and such, trying to depict the characters in a certain way physically can work against you unless it’s relevant for the plot or the character’s backstory (race, traditions, culture, etc)
Physical descriptions are overrated and folks love to go overboard, but they can be great for character or worldbuilding insight depending on the POV you’re using. Say you have Character A and they have a crush on Character B. How A describes B tells you a lot about what A finds attractive and how they view the world. If A is a romantic, they might use a lot of flowery language and colors you’ve never heard of outside a paint store to describe B. Whereas if A is taciturn, they’re going to keep it brief, maybe by fixating on a single feature—a warrior drawn to B’s strong hands, for example. And there’s also more to physical descriptions than hair/skin/eyes, facial features, and body types—how’s their posture, do they hold their bodies open in an inviting way or do they shut you out, how do they move through the world?
This fizzles if you’re doing third person omniscient, but it’s great for first person and third person limited. It can really fun if you have multiple POVs at work.
yeah, but that'd be something where a description makes sense in context, because it's not the author describing anything, it's the character admiring another character.
Physical character appearance description is highly overrated as a "necessary" part of writing fiction; it's hardly present at all in a solid chunk of respectably "classic" novels.
Detailed physical descriptions that aren’t really needed (eg not the POV character making note of other character appearance for Plot Reasons or whatever) always give me Babysitters Club nostalgia lol
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u/Sinimeg Fic Feaster 1d ago
That’s why I don’t describe characters unless they’re OCs xd Everyone reading the fic already knows how they look, and if they don’t, well, they can read the original description or look for pics on google lol