Character Description in First Person
Character description in first person narration is tricky. We usually don't talk about ourselves in terms of our physical attributes. But readers appreciate having something to imagine when they're reading your story—so how do you make it sound natural?
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Transcript for Character Description in First Person Video
Hello, this is Mary Kole with Good Story Company. Today, I wanted to talk about character description in first person.
There are many ways in which novelists sort of really twist themselves into pretzels when it comes to character description. And first person is one of those very awkward situations where you have to describe your character so that readers can envision your character but you're in first person, meaning I. And so, your character ends up saying these weird things like "I ran my fingers through my yellow hair," or, you know, "Standing at 5"9, I towered..." You know, we don't talk like that. We don't talk about ourselves necessarily in terms of our physical attributes. So it's like, "Wearing my velvet dress, I prepared myself for the cheer competition," or whatever. We just don't.
And one of the things I'm constantly harping on writers about is the sort of the idea of organic description, organic dialogue, like for example, if I know my husband in a story and, you know, we're talking over dinner, I would never in a million years say, "How was your job today as executive chef of the restaurant?" You know, like we know one another. I know what he does. And that is for the readers' benefit and that's kind of the problem. Physical description is for the readers' benefit. It doesn't necessarily fall easily or naturally into narrative, especially first person narratives. So, you still have to include it because I think readers really appreciate having something to imagine when they're thinking about your project but how do we make it natural?
A lot of people do the mirror thing, which is, "I stood in front of the mirror and regarded my..." Yeah, I'm using kind of my funny voice because that's how forced I think this stuff is. "...regarded my green eyes or the circles under my green eyes," which would be more accurate for me. By the tone of voice that I'm using, you can probably guess I don't love that option because you can only have your character regard themselves in front of a mirror so many times. I think a little bit of, you know, "I pulled aside my blond hair, my blond hair." I think that can work if you just like...
I think one of the bigger issues with physical description is that a lot of writers tend to plonk it in there the second we meet a character. And so, it's like, you know, the whistle, like, phwwhht, interrupt the action, we've got a character description coming. We need to know all 37 things that I've imagined for this character's looks right now. We're just meeting them. We don't know who the heck they are but they have brown hair, they have green eyes, they're 5"9. I think that adds to the situation a little bit and to be honest, I would do less is more. I think one of the big considerations here, whether you're in first person, whether you're in third person, don't clump all the physical description together. That sort of like huge block of information tends to not move very smoothly in a story, so do less at a time. Maybe use smaller, more digestible bites. We get a hair color over here. We get an eye color over here. The character is extraordinarily tall or short. That probably deserves mention at some point but don't do it all in one block because that really draws attention to it. And then, if you're in first person, you can sort of, you know, work it in a little bit. Like, "Oh, this sweater looks horrible with my green eyes," or whatever. So that it's kind of like it's dropped in there but a little bit more naturally. And it's not like the point of the sentence.
One thing I would really, really, really implore you to consider is not describing your character's movements in this kind of very third person way when you're in first person. That was confusing. What do I mean by that? I mean, we don't tend to like talk about what our bodies are doing in space in first person. I would never say, "I raised my arm in a forlorn farewell and waved my hand languidly under the..." We don't talk about our bodies or movements like that. We don't. If I am sitting with a friend and I'm having coffee with that friend, I would probably say, "I waved goodbye. It was a terrible moment. I didn't know when I would see him again so I gave him this wave and..." But I wouldn't say, you know, "Thrusting my arm into the air..." like we don't talk about ourselves that way. And if there's one thing I can impress upon you in this video hopefully, is that you want to make character self-description, character description first person, even character description third person, as natural as possible.
Now, if we are in third person, more is available to us in terms of really seeing our character's movements from the outside. You know, you can say, "She aimlessly wandered," or "Her footfalls were heavy." We'd more naturally be able to say that in third person rather than "My footfalls were heavy," like we don't talk about ourselves that way. And so, I think you have a little bit more leeway in third person.
First person is when it can be really tough and so then, you use tools like interiority, which is getting into your character's inner experience, their thought process, their emotions, their reactions to things, their dialogue, their actions, much more so than physical description. So, I would probably say in first person, you wanna do a little bit less of it. In third person, you can get away with some. But at the end of the day, physical description should seem natural. It shouldn't pull focus from the entire scene. It shouldn't all be done the second you introduce a new character. Just try and sort of do, less is more with physical description, no matter your point of view. Just food for thought.
This has been Mary Kole with Good Story Company and here's to a good story with less physical description.
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