Skills: Describing a Character's Appearance

Inventing Characters Read! Journal Word Notebook

Choosing Titles The Fab Four Golden Rules Generating Ideas Stealing Ideas From an Idea to a Plan Planning from a Picture Stories Based on a Passage Stories Based on a Sentence An Example of Good Planning

Describing a Location Longer descriptions Describing a character's appearance Dialogue Distinctive Voices Show, Don't Tell Characterisation: Shown Feelings More Characterisation Techniques Playing with Sentences Playscripts Action Suspense

What is story structure? 1 Exciting opening line 2 Set the scene 3 Talking and describing character 4 Characterisation 5 Suspense 6 Action 7 Cliffhanger Standing Out: How can you stand out from the crowd? Clever Clogs: Non-Linear Clever-clogs: Two perspectives Clever-clogs: Narrative voice Practice 11+ exam titles

Checking your story in an exam Redrafting = improving your story What if I run out of time in an exam? The Grumpy Examiner's Pet Hates

Year 2 into 3 Lemony Snicket After Harry Potter Must-Read Authors Spy Novels Horror Stories Classics Animal Stories Adventure Historical Fiction Myths & Legends Fantasy Family Stories & Comedies

You should always try to describe one of the characters in your story.

Scientists (they’re the ones with white coats, test tubes and weird, flyaway hair) believe that that you make a judgement about someone in the first ten seconds, based purely on their appearance. You look them up and down, and think to yourself, ‘Yuck! That’s the ugliest jumper I’ve ever seen!’ or ‘What hairy nostrils!’

We all make decisions about someone based on aspects of their appearance:

Hair
Eyes
Smile
Clothes
Posture

Remember, your aim is to create a picture of the character’s appearance in the reader’s mind. You really don’t need to describe more than a few small details – the reader’s imagination will fill in the rest. By zooming in on a mouth, this writer creates a vivid picture of an old lady:

Anna dreaded kissing her Gran goodbye. There were something about Gran’s rotting yellow teeth and chapped lips, not to mention a bristly moustache, that made Anna feel quite ill.

Sure, the ‘Gran’ you’ve imagined is different to the ‘Gran’ the writer pictured, but it doesn’t matter – the detail created a small picture, and your imagination filled in the rest.

Read the following description. It isn’t very interesting – but why?

This description does the opposite of what Bald Worm told you to do – it stands back and describes Bob as if the writer is staring at him from the other side of the room. The only interesting part of this description is the detail about the freckles.

The next description is even worse! Again, can you work out why?

Last updated on August 13, 2007