Don’t tell everything possible about a character

A mistake which it seems hard for the novice to avoid is that of telling
everything possible about a character and leaving nothing to the
imagination of the reader. This exhaustive method leads to a
multiplicity of detail which verges on baldness, and which is very apt
to contain considerable irrelevant matter; the details are usually
arranged with little regard for their true value; and the intended
description becomes a mere catalogue of personal charms. For example, in
these three descriptions, detailed though they are, there is nothing to
distinguish the particular person described from the scores of other
people possessing the same general traits:
 He was a tall, deep-chested, broad-shouldered man, having a
 light complexion, dark moustache, hair and eyes.
 We will take a look at our heroine, as she sits lazily rocking,
 the sunshine touching her hair. She is of medium height, with
 black hair and eyes and a winning smile that makes friends for
 her everywhere.
 Lura was yet but a slight school girl; she was now fifteen and
 equally as large as Grace. She looked very beautiful as she came
 out to meet Grace and Mrs. Morton, on their return from the
 village. Her dark brown hair had been carefully combed back,
 but the short locks had fallen and formed in ringlets about the
 snowy neck and face. Her large gray eyes were bright. Her full
 curved lips were red, and in laughing and talking revealed two
 rows of small, even, pearly white teeth. Her cheeks were round
 and well formed; although at the present time they bore no marks
 of roses, they were generally rosy. The gray eyes, by the
 changing of the expression, often became almost black and
 greatly completed her beauty.
Clever character depiction consists in selecting and presenting only
those salient details which will serve to body forth rather a vague
image, which shall yet possess a definite personality, to which the
reader may give such distinctness as his imagination may impart to the
hints offered. It is in a manner building a complete character upon a
single characteristic, after the familiar method of Dickens. It is this
impressionistic method which is most used by masters to picture those
characters which seem to us real persons.
In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Irving thus describes the hero,
Ichabod Crane, and the heroine, Katrina Van Tassel:
 The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was
 tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms
 and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet
 that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most
 loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at the top,
 with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose,
 so that it looked like a weather-cock, perched upon his spindle
 neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along
 the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging
 and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the
 genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow
 eloped from a cornfield.
 She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen, plump as a partridge,
 ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father's
 peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but
 her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as
 might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of
 ancient and foreign fashions, as most suited to set off her
 charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold which her
 great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam, the
 tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly
 short petticoat to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the
 country round.
Here are Hawthorne's pictures of Beatrice and her father in
"Rappaccini's Daughter":
 On again beholding Beatrice the young man was even startled to
 perceive how much her beauty exceeded his recollection of it--so
 brilliant, so vivid in its character, that she glowed amid the
 sunlight, and, as Giovanni whispered to himself, positively
 illuminated the more shadowy intervals of the garden path. Her
 face being now more revealed than on the former occasion, he was
 struck by its expression of simplicity and sweetness--qualities
 that had not entered into his idea of her character, and which
 made him ask anew what manner of mortal she might be. Nor did he
 fail again to observe or imagine an analogy between the
 beautiful girl and the gorgeous shrub that hung its gem-like
 flowers over the fountain--a resemblance which Beatrice seemed
 to have indulged a fantastic humor in heightening both by the
 arrangement of her dress and the selection of its hues.
 His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that
 of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow and
 sickly-looking man dressed in a scholar's garb of black. He was
 beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, and a thin gray
 beard and a face singularly marked with intellect and
 cultivation, but which could never, even in his more youthful
 days, have expressed much warmth of heart.
And this is the way Dickens sets forth Scrooge, the old miser, in "A
Christmas Carol":
 Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
 squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous,
 old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had
 ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and
 solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old
 features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek,
 stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and
 spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on
 his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his
 own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
 the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
There is very little of the catalogue style of description here; indeed,
the characters can hardly be said to be described: the author gives
rather the sensations which they produced on observers and so excites
similar sensations in the mind of the reader.
When once introduced the characters should be allowed to work out
their identities with the least possible interference from the
author. Their characteristics must not be listed like invoices of
goods: they must themselves display the psychological powers with
which they were endowed by their creator. Their speeches and actions
must seem the results of mental processes, and must appear natural,
if not logical; indeed, it is an open question if they can be both at
once, for there are few people who are always logical. One good
method of presenting the characteristics of a fictitious personage is
to indulge in a bit of mind reading, and give his thoughts as he
thinks them; another and better way is to show the man actuated by
his dominant mental qualities. In "The Cask of Amontillado" Poe
builds a whole story on an elaboration of the latter method, and
presents the picture of a man temporarily mastered by the spirit of
revenge. It is only by thus allowing the characters to work out their
own destinies that you can make them real; otherwise they will appear
as mere painted puppets, without life or volition.
Category:Character