This video topic was requested by my patron, Sagi Jane. If you would like to become a patron and have your video topic requests prioritized, link down below. So what I've been saying so far is really about specific features to describe. But when it comes to describing someone's physicality, there's a lot more than just describing features. Spear Room with Karen Terry. Video and welcome to Spear Room. I'm Karen Terry and today we're going to talk about descriptions of people. A good character description helps your partner envision your character in their mind. Now, I cheat for this and use face claims and you can do that too, or you could use art references or if you're a talented artist yourself, you could even draw your own characters. But if you don't want to do any of those things, it's important to provide a physical description of your character. Humans are visual creatures. So you want your partner to be seeing your character in their minds, eye, and since roleplay is a collaborative process, it's best if you and your partner are both imagining relatively the same thing. So that's why today we're going to talk about some tips you can use to physically describe people. When you think of a person, your friend, your coworker, a celebrity crush, what do you imagine? It's probably their face. Our brains are incredibly attuned to faces. So when you're describing someone, give more attention to the facial details than the body details. So that is tip number one. Describe the character's face and unique facial features. Eyes, hair, and skin are a great place to start. Describe the color and shape of each. Eyes, for example, can be blue, green, brown, black, and all sorts of colors in between. They can be round or more oval. They can be open, wide, or hooded. Eyelids can be single or double, and don't forget the lashes. Are they light and barely visible? Or are they dark and more prominent? When it comes to hair, we describe color, length, and texture. Are they blonde, brunette, or redhead, and wear in between? For example, strawberry blonde means they are blonde with hints of red in their hair. Brunette can be chestnut, chocolate, or ebony. When it comes to texture, is it straight, wavy, loosely curled, tight coils? And when we're talking about skin, we also want to describe the color and texture. But an aside to this, when it comes to skin, avoid comparisons to food. Comparing certain ethnicities of people to food items is wrought with historically racist undertones, so just avoid that altogether. Instead, describe where the skin falls between dark and pale. And what about the skin's undertone? Is it ready, tawny, olive, cool? It can also be helpful to describe the clarity of someone's skin. Is it clear and powerless? Is it freckled? Is it scarred? And then to tie this all together, it can be helpful to describe the overall shape of the face. Is it round? Is it plump? Is it heart-shaped? Is it angular? All of those sorts of things can give an overall impression of what the face looks like. So if those are the prominent parts of the face, what else should be described when it comes to describing a character's face? The answer to that, I would say, is what is most prominent on their face? If they have a particularly large or small nose, it may be helpful to call it out. If it's more of an average size nose, then I would say, just give it. Same with the lips. Are they plump? Are they thin? Are they small? Are they wide? If it's the sort of thing that you would notice when you first look at a person, then mention it. If they look like they fit their face totally average, then skip it. And that goes for the rest of the body as well. Typically, we notice the rest of the body after we notice the face, and we're going to notice the most prominent features first. Are they as tall as a tree? Or as small as a mouse? Are they Jessica Rabbit curvy? Or are they a beanpole of a person? Maybe they're more athletic? Anything that falls outside, the average should be mentioned. When it comes to describing these things, there are plenty of lists online for different words that you can use to describe various body and facial features. So if you're not sure what word describes a certain thing, pop the closest thing you can think of to describe it into Google, and I'm sure that your answer will come right up. So what I've been saying so far is really about specific features to describe. But when it comes to describing someone's physicality, there's a lot more than just describing features. So that brings me to tip number two. Consider the point of view. Is your character describing themselves? They would emphasize certain things based on how they see themselves. Are you writing a bio that's from more of an omnipotent narrator perspective? If that's the case, think more about what others would typically notice in that person and describe that. Are you writing from the perspective of a friend or family member to that person? They're probably going to mention the things that they particularly like about that person. Or is this from the perspective of their lover? That person's going to describe their absolute best and favorite features about that person and talk about how attractive they are. What about their enemy? That person is probably going to focus on the opposite and describe that person's worst features and what looks awkward about them. Resist the urge, however, to focus too much on how attractive or unattractive a person is. It's really hard to write this without making it feel like you're trying to force your partner to feel a certain way about the attractiveness level of this character. They might start to think they're going to be judged if they don't agree with you on the attractiveness level, for example. Like, I'll give a personal example. If you go on and on about how Instagram hot your character is, I'm going to think you have some kind of emotional investment on everyone thinking that your character is super hot stuff. And if for any reason I don't agree, then I'm going to start to think we might have some out of character troubles communicating. So instead, I would say it's best to be sparing with this so that your partner feels like that they and their character are allowed to come to their own conclusions. Alright, next is tip number three. It's important your descriptions match the tone of your character. I'll give a few examples. Your top notch katana wielding assassin isn't going to be 5'8' and 100 pounds. That would make them emaciated, not muscular. Your spoiled little rich girl is going to be attractive because she has access to the top fashions, the top makeup, and plastic surgery probably if she wants it. So describing her as a plain Jane average type person is not going to be realistic. And by contrast, your social recluse character probably isn't going to be a perfect 10. They're probably going to be average looking or if they don't take care of themselves below average looking. So think about the type of character you're writing and think about how that type of character probably looks for their situation. If those two things don't match, then it's going to be difficult for your partner to grasp what you're going for and we don't want that. Alright, tip number four. Don't forget movement. How does your character walk? Do they have a confident posture? Do they slump down? Do they look at their feet or do they look straight ahead when they're walking? Are they more anxious or excited with quick sporadic movements? Or are they more calm with slow and steady movements? Are they a fidgeter? Constantly shaking their leg or messing with their fingernails? Movement says so much about a character, so don't forget to mention that from time to time in your roleplay replies and in your character descriptions. And my fifth and final tip when it comes to describing characters, call attention to physical things when it's important. It can be tempting to avoid repeating the character's name or the character's pronouns because you're nervous of repetition and instead say something like the blonde or the brunette. But if there's no reason to call attention to that character's hair color in the sentence that you're writing, then just repeat the pronouns are their name. Don't call attention to the physical just to avoid overused words. Describing these things should be purposeful because your partner's imagination is already filling in those details. So when you call attention to it, it's sort of like spotlights or highlights that thing to say to the brain, hey pay attention they're blonde. But if them being blonde is unimportant, then there's no reason to have their mind do that. Those overused words are easy for your mind to skip over, so just repeat them if you need to. It's fine, there's other ways to tackle that which we can cover in a later video. So those are some of my tips for describing people to recap. First, describe the face and other unique features. Then consider the point of view. Match the tone of the character. And don't forget movement. And lastly, call attention to the physical when it's important. Do you guys use some of these already, if not, are you going to start using them? Or maybe there's some kind of tip that you like that I didn't include in this video. Either way, let me know down below and of course don't forget to make it a great day. Thanks for watching.