The Challenge of Description: First Impressions

Previously I mentioned that I was having trouble with my new introduction for Shazemar, protagonist of my fantasy poem The Winds of Winter. I had a pretty decent description of him as an individual character — of the things that distinguish him from other Debroans, and give some sense of who he is; but I was having a hard time packing enough clues to Debroan culture into the description, because it was getting too long. And if you don’t get the culture, you don’t get the character.

Well, I could add the cultural stuff afterwards, couldn’t I?

Probably not to the best effect.

If you look at books from the Middle Ages, you’ll discover something that seems odd to us: they’ll happily put Hector and King David in medieval armor, as if they were 13th-century knights. That’s because medieval people had often heard stories about earlier cultures, but, unlike us, they mostly didn’t get to see illustrations of earlier peoples in their own dress. They filled what they didn’t know with things they were familiar with.

Modern people have seen many more pictures than they have, but still think exactly the same way. You can’t tell your readers everything; you haven’t enough room. Where you left a blank, they’re likely to fill it in — with something they associate with the details you did tell them.

If you’re a modern American, and the only thing I tell you about a character is that she’s got her hair in cornrows, odds are you’re going to picture her as black. You’ll fill in her hair color, her eye color, her skin color, and (in part) the shape of her face.

If I put her in hiking boots and a backpack, you may not only picture her footwear, but the trail she’s walking.

If I put her in a suit-jacket and pumps, you may move her to an office.

She could have worn hiking boots to the office. But odds are you’ll expect her to be doing typical things in typical ways, unless I give you enough information to make you imagine otherwise.

When I introduce you to an important character, I want you to form two impressions:

1. A quick idea of the surface things about her: gender, age, race, era, and place in society.  If I’m writing about a culture you’re at least somewhat familiar with, I may be able to present such an impression in a sentence, or even a phrase.
2. A glimpse into who she is as an individual. What sets her apart from every other woman who shares the same superficial characteristics?

In most stories, I need to give you the surface elements early.

Why early?

Because I don’t (usually) want you to form the wrong impression of the character. If I write in such a way that you’re picturing a young woman, and then two chapters later you discover that the character you’ve been seeing as twenty-five years old is really sixty, the sudden, drastic revision you have to make may jar you out of the story. Most often, I want to give you a substantially correct (if necessarily incomplete) idea of the character, and then I’ll deepen it as I continue writing.

In writing, there’s an exception to practically everything. There are stories where the author intentionally misleads the reader about a character’s superficial characteristics, often by playing to stereotypes and associations. At the climax of the story, the author reveals that the associations the reader has made by habit are wrong: the character is of a sort the reader didn’t expect to see in that role.

And there are stories where the characters themselves intentionally play to stereotypes to mislead other characters.

But I’m not writing a story like that. I need my readers to form an impression of Shazemar that isn’t drastically wrong.

Tags: cultural cues, descriptions, first impressions, The Winds of Winter fantasy poem

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.