One of the most daunting tasks in writing is descriptive writing. How deftly you are able to describe your characters goes a long way to captivating your readers as much giving them an insight into your characters(their personality, physical outlook, emotional and psychological make-up....your readers are able to relate to the characters.)
As is characteristic of descriptive writing, dscribing a female character who is real, earthly(assuming we're not dealing with UFOs) and your readers can relate to, can be as difficult as any other form of descriptive writing. Yes! It's that hard. However the objective of this installment is to give you a trick that'll help you to overcome the innate difficulty.
If you're stuck trying to describe a female character, don't think you aren't any good. No. It's that difficult!
Now I have identified three steps that can help you break the ice! Yaaay🕺🏿
STEP ONE
Under this step, you identify which parts of your character you want to focus(there are umpteen sides to a character you can't describe each otherwise your work becomes superflous and difficult to read) your description on. My focus is on the following parts of my character:
❎ Figure
❎ Body
❎ Waist
❎ Complexion
❎ Eyebrows
❎ Eyelashes
❎ Nose
❎ Teeth
❎ Fingernails
❎ Hair
❎ Shape of lips or simply Lips
❎ Voice
❎ Clothes
❎ Personality
❎ Ears
❎ Skin
STEP TWO
Here we assume that you have identified which parts of your character you are interested in sharing with your readers. Remember, there is no need for you to describe every part of your character. You end up thinking for your readers when you do that. Give them room to let their imagination soar. Allow them the courtesy of filling in the gaps you've left.
Here we ask a very important question: how are those parts of your character like?
Is her character bubbly or subdued?
Are her clothes voguish(chic) or grungy or cosmopolitan?
Having identified that, now form basic sentences with each part as is illustrated below:
- She had a shapely figure. FIGURE
- It was imp-thin. BODY
- She was wasp-waisted. WAIST
- She had glossy skin. COMPLEXION
- She had slender eyebrows. EYEBROWS
- Her eyelashes were velvety. EYELASHES
- She had sea-nymph ears. EARS
- She had a dainty nose. NOSE
- She had shiny, halo-white teeth. TEETH
- Her fingernails were varnished. FINGERNAILS
- Her skin was creamy. SKIN
- Her hair was ebony-black. BLACK HAIR
- Her hair was sunrise-gold. GOLD HAIR
- She had coils of leaf-brown hair. BROWN HAIR
- She had rapture-blue eyes. BLUE EYES
- She had pouting lips. SHAPE OF LIPS
- She had syrup-sweet lips. SWEET LIPS
- She had a joyous personality. PERSONALITY
- She had a soothing voice. SWEET VOICE
- She wore grungy clothes. CLOTHES
STEP THREE
We all know you can't list those things in your story and expect your readers to think you're a sane writer. Lol your insanity would be more than that of a farmer who tried to hack the CIA!
Now you've come a long way so you can't give up now. You are almost there; you've finally crafted a female character you can call your own; it's your creation no matter who tries to steal your thunder!
Okay so what do you do with the list?
You weave it into a paragraph! This is where your forte as a writer comes to fruition! So sleep on it if you have to, take gallons of water if the need be, coz you are a sneeze away from making millions of people want to date your character. Yes your character!
So here's an example:
She had a shapely figure which was imp-thin. She was wasp-waisted and boasted a glossy skin. A pair of velvety eyelashes looked down on slender eyebrows. Her sea-nymph ears framed a dainty nose. A set of shiny, galo-white teeth shimmered as she blew gently on her carmine-red fingernails. It was as much pleasure to see the coils of leaf-brown hair that bounced off her shoulders as it was to behold her rapture-blue eyes. She had pouting lips and they tasted crimson or syrup-sweet when I kissed her. She had the personality of a cheerleader-bubbly as ever- and her soothing voice enticed me as did her grungy clothes which said she wasn't a slay queen.
Congratulations....
You have now cracked the code. Describe away....!!!!!!!
IMAGE TAKEN FROM PIXABAY