Pirate Prince
Oh, would you look at that. I’m trying to give people advice again, despite having zero qualifications to prove I am an authority on any of this stuff. Wheeeee!
This is a topic that I feel like I’m fairly good at (you are welcome to disagree). In fact, I’d almost say that describing objects, locations, and people in writing has always come naturally to me. I never struggled with it or considered myself totally inept, but I did have to practice and learn in order to really hone my capabilities.
But enough about me. Let’s get down to business. Here's what I consider the most vital/necessary things to know about descriptions.
1. Location, Location, Location
Locations are easier to describe if you base it on a place you've actually been to. I live in the middle of the desert, so I can describe a desert planet fairly easy. (Very dusty, it'll blow sand into your eyes whenever its windy, it's unbearably hot, and there's a distinct "dry, brittle" smell to the air. I don't recommend living here, it stinks.) It can also allow you to "set the scene" as far as the mood and tone goes—if your characters are chilling in a garden, but they're about to be murdered by an assassin hiding in the bushes, maybe mention the birds getting spooked and flying off, or the "unnatural quiet and stillness" where there had once been sounds of wildlife. If your protagonist is visiting someone's house for the first time, the house will presumably reflect the owner—that's an opportunity for character development.
I also strongly suggest doing more than describing sight and sound. The three other senses don't get enough air time, IMO. Have your character touch the railing as they walk up the stairs. Is it metal or wood? Is the wood polished and smooth, or rough and rotting? Ew, don't touch it, you'll get a splinter. What does it smell like in this room? Musty? Is it cold or too hot for your liking? Is that an air freshener in the corner? Smells like citrus. Okay, maybe don't lick anything in here, but if your character is eating or chewing gum, mention the taste. Do they prefer mint flavored gum, fruity, or cinnamon?
While we're on the subject of locations: I’ve seen it happen here on Chaos more than once with a variety of different writers, but y'all get so wrapped up in writing the actions and dialogue of a scene that you forget to say where your character even is.
It might sound like a silly mistake—I know I have a hard time writing a scene without clearly establishing the location and nearby objects beforehand—but it becomes a particular problem when it comes to RP writing, because then the other writers don’t know where your character is and therefore won’t know how to approach you. This is an easily fixed problem. Just add a sentence or two that explains where your character is. Are they leaning against the wall and watching everyone else from afar? Sitting in a chair drinking something? Were they confronted by somebody with a blaster just as they were on their way out the door? Etc. No need to be super flowery or hyper-detailed, just make sure that everyone knows your location and can work you into their narrative.
Now, if you want to go above and beyond what is necessary, like I tend to do, then you’re in luck, 'cause I’m going to be barfing up tips on that for the rest of this post.
2. Characters: Sketch vs. Painting
This is my personal favorite. I love to describe people and creatures, particularly monstrous and supernatural beings, because it allows me to create some really strong, visceral imagery.
What I’d like to draw y’all’s attention to is certain literary faux pas when it comes to how you describe a person. This ranges from being too simple (I recently read a post which featured a character who was simply described as an “armored individual”) to going overboard with describing what they look like (I’ve seen a few bios that go into waaaaay too much detail).
If your descriptions are too spare and minimal, the reader will have a hard time picturing the character. Like that “armored individual” one I heard not too long ago. My go-to when I need a brief, concise description is to establish the character’s sex, species, and some identifying trait that only they have, like “green Mandalorian armor”. Again, you don’t have to be super specific, you just have to give the reader enough that they can picture this character in their mind.
If you describe them too much, the reader will get tired and annoyed. You’ve probably heard people tell you not to write a paragraph description of a character (no scenes of them looking at themselves in the mirror as an excuse for this), instead opting to spread the description out and attach it to actions and other tertiary details within the scene, like “His blonde hair had darkened with sweat,” and “She blinked blue eyes at him, her brow furrowing,” I say this is a great idea, but you should also realize that the “don’t write a paragraph” description rule isn’t an absolute. I tend to go with a short paragraph when my POV character is meeting someone new, because it allows the reader to get a “first impression” of the newcomer. Likewise, Gone With the Wind describes it’s main character’s appearance in detail on the very first page for a reason—it’s used to establish the protagonist’s personality and background.
You get a lot of information in those first two paragraphs, including the setting of the scene, the time period, the local culture, and the presence of two other characters. Obviously I don’t expect this level of detail and publisher-ready refinement here on Chaos, but you get the point. If your instincts tell you that a paragraph of description would be appropriate for the scenario you’re writing, go with your gut. If your instincts tell you to give a quick one-sentence establisher and then sprinkle the description throughout, go with your gut.
3. Characters II: Electric Boogaloo
Now, this is something that may sound kind of funny (and an obvious mistake to anyone who has ever read My Immortal or knows what a Mary Sue is), and I’ve had people actually try to excuse it as a form of mocking their own character. But if you constantly remind the reader of how physically attractive your character is, it will become obnoxious. Even if your character is supposed to be arrogant and vain, it gets old.
I’m not just referring to stuff like “her hair tumbled like a waterfall down her back”, “flawless porcelain skin”, and “she had curves in all the right places”. That kind of thing is what a twelve year old girl will write in her very first self-insert fanfiction. You do generally want to avoid anything which implies that their looks are perfect, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and therefore nobody looks perfect to everyone. One person’s ugly or plain is another person’s great beauty. Again, POV also comes into play here—if you are writing from the POV of a character who is describing someone else, and they find this person attractive, then you can have a bit more freedom to describe them as beautiful or handsome or whatever. But if it’s how the character sees themselves, the reader will more than likely assume it’s an exaggeration. Which can work in some cases, but again, please exercise restraint.
Allow me to pick on
AMCO
for a bit. (Mostly because I'm pretty familiar with his threads, and I know his writer doesn’t care what I say.) This is a character who is so full of himself he probably likes the smell of his own farts. He’s also obsessed with his idea of “perfection” to the point where he is unhinged, barely clinging to sanity. His writer tends to use certain repeated phrases to describe him. One of these, “raising a single trimmed eyebrow,” is actually a good example of what I was talking about earlier with incorporating description into a character’s action. It also tells a whole lot about Adrian, namely that he cares about his looks to the point of effeminacy/vanity, that he likes things to be just so, and is generally quite rigid in how he presents himself. The fact that I once had one of my characters describe him as looking like a male mannequin was done for comedic effect, yes, but also because Adrian's idea of "perfection" and what is considered attractive isn't the same as everybody else's. Just like how my personal dislike of tattoos isn't shared by everyone.
On the other hand, he also tends to describe Adrian’s eyes as “dark blue orbs”. This doesn’t work for two main reasons. One, it’s anatomically incorrect—the human eye is not an orb, it’s an oval. Two, this terminology deliberately “romanticizes” the human body, similar to comparing long hair to a waterfall, eyelashes to wings, cheeks to apples, or eyes to gemstones. It overlaps with something being “cliche” but in the case of orbs, it’s actually considered a literary faux pas at this point. It hasn’t been considered acceptable since the Victorian era. The author’s excuse was that it was reflective of the more refined, elegant, slightly archaic writing style that he shoots for when it comes to Adrian, but isn’t Adrian also supposed to be not just fashionable, but ahead of his time? Why would he be using a faux pas that's more than a century out of date?...
But, I digress. I’ve found that you can only really get away with describing someone/something in truly exaggerated terms if the subject is ugly, deformed, or monstrous. This can be literal, or it can be metaphorical—something that is beautiful on the outside but hideous on the inside, and the ugliness within is barely contained by the attractive shell it inhabits.
Of course, you could always just find some pictures that fit your character and post them to your bio with the caption “this is what they look like”... but that’s not very punk rock of you.
4. The Emperor Has No Clothes
Most of the writers on Chaos tend to just link to a photo of their outfit. If they’re wearing armor, they just link to the sub or the Wookieepedia article for it. I’ve done that. I never really liked describing clothing, it’s one of my least favorite things to write about, but I have tried to do more with it in recent years so I'm not just getting all flowery gushing over a fictional person's wardrobe. Earth tones, people!
The main thing you will convey by your character’s choice of clothing is their lifestyle. How much money they have and what they do for a living. If they’re rich, they’ll wear expensive fashion made from luxurious fabrics. If they’re poor, they’ll wear whatever they can find, potentially even rags. If they work in an office, they’ll wear a suit. If they’re a soldier or a bounty hunter, they’ll wear armor of some kind. It can also deliver other information—helmets and masks usually indicate they’re trying to hide their identity, for instance. What do you wear when you go hiking? Probably not a dress or skirt and ballet flats. But if your character is hiking while dressed for a garden party, there should always be a reason why. Was she dumped in the wilderness after being kidnapped from her family estate? Did she not get the memo that her class was going hiking today, and therefore didn’t dress appropriately? Was it too late to change her outfit beforehand?...
Look, whatever you do, don't describe a dress as a "confection" unless it's a wedding dress or a ball gown. Something really fancy and special that is only meant to be worn once (just like how a food confection is only meant to be eaten once). If you try to say anything else is a "confection", I will come into your house and eat your clothes.
5. My Intentions Are Strictly Honorable
Sometimes I like to describe other people's characters for them. Not because I think they do a poor job of describing themselves, but because it serves a purpose.
My character has just met yours. What are their first impressions of you? I will pull information from their bio (which is why I get so bent out of shape whenever your bio isn't properly linked, or heaven forbid, you don't have a bio at all...) as well as how you have presented them in the thread itself. I usually don't go into a lot of detail, but when I do, it's because I'm trying to do something specific. I can only think of two occasions where I did this on Chaos: the first was a thread where Nimdok was coming to terms with the fact that he had a crush on a woman he wasn't sure he could trust, and the second was when Inanna met with Adrian Vandiir in order to make a deal with him. (Here we go again...) Nimdok went nuts with the descriptions of this woman because he obviously found her attractive, and Inanna did it because she was trying to study Adrian and figure out how to take advantage of him. In Inanna's thread, I actually wrote a couple of pages of notes beforehand, including, you guessed it, descriptions. The best of these is probably this bit from Inanna:
At the time when I wrote this thread, I was basing Inanna's appearance on this image, so if you would also like to see what happens when I try to describe something directly from a picture, there ya go. Adrian is infamous for not including a proper description of his appearance in his bio, and he had a different image as his avatar at the time, so I took inspiration from that and from what his writer told me about him.
Alright, I've run out of things to say. The main takeaway that I hope you get from this, dear reader, is that you should always write what you intended to say. On the other hand, not everyone understands language enough to properly articulate their thoughts and feelings, and you can’t always predict how someone is going to react to what you’re saying.
If this makes writing sound like a losing game, well, be glad I didn’t go into a tangent about how much language has changed since the 1800s. I was going to, but I decided it was unnecessary. My writing instincts told me to hold back, no matter how much fun it might be, because it doesn’t fully connect to what I’ve spent most of this post talking about.
As long as you continue to practice your writing, you will reach a point where your instincts are honed enough that you have confidence in them. You’ll be able to trust your own decisions… most of the time. More often than not. Nobody who can actually write is completely confident in their own abilities, we’ve all got insecurities and doubts about ourselves. But generally speaking, you should go with what your gut tells you to do. Everything I’ve talked about here is just advice. You are free to disregard it.
I do want to stress that you shouldn’t worry and fret about whether or not you’re doing things just right. When I was first starting out, as soon as I learned what a Mary Sue was I obsessed over not making my characters anything like that. They had to be completely depowered, unattractive/plain, and have no friends. As a result, my characters sucked, nobody wanted to read my stories, they were boring, it was terrible. The same thing happened whenever I tried to follow anyone’s advice to a T. It was not only stressful, it actually made my writing worse because it was too by-the-book. People don’t want to read standard writing, they want to read stuff that’s fresh and clever and does cool stuff that they’ve never seen before (or they have, just not quite like this). The surest sign that you are winning the game is if you are passionate about it and not withering under the weight of your own unreasonable expectations. It shouldn’t necessarily be easy, but it should be interesting and fun for the whole family.
...Get it? Cause Chaos is rated PG-13… I’ll show myself out.
This is a topic that I feel like I’m fairly good at (you are welcome to disagree). In fact, I’d almost say that describing objects, locations, and people in writing has always come naturally to me. I never struggled with it or considered myself totally inept, but I did have to practice and learn in order to really hone my capabilities.
But enough about me. Let’s get down to business. Here's what I consider the most vital/necessary things to know about descriptions.
1. Location, Location, Location
Locations are easier to describe if you base it on a place you've actually been to. I live in the middle of the desert, so I can describe a desert planet fairly easy. (Very dusty, it'll blow sand into your eyes whenever its windy, it's unbearably hot, and there's a distinct "dry, brittle" smell to the air. I don't recommend living here, it stinks.) It can also allow you to "set the scene" as far as the mood and tone goes—if your characters are chilling in a garden, but they're about to be murdered by an assassin hiding in the bushes, maybe mention the birds getting spooked and flying off, or the "unnatural quiet and stillness" where there had once been sounds of wildlife. If your protagonist is visiting someone's house for the first time, the house will presumably reflect the owner—that's an opportunity for character development.
I also strongly suggest doing more than describing sight and sound. The three other senses don't get enough air time, IMO. Have your character touch the railing as they walk up the stairs. Is it metal or wood? Is the wood polished and smooth, or rough and rotting? Ew, don't touch it, you'll get a splinter. What does it smell like in this room? Musty? Is it cold or too hot for your liking? Is that an air freshener in the corner? Smells like citrus. Okay, maybe don't lick anything in here, but if your character is eating or chewing gum, mention the taste. Do they prefer mint flavored gum, fruity, or cinnamon?
While we're on the subject of locations: I’ve seen it happen here on Chaos more than once with a variety of different writers, but y'all get so wrapped up in writing the actions and dialogue of a scene that you forget to say where your character even is.
It might sound like a silly mistake—I know I have a hard time writing a scene without clearly establishing the location and nearby objects beforehand—but it becomes a particular problem when it comes to RP writing, because then the other writers don’t know where your character is and therefore won’t know how to approach you. This is an easily fixed problem. Just add a sentence or two that explains where your character is. Are they leaning against the wall and watching everyone else from afar? Sitting in a chair drinking something? Were they confronted by somebody with a blaster just as they were on their way out the door? Etc. No need to be super flowery or hyper-detailed, just make sure that everyone knows your location and can work you into their narrative.
Now, if you want to go above and beyond what is necessary, like I tend to do, then you’re in luck, 'cause I’m going to be barfing up tips on that for the rest of this post.
2. Characters: Sketch vs. Painting
This is my personal favorite. I love to describe people and creatures, particularly monstrous and supernatural beings, because it allows me to create some really strong, visceral imagery.
What I’d like to draw y’all’s attention to is certain literary faux pas when it comes to how you describe a person. This ranges from being too simple (I recently read a post which featured a character who was simply described as an “armored individual”) to going overboard with describing what they look like (I’ve seen a few bios that go into waaaaay too much detail).
If your descriptions are too spare and minimal, the reader will have a hard time picturing the character. Like that “armored individual” one I heard not too long ago. My go-to when I need a brief, concise description is to establish the character’s sex, species, and some identifying trait that only they have, like “green Mandalorian armor”. Again, you don’t have to be super specific, you just have to give the reader enough that they can picture this character in their mind.
If you describe them too much, the reader will get tired and annoyed. You’ve probably heard people tell you not to write a paragraph description of a character (no scenes of them looking at themselves in the mirror as an excuse for this), instead opting to spread the description out and attach it to actions and other tertiary details within the scene, like “His blonde hair had darkened with sweat,” and “She blinked blue eyes at him, her brow furrowing,” I say this is a great idea, but you should also realize that the “don’t write a paragraph” description rule isn’t an absolute. I tend to go with a short paragraph when my POV character is meeting someone new, because it allows the reader to get a “first impression” of the newcomer. Likewise, Gone With the Wind describes it’s main character’s appearance in detail on the very first page for a reason—it’s used to establish the protagonist’s personality and background.
Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin–that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own.
You get a lot of information in those first two paragraphs, including the setting of the scene, the time period, the local culture, and the presence of two other characters. Obviously I don’t expect this level of detail and publisher-ready refinement here on Chaos, but you get the point. If your instincts tell you that a paragraph of description would be appropriate for the scenario you’re writing, go with your gut. If your instincts tell you to give a quick one-sentence establisher and then sprinkle the description throughout, go with your gut.
3. Characters II: Electric Boogaloo
Now, this is something that may sound kind of funny (and an obvious mistake to anyone who has ever read My Immortal or knows what a Mary Sue is), and I’ve had people actually try to excuse it as a form of mocking their own character. But if you constantly remind the reader of how physically attractive your character is, it will become obnoxious. Even if your character is supposed to be arrogant and vain, it gets old.
I’m not just referring to stuff like “her hair tumbled like a waterfall down her back”, “flawless porcelain skin”, and “she had curves in all the right places”. That kind of thing is what a twelve year old girl will write in her very first self-insert fanfiction. You do generally want to avoid anything which implies that their looks are perfect, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and therefore nobody looks perfect to everyone. One person’s ugly or plain is another person’s great beauty. Again, POV also comes into play here—if you are writing from the POV of a character who is describing someone else, and they find this person attractive, then you can have a bit more freedom to describe them as beautiful or handsome or whatever. But if it’s how the character sees themselves, the reader will more than likely assume it’s an exaggeration. Which can work in some cases, but again, please exercise restraint.
Allow me to pick on
AMCO
for a bit. (Mostly because I'm pretty familiar with his threads, and I know his writer doesn’t care what I say.) This is a character who is so full of himself he probably likes the smell of his own farts. He’s also obsessed with his idea of “perfection” to the point where he is unhinged, barely clinging to sanity. His writer tends to use certain repeated phrases to describe him. One of these, “raising a single trimmed eyebrow,” is actually a good example of what I was talking about earlier with incorporating description into a character’s action. It also tells a whole lot about Adrian, namely that he cares about his looks to the point of effeminacy/vanity, that he likes things to be just so, and is generally quite rigid in how he presents himself. The fact that I once had one of my characters describe him as looking like a male mannequin was done for comedic effect, yes, but also because Adrian's idea of "perfection" and what is considered attractive isn't the same as everybody else's. Just like how my personal dislike of tattoos isn't shared by everyone.On the other hand, he also tends to describe Adrian’s eyes as “dark blue orbs”. This doesn’t work for two main reasons. One, it’s anatomically incorrect—the human eye is not an orb, it’s an oval. Two, this terminology deliberately “romanticizes” the human body, similar to comparing long hair to a waterfall, eyelashes to wings, cheeks to apples, or eyes to gemstones. It overlaps with something being “cliche” but in the case of orbs, it’s actually considered a literary faux pas at this point. It hasn’t been considered acceptable since the Victorian era. The author’s excuse was that it was reflective of the more refined, elegant, slightly archaic writing style that he shoots for when it comes to Adrian, but isn’t Adrian also supposed to be not just fashionable, but ahead of his time? Why would he be using a faux pas that's more than a century out of date?...
But, I digress. I’ve found that you can only really get away with describing someone/something in truly exaggerated terms if the subject is ugly, deformed, or monstrous. This can be literal, or it can be metaphorical—something that is beautiful on the outside but hideous on the inside, and the ugliness within is barely contained by the attractive shell it inhabits.
Of course, you could always just find some pictures that fit your character and post them to your bio with the caption “this is what they look like”... but that’s not very punk rock of you.
4. The Emperor Has No Clothes
Most of the writers on Chaos tend to just link to a photo of their outfit. If they’re wearing armor, they just link to the sub or the Wookieepedia article for it. I’ve done that. I never really liked describing clothing, it’s one of my least favorite things to write about, but I have tried to do more with it in recent years so I'm not just getting all flowery gushing over a fictional person's wardrobe. Earth tones, people!
The main thing you will convey by your character’s choice of clothing is their lifestyle. How much money they have and what they do for a living. If they’re rich, they’ll wear expensive fashion made from luxurious fabrics. If they’re poor, they’ll wear whatever they can find, potentially even rags. If they work in an office, they’ll wear a suit. If they’re a soldier or a bounty hunter, they’ll wear armor of some kind. It can also deliver other information—helmets and masks usually indicate they’re trying to hide their identity, for instance. What do you wear when you go hiking? Probably not a dress or skirt and ballet flats. But if your character is hiking while dressed for a garden party, there should always be a reason why. Was she dumped in the wilderness after being kidnapped from her family estate? Did she not get the memo that her class was going hiking today, and therefore didn’t dress appropriately? Was it too late to change her outfit beforehand?...
Look, whatever you do, don't describe a dress as a "confection" unless it's a wedding dress or a ball gown. Something really fancy and special that is only meant to be worn once (just like how a food confection is only meant to be eaten once). If you try to say anything else is a "confection", I will come into your house and eat your clothes.
5. My Intentions Are Strictly Honorable
Sometimes I like to describe other people's characters for them. Not because I think they do a poor job of describing themselves, but because it serves a purpose.
My character has just met yours. What are their first impressions of you? I will pull information from their bio (which is why I get so bent out of shape whenever your bio isn't properly linked, or heaven forbid, you don't have a bio at all...) as well as how you have presented them in the thread itself. I usually don't go into a lot of detail, but when I do, it's because I'm trying to do something specific. I can only think of two occasions where I did this on Chaos: the first was a thread where Nimdok was coming to terms with the fact that he had a crush on a woman he wasn't sure he could trust, and the second was when Inanna met with Adrian Vandiir in order to make a deal with him. (Here we go again...) Nimdok went nuts with the descriptions of this woman because he obviously found her attractive, and Inanna did it because she was trying to study Adrian and figure out how to take advantage of him. In Inanna's thread, I actually wrote a couple of pages of notes beforehand, including, you guessed it, descriptions. The best of these is probably this bit from Inanna:
In what could’ve been a testament to Vandiir’s vanity or merely a thoughtless design choice, the walls inside the lift were mirrored. Four identical women with hair as white as an Arkanian maiden’s surrounded her all the way up to Adrian’s office.
She stared at one of these reflections, studying her face with a furrowed brow, lips slightly parted. Her current form was not the half-naked brunette who had wandered Vandiir’s nightclub, shuffling off her lecherous date and tossing her drink in the face of a desperate man. This pale-haired, ethereal young woman was what she became whenever asked to show her “true self”—and she hoped it would at least partially satisfy the curiosity she had seen in Vandiir's gaze when she briefly caught him looking down at her from the nightclub's mezzanine. She certainly didn't look merely human here. In place of cloth garments, her body was draped with hanging filaments that resembled strands of spider silk heavy with dew, each droplet a moonlit pearl strung on a silver thread. She would meet Vandiir not as a scantily-clad seductress, but as a fanciful creature out of the rarest sort of dreams, wholly alien and barely civilized...
...She felt his gaze following her as she circled around and perched on the edge of his desk, now looking down at him rather than up. The closer proximity also meant she had a better view of him than ever before.
Adrian Vandiir was not physically imposing in the slightest, having a slender frame and undeveloped physique. Probably he relied almost exclusively on the Force in a fight. He was currently dressed like an evil art critic, albeit a dizzyingly handsome one. The icy blue eyes he used so effectively to intimidate others were softened by the subtle presence of long, dark eyelashes. Not that he had ever batted them at anyone, mind you, but they were there, framing every chilling stare he aimed at people, vaguely hinting at a gentler, more vulnerable side to his personality that was just waiting to be dredged up from the murky depths—assuming that hidden side really did exist and wasn’t just deceptive charm. Still, the suggestion was there, and that was probably enough for most women."
She stared at one of these reflections, studying her face with a furrowed brow, lips slightly parted. Her current form was not the half-naked brunette who had wandered Vandiir’s nightclub, shuffling off her lecherous date and tossing her drink in the face of a desperate man. This pale-haired, ethereal young woman was what she became whenever asked to show her “true self”—and she hoped it would at least partially satisfy the curiosity she had seen in Vandiir's gaze when she briefly caught him looking down at her from the nightclub's mezzanine. She certainly didn't look merely human here. In place of cloth garments, her body was draped with hanging filaments that resembled strands of spider silk heavy with dew, each droplet a moonlit pearl strung on a silver thread. She would meet Vandiir not as a scantily-clad seductress, but as a fanciful creature out of the rarest sort of dreams, wholly alien and barely civilized...
...She felt his gaze following her as she circled around and perched on the edge of his desk, now looking down at him rather than up. The closer proximity also meant she had a better view of him than ever before.
Adrian Vandiir was not physically imposing in the slightest, having a slender frame and undeveloped physique. Probably he relied almost exclusively on the Force in a fight. He was currently dressed like an evil art critic, albeit a dizzyingly handsome one. The icy blue eyes he used so effectively to intimidate others were softened by the subtle presence of long, dark eyelashes. Not that he had ever batted them at anyone, mind you, but they were there, framing every chilling stare he aimed at people, vaguely hinting at a gentler, more vulnerable side to his personality that was just waiting to be dredged up from the murky depths—assuming that hidden side really did exist and wasn’t just deceptive charm. Still, the suggestion was there, and that was probably enough for most women."
At the time when I wrote this thread, I was basing Inanna's appearance on this image, so if you would also like to see what happens when I try to describe something directly from a picture, there ya go. Adrian is infamous for not including a proper description of his appearance in his bio, and he had a different image as his avatar at the time, so I took inspiration from that and from what his writer told me about him.
Alright, I've run out of things to say. The main takeaway that I hope you get from this, dear reader, is that you should always write what you intended to say. On the other hand, not everyone understands language enough to properly articulate their thoughts and feelings, and you can’t always predict how someone is going to react to what you’re saying.
If this makes writing sound like a losing game, well, be glad I didn’t go into a tangent about how much language has changed since the 1800s. I was going to, but I decided it was unnecessary. My writing instincts told me to hold back, no matter how much fun it might be, because it doesn’t fully connect to what I’ve spent most of this post talking about.
As long as you continue to practice your writing, you will reach a point where your instincts are honed enough that you have confidence in them. You’ll be able to trust your own decisions… most of the time. More often than not. Nobody who can actually write is completely confident in their own abilities, we’ve all got insecurities and doubts about ourselves. But generally speaking, you should go with what your gut tells you to do. Everything I’ve talked about here is just advice. You are free to disregard it.
I do want to stress that you shouldn’t worry and fret about whether or not you’re doing things just right. When I was first starting out, as soon as I learned what a Mary Sue was I obsessed over not making my characters anything like that. They had to be completely depowered, unattractive/plain, and have no friends. As a result, my characters sucked, nobody wanted to read my stories, they were boring, it was terrible. The same thing happened whenever I tried to follow anyone’s advice to a T. It was not only stressful, it actually made my writing worse because it was too by-the-book. People don’t want to read standard writing, they want to read stuff that’s fresh and clever and does cool stuff that they’ve never seen before (or they have, just not quite like this). The surest sign that you are winning the game is if you are passionate about it and not withering under the weight of your own unreasonable expectations. It shouldn’t necessarily be easy, but it should be interesting and fun for the whole family.
...Get it? Cause Chaos is rated PG-13… I’ll show myself out.
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