Have you ever struggled with how to describe a character in POV without resorting to a mirror scene? Or worse, describe a character by having them look in a mirror? It's a good rule. I'm glad somebody started saying it because we've all read those scenes where a character wanders into a bathroom, stares at their reflection, and conveniently reports their eye color, hair color, height, weight, and every distinguishing feature they possess. Readers see the machinery immediately and it can really bother them .
How do we describe a character in POV without a mirror?
Years ago, I wrote a prologue about a young girl whose life was coming apart. She was frightened, desperate, and trying to make sense of circumstances that had narrowed her world down to a handful of terrible choices. At that moment she wasn't thinking about the color of her eyes. She wasn't cataloging her features. She wasn't wondering whether anyone would think she was beautiful. She was trying to survive. So I wrote her fear. I wrote her grief. I wrote the pressure she was under and the choices she faced. In my mind, those things mattered far more than whether her hair was brown or blonde.
Then readers started asking what she looked like.At first, I found that mildly irritating. Not because the question was unfair. Quite the opposite. It was completely fair. The reader wanted something I wasn't giving them. The character couldn't thinking about her physical aspects, but the READER still wanted to see her.
I've thought about that a lot over the years because it points to a real problem in point-of-view writing. We want readers immersed in the character's experience, but readers also need enough physical detail to build a picture. How do we give them that picture without forcing our character to think thoughts that don't feel natural?
I suspect the answer has something to do with how we experience ourselves in real life.
I know what color my eyes are, but I almost never think about them. In fact, someone told me I had beautiful blue eyes the other day and I had to stop a minute. Yes, my eyes are blue but it’s not something I pay any attention to. Most days I don't think about my appearance in any organized way at all. What I notice are things that affect my life. My back that gets stiff if I sit too long. A blouse that doesn't fit the way it used to. A photograph that catches me from an angle I wasn't expecting. The fact that my hair has developed opinions of its own. Those are the things that rise to the surface of my consciousness.
Why? Because we experience ourselves indirectly. A woman may become aware of being tall because she's always the tallest one in the room. A man may think about his scar because people keep asking about it. Someone with exceptionally curly hair may spend half their life fighting it and wondering what other people might think. In other words, people usually become aware of physical characteristics when those characteristics collide with something else.
That's where things started clicking for me.
Maybe the goal isn't to describe what a character looks like. Maybe the goal is to describe what it's like to live inside that particular body. That sounds like the same thing, but I don't think it is at all.
Suppose I want readers to know my character is tall. I could simply have her tell the reader that fact. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. The reader receives the information and moves on. But what if she automatically reaches for things nobody else can reach? What if family photographs become an exercise in figuring out where to put her? What if she's spent her entire life hearing variations of, “Wow, you're tall?” But height isn't only information. It's experience.
The same thing happens with appearance generally. The description is still there. It's simply tangled up with emotion, memory, relationships, and everyday life.
A friend of mine once pointed out that we never actually see ourselves directly. We see reflections. Photographs. Shadows. Other people's reactions. We spend our lives assembling a picture from fragments and assumptions. It's a strange thought when you stop to consider it. The person we know best is also somebody we've never truly observed from the outside.
And maybe that's what I was missing in the prologue of the frightened girl. Not eye color. Not hair color. Clues. Physical experiences. Small moments that would have allowed readers to assemble the picture for themselves while they were sharing her fear and despair. And, the more I watch people, the more convinced I become that character description lives in those moments. Not in mirrors. In friction. In comparisons. In old insecurities. In favorite features. In aging joints and stubborn hair and clothes that fit beautifully or don't fit at all.
When readers ask what a character looks like, they probably aren't asking for a police sketch.
They're asking for enough pieces to imagine a human being. And the longer I write, the more I think those pieces are found not in what a character sees when they look at themselves, but in the thousand small ways they move through the world without looking at themselves at all.
For a free video on this subject and a look at the prologue I’ve mentioned, click here.
How do you describe a character in POV without using a mirror?
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About Sally
Sarah (Sally) Hamer
Sarah (Sally) Hamer is a lover of books, a teacher of writers, and a believer in a good story. Most of all, she is eternally fascinated by people and how they 'tick'. She’s passionate about helping people tell their own stories, whether through fiction or through memoir. Writing in many genres - mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, medieval history, non-fiction – she has won awards at both local and national levels, including two RWA Golden Heart finals.
A teacher of memoir, beginning and advanced creative fiction writing, and screenwriting at Louisiana State University in Shreveport for over twenty years, she also teaches online at both margielawson.com and nostresswriting.com and blogs for writersinthestormblog.com/ and thewriteconversation.blogspot.com. Sally is a free-lance editor and book coach at Mind Potential, with many of her students and clients becoming successful, award-winning authors. Find her at sa***@***********al.org
