A human face reveals a lot about a person. In creative writing, describing a character’s face can uncover information about who they are and how they feel. Writers can zoom in on individual features, like the eyes or mouth, or describe a face in its entirety to paint a picture of a character. Learn how to develop a character through their most telling attribute—their face. The physical features of your characters’ faces are important details to include in your stories. They help bring characters to life, especially when you’re introducing them for the first time. They can also reveal emotions and reactions and help set the mood of a scene without relying on dialogue. Along with personality traits, body type, body language, and physical appearance, your character’s unique facial features can tell us more about who they are. Using descriptive writing, a writer can enhance character description by detailing facial features and expressions. Here are eight tips for how to describe faces in your writing:
Use figurative language when describing a character’s face . When you’re introducing a character for the first time and want the reader to create an image in their mind, use figurative language to describe the character’s face -examples) instead of just stating the obvious qualities. For example, you can use similes and metaphors. It’s okay to simply say, “She has blonde hair,” but you could also use a simile: “Her hair was golden like the sun.” In Great Expectations Charles ■■■■■■■ uses a unique metaphor to describe a feature of a character’s face: “His mouth was such a post-office of a mouth that he had a mechanical appearance of smiling.
Create facial expressions that reveal emotions. How a character’s eyes, eyebrows, nose, forehead, mouth, and ■■■■ move in unison can let a reader in on their emotions. A character can have a facial tic when they get nervous. Whether it’s raised eyebrows and a mouth curved into a smile or a furrowed brow and an upper lip curled into a scowl, you can use a character’s expressions instead of dialogue to reveal their feelings about a situation.
Frame your character’s face with a hairstyle that reflects their story. A crewcut might signify a military soldier or someone who likes to be in control. A ponytail or pigtails might indicate a young character. Describe a character’s hair color—black hair, dark hair, brunette, redhead, blonde, gray, or white—in interesting ways instead of just stating the shade. It makes a difference whether your character dyes their hair or keeps it its natural shade. Describe the length of their hair. A confident businesswoman might have short or shoulder-length hair. A musician might have longer hair. Match your character’s hairstyle with their personality.
Make facial hair an element of a character’s style. How a male character keeps his facial hair is telling. If he’s constantly clean-shaven, he might go to a regular corporate job. A bit of stubble can signify a more casual career. From a beard to sideburns to a goatee, facial hair helps paint a picture of a male character and can help represent their life and what they do. Realize that eyes are windows to the soul. There are endless ways to depict eyes. Describe obvious characteristics like eye color—green eyes, blue eyes, brown eyes, gray eyes, or black eyes. Highlight their shape—round, almond, narrow. Think about the entire orbital structure, from eyelids to eyelashes. Illustrate how the eyes are placed in relation to the character’s face—deep-set, wide-set, or close-set. Give eyes their own movements to tap into a character’s feelings. Let a character’s eyes twinkle, squint, gaze, or glare.
Describe your character’s skin. The tone and texture of a character’s skin can provide insights into a character’s life. A child’s face might be freckled. A sickly character might look ■■■■■. An old cowboy might be good looking and rugged with craggy skin.
Give your character unique facial features. Set a character apart with distinguishing facial features. Give them dimples, freckles, or unique markings on their face. Give them poor vision so they need to wear eyeglasses. Maybe they wear heavy makeup or have piercings. Think of different ways you can create unique facial features that help define a character.
Describing characters can be tricky character-physical-descriptions-ddf5eee37dd7). Describing individual parts of the body, such as the face, can be trickier. Knowing the different ways people can be described, some things to avoid, and some words to get you started can help you in your writing.
Different ways to describe people:
Writing what a character looks like isn’t as simple as just summing up their appearance. Other thing such as their character traits, mannerisms, and emotions can affect how a person looks. Pay attention to each of these parts as you write.
Appearance:
On the basic level, appearance is the start of what a character looks like. These are things like shape of the face, color of the skin, type of nose, and color of the eyes. The shape of the eyebrows and lips, height of the cheek bones, shape of ears, and aspects of the hair all affect what the face looks like. All of these together form the baseline of a character feeling neutral and not affected by other aspects such as mannerisms, character traits, and emotions. Appearance is usually the first thing a character will see. If you’re not sure how to describe a character, finding a model picture for the character as a basis is a good way to give you ideas. You can also spend some time looking at the people around you and describing how they look to get some practice. You can also work with your beta reader to make sure that you create a good character description.
Mannerisms:
Mannerisms are the way your character acts habitually. A person’s face can convey a lot of things. Sometimes actions become a habit or a way of acting. Maybe a character always frowns or scrunches up their nose. Maybe they blink a lot or less than usual compared to other people. Another mannerism might include other parts of the body such as the hand when someone pushs hair out of their face constantly or touches their face constantly. Mannerisms can tell a lot about a character, both in describing their face and in appearance in general.
Traits:
Character traits have to do with their personality and often drive mannerisms. An angry character might frown or glare a lot. Another character might hide their face under their hair because they’re shy or nervous a lot. They might tug on their ear or their braid out of nervousness as well. When writing, consider what is driving the mannerism.
Feelings:
The way a character feels at a particular moment will play into what their face currently looks like. These behaviors are limited to the time of the emotions unlike mannerisms. A character might frown due to disappointment or sadness instead of having a character trait of being angry and frowning a lot. One example is that very happy character will have very different facial expressions than a character in normal, every day circumstances. Consider mannerisms and feelings together to create the current state your character is in.
Things to avoid:
Avoid cliches:
Writing cliches can be common. Writing cliches can be a problem when writing faces as well. There’s nothing wrong with describing facial features such as “blue eyes”, “blonde”, or “thin lips”, although those descriptions could be made more interesting by expanding on what they look like. On the other hand, some phrases become overly used. Writing “skin as white as snow” is overused. She had a “horsey face” is as well. “Five o’clock shadow” also falls under a cliche. Sometimes cliches have their place, but try not to overuse them. Look for ways to say the same thing that are different. You’ll look like a better writer if you avoid depending on cliches.
Don’t stereotype:
Be very careful when you’re writing faces that you aren’t stereotyping or otherwise being offensive. Using food to describe skin color can be very offensive. Be careful when referring to facial features from a particular race.
Words you can use:
The list of words for any particular part of the face are far beyond what could ever be suggested in one list, but this list is a start. This list includes appearance, mannerisms, and emotions. Some of the words and phrases will be basic words or phrases and may be more often used while some of them will be less common. Feel free to branch out and try out your own word choices.
Facial shape:
Heart-shaped, squared, round, oval, triangular, chiseled, sculpted, high forehead, blocky, flat, fat, fine-■■■■■, beefy, ■■■■■■■, hawkish, horse-faced, haggard, homely, hideous, malevolent, shifty looking, snobbish, ugly, beautiful, pretty, animated, poker face, nondescript face, face that you forget immediately.
Skin:
Alabaster, pale, fair, pallid, waxen, ashen grey, faded, albino, ■■■■■, porcelain, sallow, rosy, amber, ebony, bronze, flawless, ageless, youthful, sunburned, peeling, freckled, washed-out, wrinkled, lined, smooth, pimpled, leathery, silken, scaly, chalky, scarred, weathered, tattooed, blemished, beauty marks, liver spots, covered in acne, bloodless, blanched, flushed, green with nausea, covered in makeup, full of pores.
Hair:
Short, buzzed, military hair cut, ■■■■■ cut, cropped, curly, straight, permed, comb-over, shoulder length, long, thinning, balding, bald, has a widow’s peak, streaked, dyed, middle part, side part, braided, in a bun, glossy, shiny, messy, tousled, dry, wet, oily, brown, blonde, black, grey, red, salt and pepper, silver, snow-white, flaxen, yellow, golden, honey blonde, dark blonde, ginger, strawberry-blonde, copper, auburn, tawny brown, raven black, jet black, unusual colors, spiky, frizzy, shaggy, twirled around her finger, pulled on her braid, hair hung over face, pushed her hair back from her face, wore her hair loose, put her hair in a ponytail
Eyes:
Eye related behaviors:
Eyes opened wide, eyes narrowed, eyes pinched, eyebrows raised, arched eyebrows, skin around eyes wrinkled, staring, glaring, red-rimmed, squinty, steely, “bedroom” eyes, beamed, covered by makeup (which could look good or bad), rolled her eyes, teared up, looked stormy, wore glasses, wore different colored contacts.
Eye types:
Almond-shaped, big, protruding, narrow, wide- or narrow- set, slanted, bulging, beady, hard, drab eyes, thin eyebrows, bushy eyebrows, long eyelashes, thick lashes, plucked lashes, hooded , sparkling, dull, sunken, swollen.
Eye colors:
Blue, green, brown, Arctic blue, ice blue, baby blue, sky blue, cornflower, robin’s egg blue, azure, aquamarine, cerulean, river blue, turquoise, sapphire blue, denim blue, steel blue, indigo, midnight blue, mint green, clover green, leaf green, moss green, emerald, army green, viridian, hazel, rust, sepia, amber, copper, sienna, mahogany, coal, ebony, obsidian, midnight black, cloud grey, silver, smoky, gunmetal grey, charcoal grey, stormy grey, gold, lavender, unusual eye color.
Ears:
Stick out, large, low, small, looks like an elephant’s ears, broad, pointed, elfin, delicate, triangular, slanted, prominent, close to the head, asymmetric, deformed, feminine, lop-eared, floppy, pierced (describe piercings), hairy, ears reddened, tugged on her ear, tucked hair behind ear, covered ears with hands.
Nose:
Big, crooked, beaky, aquiline, pointed, snub nose, bulbous, wide, flat, pointy, dainty, cute, Roman nose, hawk-like, aristocratic, distinctive, sharp, vulpine, prominent, short, thin, tiny, pert, turned up, asymmetric, straight, broken, craggy, reddened, nose ring, nose flared, she picked her nose, she scratched her nose a lot.
Cheeks:
Oval, square, round, sharp cheekbones, high cheekbones, sculpted, chiseled, hollow cheeks, plump, sallow, sunken, angular, flawless, radiant, broad, youthful, gaunt, thin, lank, smooth, chubby, puffy, dimpled, furrowed, bulging, broad, fleshy, glowing, healthy, clean, soft, fair, tender, delicate, florid, fresh, wrinkled, withered, sunken, ruddy, reddened, rosy, burning, dull, greyish, colorless, tears rolled down her cheeks.
Mouth:
Thin lips, thick lips, big lips, dimpled, whiskered, missing teeth or toothless, gap toothed, underbite, overbite, squared jaw, jutting jaw, weak jawline, big jowls, Cupid’s bow mouth, half open, frowned, smiled, lips pressed firmly together, chapped lips, wore lipstick, stuck out her tongue, chewed on her lips, made a kissing face, licked her lips, lip smacks
Facial Hair:
No facial hair, unshaven, clean shaven, mustache, beard, sideburns, mutton-chop, goatee, five o’clock shadow, stubble, day-old stubble, pencil-thin, thin, thick beard, bushy, long, voluminous, pointy, lumberjack-like, clean, groomed, oiled, neat, closely trimmed, sculpted, greasy, patchy, scraggly, badly trimmed, tangled, stroked his beard, (same colors as the hair)
Writing descriptions for faces can be a challenge, but knowing what goes into describing this part of the body can help you along. Having a list of words to start with can also help. Between knowing what is needed to create descriptions and having lists of suggested words to get your thoughts started, you can create better descriptions for you work.