An Interesting Tangent

I've done it. After all that waiting, after all those promises to do it, I've done it. What have you done? you may ask yourself as you stare at your computer screen. Now ladies, try to contain your excitement:

I finally scrounged up the time to sit and watch North & South.

Now I can swoon over Mr. Thornton with the rest of them!

Really, I wish I could watch this movie every day. The way they used light and color to contrast the North and the South. The subtle character development. The gorgeous music. I wish I could watch it for the first time all over again! It truly was one of the best movies/mini series I've seen in a long time. May I ask, did anyone else notice a certain Mister Bates wandering the premises? I daresay that Nicholas fellow looked rather familiar. (And with that, the Downton Abbey fans are at attention.)

Before I go off on that aforementioned tangent, here's a taste of the music. I am buying the soundtrack with my birthday money. My mind is quite made up.

When the theme kicks in, a part of me melts and what's left of me is transported into another world altogether. All of this probably sounds like my usual fluff, but really, this movie was fantastic. I am not just gushing --- I am gushing from the heart!

Now, for the interesting parallel. While I was watching the first half of the film with a friend of mine, we discussed how pretty the actress is who portrays the female lead, Margaret. I ended up getting into the same conversation with my mother during the second half, and we all came to the same conclusion. She's a very wholesome kind of pretty, we conceded. In fact, the girl is stunningly beautiful. Not in an in-your-face kind of way. She's simply nice to look at, and has a sort of feminine quality and a grace that is quite becoming. (I gave her a very kind description; Maybe she will stumble upon it in the future.)

This got me thinking: There are so many different kinds of attractiveness in this world. The obvious beauty of a sunset, the hidden beauty of someone in need, the indescribable beauty of music. This rule applies to every aspect of our lives as well as to our characters. This is why run-of-the-mill descriptions simply won't do.

Take this for example. The actress/character I just described (Margaret) could also be described in this manner: She was pretty and had dark brown hair and blue eyes. [Note: This is not the author's description from the book the movie based upon. This is a simplified example.] Two different readers might envision two different people.

Daniela Denby-Ashe as Margaret Hale

Megan Fox

Woah! These are two very different-looking women! Such a generic description gives the reader no sense of what sort of character they're supposed to be imaginging. Furthermore, if you give the reader twenty of these simple descriptions to remember, they won't remember anything you told them and will probably just come up with their own descriptions.

Mind you, a description might not be necessary for every character. In fact, you may choose to opt out of using any physical descriptions at all. But if you really want to impress the overall look of your character upon your readers, take heed and do it right!

Some of my favorite descriptions are from Gail Carson Levine's The Fairy's Return and Other Princess Tales. She doesn't say anything about hair color or eye color, but it doesn't matter. The reader has a sense of the character anyways. Here are a few good examples:

"The twins, Prince Randolph and Prince Rudolph, would have been handsome if they had ever stopped glaring at each other. The youngest prince, Prince Tansy, had freckles, a cowlick, and a serious expression. Parsley thought he looked exactly the way a prince should." - For Biddle's Sake

*** Note: The next one is long, simply because it is my all time favorite. I could include the entirety of the passage, because it gets even better, but you'll get the general idea.

"He'd bumped into a Royal Dairymaid. A pretty one, with a sweet face, a very sweet face.

Now here's someone with a kind face, Marigold thought. Too bad he was a farm lad. It would be a waste of time to talk to him, since he wouldn't have a suit of armor. But she wanted to know what someone who looked so kind would say. She smiled at him, feeling shy because he looked so nice. "Er, pardon me. What would you do if you won the contest and became prince of Skiddle and Luddle and Buffle?"

He liked her dimple. "What?" What had she said? "Sorry."

None of the others had apologized for anything. "That's alright." She repeated the question.

"I don't know." He wished he had a good answer. "I don't want to be the prince."

Ah. What a good answer." - Cinderellis and the Glass Hill

*** I am skipping the lovely description of the sleeping beauty's general dirtiness for the good part. You're welcome.

"Her eyes were big and gray, and her teether were white against her dirty skin. Her teeth looked clean. The inside of her mouth was probably clean too, so she wasn't dirty all over.

He looks nice, Sonora thought. There was something smiley about him. He was sort of handsome, but mostly he looked nice." - Princess Sonora and the Long Sleep

Some parting advice. I know how much we all like to write attractive characters. It's good fun when your heroine is pretty and your hero is handsome! However, it is easy to fall into the trap of telling your readers that your MC is good looking in one way or another. Let them figure out for themselves what makes them so attractive to other people. Is it just their features? Or is it something in their personality? In my opinion, the examples above are more natural and realistic ways of describing the positive attributes of a character. Would you rather hear about a smiley prince or a generic looker?

I shall end with a Doctor Who quote, because I think Amy Pond said it better than I have in this post. Remember your characters as you read it.

"You know when sometimes you meet someone who's so beautiful, then you actually talk to them and five minutes later, they're as dull as a brick? And then there's other people, and you think they're okay - but then you get to know them and their face becomes them. Like their personality's written all over it, and they just turn into someone beatuiful."

Now go write somebody's personality all over their face and make something beautiful.