Forum: Author Hangout

Measurements

PotomacBob 🚫

Frequently, on SOL, I see each new character introduced with height, weight, hair color, eye color, bust size. All vital statistics, I guess.
In the dead-tree books I like most, I rarely see that. I may get those things strewn across chapters, but not in intro paragraphs.
I also find that where the measurements are provided early on, I often forget what they were. "She leaned over to kiss me" is much more memorable, to me, if the fact that she's 6-feet tall is provided at the time of the attempted kiss rather than in an introductory character description. I tend to remember that he was muscled if it's provided as part of the description of a high school wrestling match.
What's your experience with either reading or writing character measurements?

Replies: samuelmichaels Quasirandom samsonjas Crumbly Writer Switch Blayde Maclir Redsliver Uther Pendragon

samuelmichaels 🚫

@PotomacBob

I really dislike those introductions. This is especially jarring when it sounds like somebody is copying/pasting from a character sheet.

And don't start me on cup sizes and waist/hip measurements.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@samuelmichaels

I might have the narrator mention the MC's height or have the MC mention it in some context, then the rest are done as estimates of so much taller/shorter than the MC.

As to cup sizes and waist/hip measurements for female characters, I see two major issues with this in a lot of stories.

Most don't understand how cup size works (I actually researched this).

The second major issue is not understanding what constitutes realistic proportions for the various measurements.

It's not as bad if the author puts in the effort to have the measurement in realistic proportions.

I've introduced them only in two very specific cases.

The male lead had an opportunity to rifle through a female character's clothes and looked at the size of her bras. Of course from what I've read, a lot of women wear the wrong size bra.

The other case was scenes where a female character was being professionally measured for custom clothes.

Replies: helmut_meukel awnlee jawking

helmut_meukel 🚫

@Dominions Son

Of course from what I've read, a lot of women wear the wrong size bra.

Just look at the pictures of models posing in swimwear or underwear. Even if they wear the right size most have the straps too long so their tits hang down without support.

HM.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

Of course from what I've read, a lot of women wear the wrong size bra.

And women's breast sizes vary throughout the month so a bra that's a perfect fit one day might the wrong size a few days later.

AJ

Quasirandom 🚫
Updated:

@PotomacBob

I hate hate hate those introductions. It makes the pacing awful. It's telling instead of showing. It isn't realistic.

I mean, I know my own height and my pants size, but none of my other measurements. I am shite at judging a single measurement of another person. Other people are "taller than me," "about my height," "shorter than me," or "kid-sized." I can imagine there are people who are a little better than that at judging, but not detailed numbers. Bust-waist-hip at a glance? —the suspension bridge of disbelief collapses.

"She leaned over to kiss me" is much more memorable

This. So. Hard.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@Quasirandom

I can imagine there are people who are a little better than that at judging, but not detailed numbers. Bust-waist-hip at a glance? —the suspension bridge of disbelief collapses.

Even worse is when it's absurd Barbie doll proportions.

Replies: Remus2 awnlee jawking

Remus2 🚫

@Dominions Son

Even worse is when it's absurd Barbie doll proportions.

I don't think even Barbie could measure up to some of them.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Dominions Son

Even worse is when it's absurd Barbie doll proportions.

Or steroid-junkie Cold War-era East European female weight-lifter chest proportions ;-)

(did I get those adjectives in the right order?)

AJ

samsonjas 🚫

@PotomacBob

It's a strong indicator of stories I'm not gonna enjoy.

I'm all for describing the protagonists - slender, lithe, a dimple when she smiles, etc - but with words not numbers, and as part of a much bigger picture about how they feel and what motivates them and so on.

Crumbly Writer 🚫
Updated:

@PotomacBob

How about: She struck my eyes like a glass of cold water to the face? or In her heels, she towered over me like a pine tree, though with a more pleasant shape?

Switch Blayde 🚫

@PotomacBob

I hardly ever described characters. I remember reading once that Hemingway in a story described the woman simply as wearing a red hat.

But since I've been analyzing novels while reading them, I find that most mainstream novels I read do describe characters. Not as blatantly and boringly as we see on SOL, but they do describe them. So I started describing characters. For example in my WIP novel, I have:

The waitress came over. In her twenties, she had brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a little pug nose, and big eyes with long eyelashes. She wore a pink dress with a white collar. The same as the other waitresses, although the hem of her dress was a little shorter. It came just below her knees instead of mid-calf. She looked guarded as she stood there, holding a pad in her left hand and a pencil that she took out from behind her ear with her right.

I try to write cinematically. I want the reader to "see" the story like they do when watching a movie. I found that describing helps that.

Replies: Crumbly Writer Mat Twassel

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I try to write cinematically. I want the reader to "see" the story like they do when watching a movie. I found that describing helps that.

I've found that a significant difference between amateur and best-selling novelists are 1) their physical descriptions and 2) they're not relying on cliches.

The key seems to be that the descriptions don't actually describe what they look like, or reduce them to some chart of descriptions, but how they impact the characters emotionally.

You see the same thing in their psychical descriptions (observations of the things surrounding them). Rather than just going on about how something looks, they instead focus on how the characters feel observing the scenery.

But the final point is that most 'distinguished' authors do not rely on overworked cliches, but instead rework them, creating new ones in their own language, typically relying on allusions (rarely) and metaphor.

Noting that, I've been trying the same, but damn it, when you're not used to the techniques, creating metaphors on the fly is difficult, so I did well for a few chapters, and fell off again. Obviously, I'm going to have to keep working on it, until they eventually come more naturally to me.

Replies: Quasirandom awnlee jawking Redsliver

Quasirandom 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

The key seems to be that the descriptions don't actually describe what they look like, or reduce them to some chart of descriptions, but how they impact the characters emotionally.

Exactly this. For all descriptions.

awnlee jawking 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

but how they impact the characters emotionally.

Her huge swinging tits impacted me motionally ;-)

AJ

Redsliver 🚫

@Crumbly Writer

The key seems to be that the descriptions don't actually describe what they look like, or reduce them to some chart of descriptions, but how they impact the characters emotionally.

Reminds me of some advice I'd been given: Turn your exposition into ammunition.

I always took this to mean having the reader learn the rules of the world by having the characters be impacted by the rules. I'm now thinking about it as how to describe.

If you're gonna describe someone, have it impact someone else. More than likely the narrator. I like it.

Mat Twassel 🚫
Updated:

@Switch Blayde

I hardly ever described characters. I remember reading once that Hemingway in a story described the woman simply as wearing a red hat.

But since I've been analyzing novels while reading them, I find that most mainstream novels I read do describe characters. Not as blatantly and boringly as we see on SOL, but they do describe them. So I started describing characters. For example in my WIP novel, I have:

The waitress came over. In her twenties, she had brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a little pug nose, and big eyes with long eyelashes. She wore a pink dress with a white collar. The same as the other waitresses, although the hem of her dress was a little shorter. It came just below her knees instead of mid-calf. She looked guarded as she stood there, holding a pad in her left hand and a pencil that she took out from behind her ear with her right.

I try to write cinematically. I want the reader to "see" the story like they do when watching a movie. I found that describing helps that.

I like that waitress passage. It was fun to read. I wouldn't have minded if it had gone on a bit or even more than a bit. But now a minute later all I remember is that the waitress was in her twenties, had a ponytail and a pug nose, and carried her pencil behind her ear. Was it her right ear or her left? Did she have earrings? If so, what were they like? Any other piercings? I know we were told something about her eyes and her eyelashes, but what? For id purposes, probably: "the waitress was young with a pug nose, a ponytail, and a stubby pencil behind her ear" would have been enough. Or even more than enough. Even so, I wouldn't mind knowing if the pencil was plain, had a logo of some sort, and if so what? If I think about this waitress and her pug nose, I think she must have freckles. Somehow pug noses make me think of freckles. And if the nose is mentioned, given how my mind works, I'll think of her lover kissing her nose, and she likes it and doesn't like it at the same time, and she almost sneezes, or thinks she might sneeze, which would not be the thing to do if you're serving food to someone, or really at almost anytime, but especially in bed with your lover kissing your nose. The other day I wrote a story about how a sneeze is like an orgasm in many ways, but if one is sexually aroused, it may not be possible to sneeze. I might have learned that originally in a movie with Demi Moore, who does not have a pug nose. The bottom line is that even if I find passages of description entertaining, I tend not to really see the scene or character. I suspect others have more cinematic minds.

Replies: Crumbly Writer Switch Blayde

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Mat Twassel

I like that waitress passage. It was fun to read. I wouldn't have minded if it had gone on a bit or even more than a bit. But now a minute later all I remember is that the waitress was in her twenties, had a ponytail and a pug nose, and carried her pencil behind her ear. Was it her right ear or her left? Did she have earrings? If so, what were they like? Any other piercings?

Yet another reason to focus on the most impactful aspect of the character (i.e. NOT her chest size) and describing their emotional impact on the other characters.

Authors have long argued: why bother with descriptions, because no one remembers them. But what aren't you remembering, her earrings? Really? That's focusing on the trivial details, just like focusing on their height or shoe size (again, something a casual observer would have no way of knowing).

Besides, I've long argued that, however impactful the initial description was, if their description matters to the story, don't be afraid to repeat those details.

In my first Catalyst series, I initially noted the protagonist, Alex's, bushy eyebrows. Because that little trivial element was important to the larger story, I kept emphasizing how everyone, when first meeting him, were struck by the eyebrows. It thus became a defining characteristic, and yet another thing for him to fret and worry over.

There are more than just one way to describe events (i.e. cinematically), so take the long road, and focus on what's truly essential about the character, something which is likely to remain long after the blond hair, bands and 'perky breasts' have long ago disappeared. What is essentially them, and focus on that characteristic.

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

@Mat Twassel

But now a minute later all I remember is that the waitress was in her twenties, had a ponytail and a pug nose, and carried her pencil behind her ear.

Actually, the two important parts of the description were that she was in her twenties (which you remembered) and her uniform dress was shorter than the other waitresses' dresses (which you didn't).

It's 1943 so her dress being shorter indicates her young age. Unlike the other women the hero is encountering, she's young, inexperienced, and immature. The length of the dress, and even her ponytail, in 1943 are supposed to present that visualization. The color of her hair, the pug nose, big eyes with long eyelashes only reflect that she's pretty. The significance of the pad, other than part of a waitress's "tools," was that it was used to give the hero her phone number.

Maclir 🚫

@PotomacBob

I try (at least, I hope I do) to give just enough of a description so that the reader can form an image of each character in their own mind. I have a definite picture in my mind of what each person looks like - even down to bust / cup size, areola colour, shape of labia.... But I will only mention them in a general way, and only where it's necessary to advance the plot. For example, early on a minor female character was described as having very large breasts... but that was because another character who was involved with her had an obession with large breasts.

I generally ask myself "does the ready really need to know that character X has 36D breasts?" And in most cases, not really. Now, many of the female characters are rather lacking in the boob department - but that is mentioned in the context of the plot developing, not to rattle off the vital statistics of each character

Redsliver 🚫

@PotomacBob

I often include height as a number, but oh my god, I hate getting a block of text that tells me the proportions of a girl.

In Shelter In Place On Haunted Hill, I describe Nadine as 3cm taller than Heath. The other three girls are shorter.

In Flying Fox and Warhound, I point out Amy's 185cm tall, but she's chained to a desk and trying to reach out with her leg to reach a cabinet:

Usually, she found a hundred eighty-five centimeters was too much for a woman. Right now, Amy could've used another fifteen.

This also drops in that a girl 185cm is a bit self-conscious about her height. Works for me.

That said, direct numbers are much worse than context clues:

She was short, he was tall, they could only kiss so long before need, desire, and geometry broke them apart.

The other point, just writing out what size bra she wears? Uh. Better to just say, she's got big tits. Or small tits. Hand size. There's always the classic produce comparisons: Peaches, cantaloupes, watermelons, pineapples, kelp, state-fair winning pumpkins.

I dislike straight numbers. I dislike just dropping a character sheet as a paragraph early on. But I do get the point of getting the character description over and done with so you can just stick to names. Because, if, down the road, someone doesn't remember all of the details from chapter one and forms a different image in their mind, redescribing the character can break immersion.

I was reading A Strange Geek's Haven series and when he goes for chapters without describing Cassie, I get a blonde in my head. Then he describes her as a brunette, ruins my immersion for a dozen paragraphs, and then I'm thinking blonde all over again.

If you're writing a porn story, and the character's part of the sex, your audience is gonna imagine them as hot. Takes a lot of the work out of your hands.

Replies: Switch Blayde Crumbly Writer

Switch Blayde 🚫

@Redsliver

I was reading A Strange Geek's Haven series and when he goes for chapters without describing Cassie, I get a blonde in my head. Then he describes her as a brunette, ruins my immersion for a dozen paragraphs

That's a problem I came across when I started describing characters. I took the (bad) advice of sprinkling it in along the way in the draft of my novel "Sexual Awakening."

Then, way into the novel, I mentioned the preacher's bushy gray eyebrows and that's why the kids called him Squirrel. I realized by then the reader had already visualized what the character looked like from the limited description I had given earlier and all of a sudden I sprang bushy gray eyebrows on the reader. That wasn't how they saw him. Thankfully I caught it during editing the draft.

Replies: Vincent Berg Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I realized by then the reader had already visualized what the character looked like from the limited description I had given earlier and all of a sudden I sprang bushy gray eyebrows on the reader. That wasn't how they saw him. Thankfully I caught it during editing the draft.

Yet another reason to reinforce those essential description details. You don't need to harp on it, but for any point to stick in a reader's memory (like the character's name), it needs to be repeated and to have some emotional character, otherwise, what's the point of remembering it?

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Then, way into the novel, I mentioned the preacher's bushy gray eyebrows and that's why the kids called him Squirrel. I realized by then the reader had already visualized what the character looked like from the limited description I had given earlier and all of a sudden I sprang bushy gray eyebrows on the reader. That wasn't how they saw him. Thankfully I caught it during editing the draft.

That's what revisions are for. Once you've written those elements, when you go back and revise, you need to specify someone referring to him as 'squirrel' (foreshadowing), so it'll make sense when they explain where the name came from.

Stories evolve over time, but when you add a new element, it not only changes who follows, but often necessitates putting things into context ahead of time.

Crumbly Writer 🚫

@Redsliver

There's always the classic produce comparisons: Peaches, cantaloupes, watermelons, pineapples, kelp, state-fair winning pumpkins.

Or cumquats, raisins or even pumpkin seeds!

But of course, size discrepancies, such as you described limiting their kissing time, are more emotionally impactful than what size bra she wore that particular day.

Uther Pendragon 🚫

@PotomacBob

I generally leave off character descriptions. When I douse them, if it's the thoughts of the charcter, it's precise. He knows his height; she knows her cup size.
The nurse in my doctor's office knows my height and weight -- to the 1/10 pound the last time. I don't have my characters getting medical examinations; so, I don't report that.
With my couples, much likelier to tell where she reaches on him.

Replies: Vincent Berg

Vincent Berg 🚫

@Uther Pendragon

I generally leave off character descriptions. When I douse them, if it's the thoughts of the charcter, it's precise. He knows his height; she knows her cup size.

Even among long-time lovers, rarely will one describe such precise measurements, and I've NEVER described precisely how long I am, though I have been known to hint about it, as I prefer subtlety to outright bragging.

Instead, lovers will typically refer to how 'hot' they are, how they 'sizzle' and how attentive and Romantic they are (i.e. they 'pay attention' rather than just 'going through the motions').

Again, these boil down to their emotional commitment, rather than random genetic details which could apply to any of millions of other individuals. and are not in the lest bit captivating. If you want someone who's 8", go purchase a dildoe and have fun, but leave me out of it!

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Measurements

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