Forum: Author Hangout

I found this on a site:

WOMEN (BREASTS): busty, big-chested, full, flat, sagging, well-endowed, buxom, busty, stacked, built, curvy or curvaceous, heavy, slopes, rounded, shapely, petite, cleavage, tanned, voluptuous…

and these from another site:

large, small, full, own, bare, firm, big, naked, white, female, pendulous, heavy, soft, young, round, beautiful, ample, huge, rounded, chicken, enormous, pointed, skinless, perfect, lovely, dense, tiny, larger, tender, fibrocystic, prominent, plump, red, flat, painful, bared, warm, dry, sore, generous, brown, nice, voluptuous, developed, hard, enlarged, perky, pert, shaped, ripe, magnificent, smaller, bigger, pale, male, lumpy, sized, withered, shapely, supernumerary, tipped, false, youthful, savage, flabby, sweet, like, taut, luscious, creamy, massive, yellow, lush, smooth, empty, pretty, sensitive, swollen, fat, snowy, cancerous, uncovered.

Not that I'm thrilled with any of those above.

This is NOT the answer you want. Rather it's how I approach being in the same situation.

...

Go look at someone 'in the real world' without chasing her with a tape measure, and then write down what you saw.

I'm becoming a fan of more vague and emotion based descriptions for the 'anatomy'.

If you have one character describing another that they are attracted to - the best way to describe is a combination of what they see and how they react to it. Again put away the tape measures and surveying equipment and go look at some people you find attractive and the thoughts in your head - that's your description.

Then flip it and imagine if that person found a person of your sex attractive, how might they describe that.

You are probably not suffering for words when describing someone you're into.

When my female protagonists describe people they meet they're not going to say "he had a 7" dick that was 1 1/4" in diameter with a knob that was 1.478" in diameter that I knew would hit my 4.3791267" deep vagina in a way that would cause me to be able to cum every 31.23 seconds."

- Much as half the writers out there basically do that, ESPECIALLY when they have men describe women.

But I'm also going to want to shy off of everything in the world being either perky, pendulous, thick, bouncy, etc.

(Of course if you're writing a robot story you could play the scene for laughs with absurdly accurate measurements...)

Sometimes you just want "while thin; she was cute and curvy with clearly natural breasts. She moved in a way that caught my eye and wouldn't let go."

- and let the reader fill in what they need.

Just enough terms that people have an idea pop into their head. The idea in my head shouldn't be the one in yours - each of us should get the idea that engages us the most.

Sometimes you can even describe someone without a single word that refers to them. Only describing how your viewer feels about them / seeing them.

"Carlos made me feel hot and nervous. Everytime I was near him I couldn't think of anything other than bending over the table and begging for something very lewd to happen. I would blush and try to find an excuse to not be in the same office, but always manage to trap myself in there anyway. When he spoke, my replies came out like a dumb teenager, flustered and confused and feeling silly. I couldn't look at him, I had to look at the space around him, or I'd be squirming, suddenly aware of all the tight spots in my blouse and skirt. Wondering what it would feel like if it was him touching me there rather than the silk and cotton of my garments."

- And that... is Carlos. :)

(This trick is especially handy in a story where you want your reader to be turned on by your POV character, as it tries to make the reader feel like they are Carlos. But with a little work you can use it to instead turn "Carlos" into an object of desire. And if you're describing "Carmine" instead, she can be just as distracting or otherwise get a 'rise' out of your speaker.)

Something I'm working on at the minute as my brain sluggishly does it's thing, and I'm just not finding the word I'm sure exists.

I'm having a similar senior moment issue. I'm trying to remember a single word colloquial expression meaning 'beginner' or 'rookie' and starting with 'wet'. It's not 'wet behind the ears', although that has the right meaning. For some reason 'wetback' keeps nagging me, but that's a derogatory US term for an immigrant labourer.

AJ