How Aragon Describes People · 7:32pm Jun 8th, 2022
When giving examples of great descriptions, I often turn to Emily Dickinson and Peter Beagle. When speaking specifically about character descriptions, I use Aragon.
"The Gigantic List of Character Descriptions" lists 73 examples of character descriptions from great literature, most of which don't impress me. They're mostly physical descriptions and vague adjectives describing clothes and facial features. They are IMHO more obligatory than functional--something writers feel they have to do when introducing a character, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of each school day.
If you take one thing from this blog post, it should be the part at the end. But if you take two things from this blog post, the other should be that descriptions of facial features and clothing are not character descriptions. Any character who can be summarized by their geometry and the clothing stores they shop at should not be a character in your story.
Dashiell Hammett works clothing and facial geometry hard in his descriptions of people:
Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.
...
Mr. Joel Cairo was a small-boned dark man of medium height. His hair was black and smooth and very glossy. His features were Levantine. A square-cut ruby, its sides paralleled by four baguette diamonds, gleamed against the deep green of his cravat. His black coat, cut tight to narrow shoulders, flared a little over slightly plump hips. His trousers fitted his round legs more snugly than was the current fashion. The uppers of his patent-leather shoes were hidden by fawn spats. He held a black derby hat in a chamois-gloved hand and came towards Spade with short, mincing, bobbing steps. The fragrance of chypre came with him.
-- Dashiell Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
But most of that tells us little about character. What are small-boned dark men of medium height like? (What does "small-boned" even look like?) Hammett is piling up associations from stereotypes: black, smooth, glossy hair (like villains and car salesmen); a cravat and spats (a fop); plump (insert some negative stereotype about fat people here), wearing a black derby hat and a chamois-gloved hand (like villains and mobsters). I'm leery of describing characters in a way that reinforces stereotypes.
Besides, are you honestly going to remember any of that by the end of the book? For me, such descriptions are read and forgotten. Maybe I find them so unhelpful only because, like Aragon, I can't remember faces.
What I like is the short, mincing, bobbing steps, and the fact that Spade looks like a blonde Satan. That's not just an image; it's a personality. Satan always, always has black hair. Why is that? Because we just can't help but think that someone blonde has a bit of sunshine in him. Spade might be a devil, but isn't just that.
Raymond Chandler, though, is great at character descriptions:
Half an hour and three or four cigarettes later a door opened behind Miss Fromsett’s desk and two men came out backwards laughing. A third man held the door for them and helped them laugh. They all shook hands heartily and the two men went across the office and out. The third man dropped the grin off his face and looked as if he had never grinned in his life. He was a tall bird in a gray suit and he didn’t want any nonsense.
“Any calls?” he asked in a sharp bossy voice.
...
Derace Kingsley marched briskly behind about eight hundred dollars’ worth of executive desk and planted his backside in a tall leather chair. He reached himself a panatela out of a copper and mahogany box and trimmed it and lit it with a fat copper desk lighter. He took his time about it. It didn’t matter about my time.
-- Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
Notice Chandler's physical descriptions of people aren't just static descriptions. Westerners have a metaphysics of stasis, which you can trace back through modern art, to Christianity and Plato, to archaic Greek art, and Egyptian art before that, which teaches that the "essence" of a thing is something eternal and timeless, therefore changeless, therefore static. When writers are told to "describe" something, they immediately turn into photographers instead of cinematographers. (Except, not surprisingly, for scriptwriters, who think cinematically.)
But what people do is also a description. So is what they say, how they treat people, and how they make them feel. Chandler is better than the literati because, like his detectives, he wades into the vulgar, messy world of action. He doesn't show us what Derace Kingsley looks like at one moment, but at two -- when the client's there, and when he isn't. That change, and what causes it, is more important than what he looks like. He shows us how Kingsley speaks to his secretary, and how much he values other peoples' time.
(Also, I love that Kingsley "helps them laugh". Subtly hinting that he isn't really laughing himself.)
When Chandler uses static descriptions, they're ones that matter. He doesn't show us what the desk looks like; he says it looks like it cost $800. He tells us the chair is tall and leather because tall leather chairs are expensive.
She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.
-- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
He doesn't describe the lip or the eyes or the lashes, but shows us what they do, and why. That's character.
The first page of The Big Sleep is a long, almost tedious description of a mansion, except that it's really an indirect description of the people who live there. Descriptions of places are often also descriptions of people.
But my favorite is Aragon. Aragon doesn't talk about noses and chins. He uses comparisons and metaphors. He tells how people make you feel; he shows what they do and how they sound. Which is much more significant.
Kuairu is a summer day in human form; whenever he rides a bike, you hear anime songs in the background. He wears his smile with pride and excitement, and talks like he was born at a sports bar: clearly, loudly, sharp e-nun-ci-a-tion. He leans forward when paying attention, and leans backwards when surprised.
Nyronus is not overly tall, but he moves like he were a giant. At all times he talks like he’s giving a speech, he makes a flourish with every move, he walks like an actor dancing on the stage. When he speaks you feel his mother tongue is Shakespearean sonnets; his first full sentence was an alliteration.
I genuinely can’t tell if he wore a cape, gloves, and a cane at all times, or if I simply added those to my memories. They fit him. Nyronus would be a Transylvanian figure if he weren’t smiling all the goddamn time. If he were a vampire, he’d drink liquid candy.
A few years ago, I PMed Aragon to ask how he wrote his character descriptions, and he wrote a post about that (thanks, Lia Springs!) It's hard to read, because it's a screenshot. Here's most of it, as text:
The hoppy accident comes from the fact that:
- I am terrible with faces,
- I generally dislike overly physical descriptions in fiction, to be honest?
Like, Pokedex-entry sorta stuff. "The dude was tall, 183 cm, had blue eyes, blonde hair, wore a blue jacket with red ornaments, dark brown pants with ornaments that fit the jacket, and black shoes, his face was sharp his ears were small blahblablah". I just skip those fuckers; unless you're literally describing something to an artist so they can draw it, they don't really give you a clear picture of what you're describing.
I'm an advocate of describing how things feel rather than describing how things look; with people this often translates into giving a rundown of the first impression someone gives you. How they move is always much more important than how they look; what they do when they're talking and how it compares when they're silent, what kind of face they make rather than how their face is, etcetera. Like, the most shocking things in a person's mannerism, the ones that describe either their most immediately obvious personality traits (chipper, ergo, smiles a lot) or the ones that contradict the most immediately obvious personality traits (jokes a lot, but never smiles).
Mostly, describing character through action, I guess? I always focus a lot on gestures. Also because that's what I tend to remember about people; reading my blog you have no idea what color Jaxie's hair is because I don't know his hair color. I have no fucking idea. So I just talked about how he always looks like he's thinking of something and he moves almost in snaps, and how his arms and legs look long because of this, and called it a day. La-di-dah. Wording also helps a lot, obviously; you gotta make it stylish.
I also really like something a bit more abstract now and then to give it flavor? "He looked like [x]" is the most basic example. Horse Voice being like a skinhead who works at a kindergarten, for example ~ it doesn't really mean anything, but it does give you a general
impression that sorta fits the whole thing.Really, that's about it. It's less artistry, more me conveying how I tend to remember people in text. Overall tho, the generic advice of "ignore how it looks but tell me how it feels or what is your first impression" is great for describing just about everything, cause prose is a fickle mistress and all that.
In searching for it, I found his descriptions of Bronycon 2019 (which I didn't even know he was at!), which included this gem from Aragón at Bronycon 2019 -- Day Four, telling people how he does it, in a way that sounds like it could be duplicated. It isn't complicated; you don't need any esoteric wisdom or special inspiration. I'm sure you need some level of talent, but it sounds like you mostly need to work at it.
Let me tell you a secret:
I do it on purpose.
I try to make it look natural, and most of the time it flows out of the conversation without issue, but it’s very much premeditated. Deliberate. If you’re one of my friends, you might’ve seen me doing it—for no particular reason, other than me goofing off, I’ll describe a person in the room.
I like to do it with abstract ideas. I’ll say Majin Syeekoh has Weird Uncle Vibes, and Dubs Rewatcher is more of a Younger Cousin sorta deal. You attach a positive label, one that’s personalized and describes the general feeling a person gives you. You try to distill their character, their personality, in as few words as possible.
It’s always fun. I enjoy doing it, and people like it. Soon enough we’re all participating, doing a list, trying to assess who’s what, who’s who, etcetera. “What about me? What’s your read of me” is a sentence I’ve heard many times.
People remember those labels, right? They’re proud of them. The more specific the better. I’ll look at MrNumbers and teasingly describe exactly which kind of media he enjoys, and how it all fits two very basic categories. I’ll message Posh and say, hey, there’s this pattern to your stories, I’ve noticed, and I appreciate it a lot. This is how I describe your writing style in one word only. I’ll chat up Caligari87 and say, hey, if you were a subreddit? You’d be this subreddit.
Corny, yeah, but suck my dick. It might not make someone’s day, but it always makes them smile, it makes them re-read what I just wrote over and over, taking it in, rolling it in their head a little.
We all crave validation. We all want to feel we matter, that we don’t go unnoticed, and that’s perfectly fine. I know that feeling more than most, believe me. So I play with that. Now and then, for the hell of it, I’ll try to describe a person, I’ll try to make them realize that I know them, that I pay attention to them.
Most of the time, when I say something like this, people remember what I said about them, and quote it back at me. They smile about it a lot.
It never fails to make me smile back. A little private joke. Because it is on purpose—why do you think my descriptions in these blogs are so elaborate?
I just hope I have the courage to actually start doing that.
I highlighted the parts about smiling and pay attention to others, because I'm writing a long blog post on writing description right now, and I had already concluded that the key to writing good descriptions is to care. Care about who or what you're describing, and care about your reader. Not just in an abstract, love-thy-neighbor way. Think about your words the way you'd think about a present you were about to give to a friend: How will they react to it? Do they want this? Is it useful to them? Is it useful to them now, or do they need something else before they can use it? How will they interpret it? Am I giving it to them just because I like it?
Aragon almost spells out that the secret to writing great descriptions of people is to care about them, to want to understand them. A second half is to care about the reader enough to see your words through her eyes, to feel what she feels reading those words, to want to make a connection. And the third half is practice.
I've read dozens, maybe hundreds, of books about writing, but the most-important thing I know about writing is something I've never seen mentioned in any book: Love. Love your characters. Love your readers. Even love some people in real life.
More on that later.
I am not my meat, and neither is anybody else worth talking about.
Sometimes I love my characters too much.
5663324
Maybe I should've written "tough love".
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/825016/how-to-describe-characters-or-people-in-fiction
Well! This was incredibly nice to see pop up!
I've always liked Chandler, since my father has been a longlife fan of his and I tend to walk on his footsteps when it comes to literature -- so it's funny to see his descriptions being good like that. I genuinely never noticed. I should reread him one of these days.
Thank you very much for the praise, and I absolutely agree that caring is the best way to make good art. Not literature, just, art in general.
Damn good blog overall! If you excuse the ego. The best part about this blog is that I essentially agree with it -- to the point where my highest Patreon reward for my comics is for me to describe my Patreons at the end of each one. Guess that's proof enough I can describe people in ways they like.
It makes sense. If you want the reader to care about characters as more than words on a page, you need to care about them as more than lumps of carbon. Thank you for a wonderful bit of insight.
Goddamn this is good.
This was a neat post. I appreciated the ideas and will have to mull them over a bit.
Also, I logged onto Discord today and got a decent ammount of notifications of people sending me that Aragon description of me, which was very amusing.
5663355 4925181 You're very consistent!
"Bad Horse was a tasty man. Crunchy arms, fleshy legs, lily-scented liver, absolutely toothsome spleen. His brain had nut-flavoured overtones to it. Crisp eyes, savoury tongue. In every aspect, he was a feast on two-legs."
Camille Darcy, The Diary of a Cannibal
5663448
Epitaphs. We're talking epitaphs here. Wits used to write them for one another while they were still alive to resent them:
"Here lies Nolly Goldsmith, for shortness called Noll
Who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll."
That's David Garrick, a famous English actor of the 1700's, on Oliver Goldsmith, an author and crony. "Poll" means "Polly," as in "Parrot." Goldsmith apparently 'ad a bad case o' adenoids, 'e did (he was also short).
Goldsmith seems to have been the butt of many such jokes. He bided his time and replied to each one in a long poem called Retaliation in which he disjointed Garrick like a roast chicken:
On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting:
'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting
And so on.
But the most Aragon-like part of the poem is the introduction:
Of old, when Scarron his companions invited,
Each guest brought his dish, and the feast was united;
If our landlord supplies us with beef, and with fish,
Let each guest bring himself, and he brings the best dish:
Our Dean shall be venison, just fresh from the plains;
Our Burke shall be tongue, with a garnish of brains;
Our Will shall be wild fowl, of excellent flavour,
Our Cumberland's sweet-bread its place shall obtain,
And Douglas is pudding, substantial and plain:
Our Garrick's a salad, for in him we see
Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree:
To make out the dinner, full certain I am,
That Ridge is an anchovy, and Reynolds is lamb;
That Hickey's a capon, and by the same rule,
Magnanimous Goldsmith, a gooseberry fool:
At a dinner so various, at such a repast,
Who'd not be a glutton, and stick to the last?
Here, waiter, more wine, let me sit while I'm able,
'Till all my companions sink under the table;
Then with chaos and blunders encircling my head,
Let me ponder, and tell what I think of the dead.
He could really dish it out, huh?
5663451 5663354 Aragon -- new highest Patreon reward idea! Stonecutting not included.
Also--it seems Dashiell Hammett is trying to tell us that "Peter Lorre would be a natural to play this character!"
Aragon does some of the best descriptions I've ever read, bar none. Sometimes I just want to gobble him up and regurgitate his character-writing expertise at opportune moments.
5663318
"He was the sort of man who started shopping at Land's End in the Eighties and, despite all society did to warn him, never stopped."
I regret not reading this as soon as it was posted. This is a topic that's sat at the back of my mind forever, but I've never bothered to develop the thought. I'm glad that somebody is able to put into perspective the importance of creative character descriptions and that feeling the need to describe every detail of the character "Just because" should be vetoed in favor of something that's worth the reader's intelligence. I'll try my best to apply this method to my own writing!
EDIT: I didn't realize I was on my NSFW account lol
I'm certainly in the crowd of people who regret not reading the post earlier. It helped me recall something that I've already managed to discard in the past, and now the job is to pick up the shattered pieces.
So thank you.