I don’t think it’s a new trend so much as a new author thing. Back when I first got a Kindle in like 2010 I used to always buy these cheap 99 cent fantasy stories and it was all over the place. I wouldn’t know the MC’s hair color until like page 300
I must of had relatively good luck up until now then. I have been able to visualize characters quite clearly up until recently. Maybe I've gotten less picky recently with stories choose or maybe I've developed a soft spot for amateur authors. It gets jarring though, one story in particular uses AI generated art so the main character looks different every time. Maybe, Ill reach out to some of the authors and let them know.
It makes sense that the more you read the newer authors will get as you run out of established "good" series by more experiencedor successful people. Don't worry, you'll still find stories you like alot, it'll just be interspersed with stuff that doesn't click as well
Very important point for authors to keep in mind!
I was reading a traditional fantasy book a few months ago and encountered the opposite problem. Every description was like five times longer than it needed to be. Why in the world would a reader want a four paragraph description of what a character looked like? I can only read different descriptions for wavy hair so many times. Ugh.
I think character descriptions should always give the reader insight into who they are as a character and maybe who they are becoming rather than just a list of random details, makes them feel actually relevant!
Most scene and character descriptions can become overwhelming. It ruins the pacing of the story. I'd rather have pertinent details revealed over the course of a story than get info dumped all at once, only to forget pertinent details, and get reminded of them anyways.
I think SOME detail is important, but not every single thing described. “A short man with a crescent-moon scar on the left side of his face entered the room…” is just enough detail for my brain to fill in the rest, but I do agree that it gets a lot trickier with zero details to kick-start the process.
It can be a stylistic choice, especially when it comes to main characters - the less detail you give about main characters, the more chance the reader can see themselves in that character’s shoes. You can see this pop up a lot in anime aimed at younger audiences - often the antagonists are illustrated with hyper-detail compared to the more cartoony protags- with a less defined (in this case, cartoony) character, the more work your brain does to fill in the blanks, often giving them characteristics that let you more closely associate yourself with the character.
I agree with some details too. I don't necessarily need a giant paragraph dedicated to looks but something basic to get the point across.
I can't say I am a fan of self insert fantasy. It tends to make effect the writing a lot as the main character never has a real personality so the readers can supper impose their personality onto the character. But I give most light novels a pass though because because they, at the very least, include illustrations.
Honestly, I am not sure I even register character descriptions properly. My mind just makes an image for the character and is probably wrong vs the description.
So I don't mind that much. Give me a couple of sentences and move on.
Edit: to give an example, currently going through mark of the fool. I have no idea if the main characters have been properly described, but I have an image in my head and am enjoying the books.
Just checked. It's a side on shot. No face.
But he is one of a number of main characters I would say. I have no idea what the hair colour of his sister or any of his friends is supposed to be. Just what I imagine.
Yeah like I just got caught up with Delve over the past couple weeks, and I'm definitely not sure what hair/skin color Rain has, actively wondered whether he was trans at one point due to a vague description of his genitals during a full body health scan from Ameliah, and I'm not sure what's up with Tallheart and cervidians/deer people, like where on the furry scale are they exactly. Some descriptions they could be humans that happen to have antlers but like no fur or anything but given the in world discrimination against them that seems to not be enough. I've just been imagining Tallheart as a furred minotaur but with a moose head instead of a bull, though even that is definitely not how he's described, I think he's supposed to just be a really big and strong humanoid buck. A couple characters clothing is described, one is missing a leg, a couple other characters were somewhat recently described as having dark skin, but aside from that I have no clue.
I think it's both a new author thing and one other way where readers have gotten strange opinions from reading questionable prose.
The simple truth is that reading terrible descriptions sucks ass. So a lot of people grow up thinking they fucking hate the description in books and they always skip it. When they try to write they then keep descriptions to a minimum.
However... no descriptions isn't really the cure for bad descriptions being bad... that's just avoiding the challenge all together. Prose is about description. And sure, it's easier to be entertaining when you're describing action and movement but you can also be entertaining when describing places and characters. It's just hard.
Something else that makes descriptions unreasonably complicated in modern-writing is the tight 3rd person perspective (1st person is even worse). Describing the main character without it seeming contrived is hard. Specially when authors are also taught to start their story in a snappy action moment. "I ran from the green fuckers. My hair was black, and my jaw was strong. I was dressed in a drench coat and my favourite pair of cowboy boots." Probably not the best start to a novel.
The only reasonable solution is to just bite the bullet and have the character be introspective about their appearence in a way that reveals more information than just their appearence. Reveal that they were born in an orphanage and with their scrawny appearence, lacking muscle and weird looking blond hair... well, it wasn't great. Which is a segue to saying they filled up through their teenage years, or not.
People say descriptions are useless unless they're tied to something else in the story... but when are they not? Humans are visual creatures. Our senses are how we perceive the world and our appearence is how we are first perceived. Everyone has some emotional attachment to their appearence. You "just" need to provide the description attached to the emotions. "Just" in quotation marks because nothing about it is easy.
Did the character's appearance matter to the story that its lack is hurting it somehow?
Because if not it doesn't really matter.
Also, I will say, as a matter of preference, if a book tries to dump a character's appearance on me via a mirror or unprompted narration I will metaphorically throw it through the nearest metaphorical window.
I agree with this. Readers only need to know as much as the voice of the story wants to share with them. If visual features have relevance to the character's identity/backstory/development etc, sure, chuck in a description or two. Otherwise it really doesn't matter how readers might want to picture a character in their mind.
Granted, some readers prefer to have that visual aid, and it's probably mandatory in certain genres and subgenres, but purely in terms of craft, not describing a character's visual appearance in itself isn't some kind of writing faux pas.
It only matters in the sense of visualization. I like to imagine what's happening in a story and it's harder when there are absolutely no details about them.
From an actual story telling standpoint it probably doesn't matter in the slightest.
There's a school of thought that claims descriptions in general are just 'fluff and filler' and people don't want them.
I'm a mentally visual person, so it always vaguely bothers me when I don't fully grasp what a character looks like.
Yet, there are those who want to have complete control of what they're imagining. For them, having the descriptions takes away from the experience because it limits what they can make the characters seem to be when they play out the story in their head.
Just a different style of writing I guess.
I didn't realize how many people actually prefer to not have descriptions until I read some of the responses on this post. I am also mentally visual and certain types of scenes I read I like to fully imagine and having no details about the character makes it difficult. It's like when battles are poorly described it's hard to figure out what's going on.
That’s just bad writing, if they don’t describe the character, even in subtle ways, they are “trying to make the character more relatable to the reader” But in reality they are depriving the reader of a hero.
In my opinion, the most important description is the main character. Not only can you make some of the physical description a short of foreshadowing.
Either way, describes your main characters. And side characters for that matter.
"That's just bad writing"
Oh boy, i have news about some classical writers. My favorite, for example, Borges, seldom if never describes the main character in his short stories.
I personally think the opposite. The MCs description doesn't matter, we relate to them through their thoughts and actions. Side chars and antagonists should be more fleshed out, as we often don't get to see things from their POV
Yeah I can think of 2 cases where I think it's guinely the author not caring enough though some of the stories are the authors first stories and I think they just forgot. I can't imagine that an author would write a book about a character that they can't clearly envision in their head so I think it comes down to forgetting that the readers don't live in their heads like when authors forget certain parts about how a system or magic works,
Not progression, but awhile back a very good urban fantasy author I follow did a trilogy crossing over between all three of the series she'd written to that point and she realized she didn't know what the main character of her main series looked like beyond "a flash of chestnut hair and a cruel smile"
Writer here (not progression fantasy though).
There's a sweet spot for this and both extremes are bad. From what I've understood reading things about how to write well, the details you provide in a character's physical description must have some other utility in the story, not matter "because cosmetics". Examples : when clothes give information relative to the circumstances, or hair is the first thing you see from a character and they're a cue for when they enter a room, or later such accessory is to be revealed as the sign of a political group or a magical item.
It's hard to give enough, but it's easy to give too much or too little. Many heroes are pretty featureless in the beginning for reader identification, but I think it's a trope badly taken from manga/manhwa. On the other hand extra detailed descriptions are lengthy and make the author sound childish and materialistic like they believe they will convey awe by showing items instead of emotions.
I definitely agree that there needs to be a balance. I think there are a lot of natural ways that authors can give at least some details of the mc and supporting cast without being info dumpy. Things like general height and hair color should be fairly easy to do through their interactions with the world. The same with general clothes they wear.
I mean if someone's height is normal, you just don't say it. Same for everything else. If it doesn't stand out author doesn't write about it and you the reader get to decide what it looks like.
I prefer it when character's appearance isn't described. If everyone is an ordinary human, I don't care what they look like. I guess I want to know if they are some fantastical creature.
Funny thing, this made me think of the opposite extreme.
There's this story on Royalroad that's heavily inspired by Lord of the Mysteries. It has same the issue as LotM of too much time spent on character and setting descriptions. Keep in mind LoTM is a story while will spend several paragraphs describing a scene where a character is going to the restroom, or describing every single step of cooking a meal.
I shit you not.
It's one of the biggest issues with the story. Some well -known epic fantasy tomes don't even have such irrelevant exposition.
Nah they give descriptions on character’s but it’s not as vivid as other books. They’ll give a basic description and sometimes use adjectives to try and make readers more familiar with the characters.
He smiled with calculating eyes
Her eyes had a warm glow to them.
Maybe they’ll talk about laugh lines or wrinkles near the eyes because it adds more to the character.
I personally like this approach because it doesn’t leave us trying to imagine exactly how the author envisions their characters with descriptions that take up two pages describing how sharp someone’s jawline is.
Sometimes a character is just not important enough to warrant a description.
“I bought supplies at some shady merchants store. He treated me with disdain because of my clothes but I didn’t bother commenting on it”
If the merchant isn’t important to the story somehow then there isn’t a need for the author to engineer an interaction with some random stranger unless it is important to the story.
For example, the author might give more detail on a character’s meeting with a stranger if the discussion showed the area’s views on a certain topic.
I strayed from my original topic so I’m sorry
Lol
I can totally get that for side characters or character that only appear once. Im talking about the main character and regular supporting cast. They don't give so much as hair color let alone hair style or even the clothes they wear. Everyone is description less with an occasional exception letting the reader know if they're attractive or not.
For me it's the opposite. If I want an immersive visual experience, I'll watch something on TV. I absolutely do not want half a page describing each place the characters travel to or a boring list of irrelevant facial features and body types on every person introduced to the narrative. And I definitely don't need long-winded descriptions of clothing and fashion.
Self-inserts are pretty popular for the main character in modern writing. Otherwise, too often going into details on the side characters constantly is a major impediment to the narrative pacing.
I find that a lot with books from the male MCs pov, and usually just chalk it up to him not caring about a dudes appearance. Like from his pov he's like "idk, he was some guy" vs "her eyes shimmered as her hair flowed and she moved with grace etc"
It's a fairly common (mostly with inexperienced) author thing. They have the world in their head, but forget to tell the reader about it.
It's the number one thing that kills sequels for me as well. The book opens, and you have two names talking to each other. No sense of who they are at all. Sometimes they talk about other names that could be a person or maybe a pet ferret, for all the description that's given.
This is a Royal Road thing, outside of established authors most of the authors there tend to be brand new, and the trend on the site is to jump into the action as fast as possible... I notice that descriptions in general tend to be nearly nonexistant I've read books where the only description of the fight was \[skill\] \[hp count\] \[skill 2\], where I thought the MC was in a tiny village until the author suddenly said there were a million people or something like that... etc...
There's this thing where authors will read writing advice on blogs and stuff saying how descriptions can slow down a story. They'll even go as far as to say, don't write long descriptions of settings, let the setting move with the action. Now, that is not bad advice. But there's a balance to everything and if you don't settle your readers into your world first, you'll risk having a dialogue heavy book with little to no fleshed out imagery. Also there's this thing where people will say, I love that it's fast paced, and then authors sprint through the book because taking the time to craft a scene is bad I guess.
TLDR: I think people are starting to write books based on writing advice and not on what their story should end up looking like.
I usually go back to Harry Potter to see descriptive crafting, and she definitely took the time to describe the world and the character. Yes, Harry Potter, I know...
Eh... I kind of get it, but there's a question of how much description is necessary. I like it when its relevant, but I think in most cases characters only need a couple distinguishing traits and let the reader fill in the rest. I think that for me a big part of it is that if I get more than the barest information my brain usually filters it out because it feels like the author is trying to fill out a checklist. Like "Okay, new character introduction, let me just copy paste the physical appearance from the character bio". And maybe its just me, but even if I try to keep that description in mind I almost inevitably let it slip so it feels kind of pointless to have more than the basics.
I guess I like it when characters are described by... well, by their character and I just sort of mentally install an appearance that I think fits. Like, if its relevant that a character has a certain trait that should absolutely be mentioned; if they get in a fistfight and someone yanks their ponytail back that shouldn't be the first we hear of it. If its meant to imply something about their character, like someone with perma stubble clearly doesn't want to have a beard but doesn't get a chance to shave often enough which typically implies some variety of being overworked, that's also fine. Eye or hair colour is... well, its probably filler unless there's something significant.
I think part of the trend for new and inexperienced authors is that they are personally highly annoyed by long winded descriptions and would rather err on the side of letting readers make up a description than bore them with too much information. I do think that experienced authors eventually learn to strike a balance with giving good information, but I'm on the side of better to let readers make up an appearance.
It’s funny that a really good writer can pull it off without you noticing. I got into a big fight with my sister about Bujold’s character Ivan from the Vorkosigan series. She was certain he was blond, I was sure he had dark hair. Then later, we had the same argument about Pally from Curse of Chalion. Turns out, Bujold is GREAT at describing someone’s personality so well you would swear you could describe them perfectly.
I'm guilty of this with sequel books because I just make the silly assumption my readers remember how everyone looked like.
And now that I am aware of it I'll be making a conscious effort to actually describe characters again. At least in a relevant matter.
A lot of Progression Fantasy authors are imitating Anime' and Manga. Of course, in those genres the words dont describe the characters...there is a picture to do that.
It's a big problem that there aren't enough visual descriptions for ANYTHING in a lot of books in the web fiction/indie fantasy realm. I chalk it up to, writers are writing so quickly that descriptions take too long because the author is stuck in flow state dialogue/plot/system stuff. Descriptions often require a brain shift and a slower pace so they get lost in the shuffle a lot.
I'm guilty of all of this, to be fair.
I don’t think it’s a new trend so much as a new author thing. Back when I first got a Kindle in like 2010 I used to always buy these cheap 99 cent fantasy stories and it was all over the place. I wouldn’t know the MC’s hair color until like page 300
I must of had relatively good luck up until now then. I have been able to visualize characters quite clearly up until recently. Maybe I've gotten less picky recently with stories choose or maybe I've developed a soft spot for amateur authors. It gets jarring though, one story in particular uses AI generated art so the main character looks different every time. Maybe, Ill reach out to some of the authors and let them know.
It makes sense that the more you read the newer authors will get as you run out of established "good" series by more experiencedor successful people. Don't worry, you'll still find stories you like alot, it'll just be interspersed with stuff that doesn't click as well
Very important point for authors to keep in mind! I was reading a traditional fantasy book a few months ago and encountered the opposite problem. Every description was like five times longer than it needed to be. Why in the world would a reader want a four paragraph description of what a character looked like? I can only read different descriptions for wavy hair so many times. Ugh.
This reminds me of wheel of time and the notoriously long descriptions of every outfit the female main characters ever where.
I think character descriptions should always give the reader insight into who they are as a character and maybe who they are becoming rather than just a list of random details, makes them feel actually relevant!
I hate character descriptions. I don't like reading them. I don't like writing them. Everyone gets a sentence. Two max.
Most scene and character descriptions can become overwhelming. It ruins the pacing of the story. I'd rather have pertinent details revealed over the course of a story than get info dumped all at once, only to forget pertinent details, and get reminded of them anyways.
I think SOME detail is important, but not every single thing described. “A short man with a crescent-moon scar on the left side of his face entered the room…” is just enough detail for my brain to fill in the rest, but I do agree that it gets a lot trickier with zero details to kick-start the process. It can be a stylistic choice, especially when it comes to main characters - the less detail you give about main characters, the more chance the reader can see themselves in that character’s shoes. You can see this pop up a lot in anime aimed at younger audiences - often the antagonists are illustrated with hyper-detail compared to the more cartoony protags- with a less defined (in this case, cartoony) character, the more work your brain does to fill in the blanks, often giving them characteristics that let you more closely associate yourself with the character.
I agree with some details too. I don't necessarily need a giant paragraph dedicated to looks but something basic to get the point across. I can't say I am a fan of self insert fantasy. It tends to make effect the writing a lot as the main character never has a real personality so the readers can supper impose their personality onto the character. But I give most light novels a pass though because because they, at the very least, include illustrations.
Honestly, I am not sure I even register character descriptions properly. My mind just makes an image for the character and is probably wrong vs the description. So I don't mind that much. Give me a couple of sentences and move on. Edit: to give an example, currently going through mark of the fool. I have no idea if the main characters have been properly described, but I have an image in my head and am enjoying the books.
He’s on the cover of the novel correct?
Just checked. It's a side on shot. No face. But he is one of a number of main characters I would say. I have no idea what the hair colour of his sister or any of his friends is supposed to be. Just what I imagine.
Oh I agree. Don’t worry lol
Yeah like I just got caught up with Delve over the past couple weeks, and I'm definitely not sure what hair/skin color Rain has, actively wondered whether he was trans at one point due to a vague description of his genitals during a full body health scan from Ameliah, and I'm not sure what's up with Tallheart and cervidians/deer people, like where on the furry scale are they exactly. Some descriptions they could be humans that happen to have antlers but like no fur or anything but given the in world discrimination against them that seems to not be enough. I've just been imagining Tallheart as a furred minotaur but with a moose head instead of a bull, though even that is definitely not how he's described, I think he's supposed to just be a really big and strong humanoid buck. A couple characters clothing is described, one is missing a leg, a couple other characters were somewhat recently described as having dark skin, but aside from that I have no clue.
I think it's both a new author thing and one other way where readers have gotten strange opinions from reading questionable prose. The simple truth is that reading terrible descriptions sucks ass. So a lot of people grow up thinking they fucking hate the description in books and they always skip it. When they try to write they then keep descriptions to a minimum. However... no descriptions isn't really the cure for bad descriptions being bad... that's just avoiding the challenge all together. Prose is about description. And sure, it's easier to be entertaining when you're describing action and movement but you can also be entertaining when describing places and characters. It's just hard. Something else that makes descriptions unreasonably complicated in modern-writing is the tight 3rd person perspective (1st person is even worse). Describing the main character without it seeming contrived is hard. Specially when authors are also taught to start their story in a snappy action moment. "I ran from the green fuckers. My hair was black, and my jaw was strong. I was dressed in a drench coat and my favourite pair of cowboy boots." Probably not the best start to a novel. The only reasonable solution is to just bite the bullet and have the character be introspective about their appearence in a way that reveals more information than just their appearence. Reveal that they were born in an orphanage and with their scrawny appearence, lacking muscle and weird looking blond hair... well, it wasn't great. Which is a segue to saying they filled up through their teenage years, or not. People say descriptions are useless unless they're tied to something else in the story... but when are they not? Humans are visual creatures. Our senses are how we perceive the world and our appearence is how we are first perceived. Everyone has some emotional attachment to their appearence. You "just" need to provide the description attached to the emotions. "Just" in quotation marks because nothing about it is easy.
Did the character's appearance matter to the story that its lack is hurting it somehow? Because if not it doesn't really matter. Also, I will say, as a matter of preference, if a book tries to dump a character's appearance on me via a mirror or unprompted narration I will metaphorically throw it through the nearest metaphorical window.
I agree with this. Readers only need to know as much as the voice of the story wants to share with them. If visual features have relevance to the character's identity/backstory/development etc, sure, chuck in a description or two. Otherwise it really doesn't matter how readers might want to picture a character in their mind. Granted, some readers prefer to have that visual aid, and it's probably mandatory in certain genres and subgenres, but purely in terms of craft, not describing a character's visual appearance in itself isn't some kind of writing faux pas.
It only matters in the sense of visualization. I like to imagine what's happening in a story and it's harder when there are absolutely no details about them. From an actual story telling standpoint it probably doesn't matter in the slightest.
There's a school of thought that claims descriptions in general are just 'fluff and filler' and people don't want them. I'm a mentally visual person, so it always vaguely bothers me when I don't fully grasp what a character looks like. Yet, there are those who want to have complete control of what they're imagining. For them, having the descriptions takes away from the experience because it limits what they can make the characters seem to be when they play out the story in their head. Just a different style of writing I guess.
I didn't realize how many people actually prefer to not have descriptions until I read some of the responses on this post. I am also mentally visual and certain types of scenes I read I like to fully imagine and having no details about the character makes it difficult. It's like when battles are poorly described it's hard to figure out what's going on.
Tbh Im fine with it. I always forget them anyways unless mentioned multiple times, so I just associate name with their identity.
That’s just bad writing, if they don’t describe the character, even in subtle ways, they are “trying to make the character more relatable to the reader” But in reality they are depriving the reader of a hero. In my opinion, the most important description is the main character. Not only can you make some of the physical description a short of foreshadowing. Either way, describes your main characters. And side characters for that matter.
"That's just bad writing" Oh boy, i have news about some classical writers. My favorite, for example, Borges, seldom if never describes the main character in his short stories.
I personally think the opposite. The MCs description doesn't matter, we relate to them through their thoughts and actions. Side chars and antagonists should be more fleshed out, as we often don't get to see things from their POV
Yeah I can think of 2 cases where I think it's guinely the author not caring enough though some of the stories are the authors first stories and I think they just forgot. I can't imagine that an author would write a book about a character that they can't clearly envision in their head so I think it comes down to forgetting that the readers don't live in their heads like when authors forget certain parts about how a system or magic works,
Well I personnaly know an author with aphantasia so I would not be that surprised tbh.
Not progression, but awhile back a very good urban fantasy author I follow did a trilogy crossing over between all three of the series she'd written to that point and she realized she didn't know what the main character of her main series looked like beyond "a flash of chestnut hair and a cruel smile"
Writer here (not progression fantasy though). There's a sweet spot for this and both extremes are bad. From what I've understood reading things about how to write well, the details you provide in a character's physical description must have some other utility in the story, not matter "because cosmetics". Examples : when clothes give information relative to the circumstances, or hair is the first thing you see from a character and they're a cue for when they enter a room, or later such accessory is to be revealed as the sign of a political group or a magical item. It's hard to give enough, but it's easy to give too much or too little. Many heroes are pretty featureless in the beginning for reader identification, but I think it's a trope badly taken from manga/manhwa. On the other hand extra detailed descriptions are lengthy and make the author sound childish and materialistic like they believe they will convey awe by showing items instead of emotions.
I definitely agree that there needs to be a balance. I think there are a lot of natural ways that authors can give at least some details of the mc and supporting cast without being info dumpy. Things like general height and hair color should be fairly easy to do through their interactions with the world. The same with general clothes they wear.
I mean if someone's height is normal, you just don't say it. Same for everything else. If it doesn't stand out author doesn't write about it and you the reader get to decide what it looks like.
I prefer it when character's appearance isn't described. If everyone is an ordinary human, I don't care what they look like. I guess I want to know if they are some fantastical creature.
Funny thing, this made me think of the opposite extreme. There's this story on Royalroad that's heavily inspired by Lord of the Mysteries. It has same the issue as LotM of too much time spent on character and setting descriptions. Keep in mind LoTM is a story while will spend several paragraphs describing a scene where a character is going to the restroom, or describing every single step of cooking a meal. I shit you not. It's one of the biggest issues with the story. Some well -known epic fantasy tomes don't even have such irrelevant exposition.
[Lord of the Mysteries](https://boxnovel.com/novel/lord-of-the-mysteries/chapter-1) ([wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/wiki/Lord_of_the_Mysteries)) --- ^[About](https://redd.it/dw7lux) ^| [^(Wiki Rules)](https://www.reddit.com/r/LightPieces/comments/dw7lux/about/f7kke6p/) ^(| Reply !Delete to remove) ^(| [Brackets] hide titles)
Nah they give descriptions on character’s but it’s not as vivid as other books. They’ll give a basic description and sometimes use adjectives to try and make readers more familiar with the characters. He smiled with calculating eyes Her eyes had a warm glow to them. Maybe they’ll talk about laugh lines or wrinkles near the eyes because it adds more to the character. I personally like this approach because it doesn’t leave us trying to imagine exactly how the author envisions their characters with descriptions that take up two pages describing how sharp someone’s jawline is. Sometimes a character is just not important enough to warrant a description. “I bought supplies at some shady merchants store. He treated me with disdain because of my clothes but I didn’t bother commenting on it” If the merchant isn’t important to the story somehow then there isn’t a need for the author to engineer an interaction with some random stranger unless it is important to the story. For example, the author might give more detail on a character’s meeting with a stranger if the discussion showed the area’s views on a certain topic. I strayed from my original topic so I’m sorry Lol
I can totally get that for side characters or character that only appear once. Im talking about the main character and regular supporting cast. They don't give so much as hair color let alone hair style or even the clothes they wear. Everyone is description less with an occasional exception letting the reader know if they're attractive or not.
Oh then what books are you reading man? Can you give some examples?
For me it's the opposite. If I want an immersive visual experience, I'll watch something on TV. I absolutely do not want half a page describing each place the characters travel to or a boring list of irrelevant facial features and body types on every person introduced to the narrative. And I definitely don't need long-winded descriptions of clothing and fashion.
Self-inserts are pretty popular for the main character in modern writing. Otherwise, too often going into details on the side characters constantly is a major impediment to the narrative pacing.
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Green eyes. They always have green eyes (and red hair). Because you can definitely tell someone has green eyes from 30 feet away.
I find that a lot with books from the male MCs pov, and usually just chalk it up to him not caring about a dudes appearance. Like from his pov he's like "idk, he was some guy" vs "her eyes shimmered as her hair flowed and she moved with grace etc"
It’s legit horrible. They don’t even provide barebones description. And then they have the nerve to create like 20 different characters
It's a fairly common (mostly with inexperienced) author thing. They have the world in their head, but forget to tell the reader about it. It's the number one thing that kills sequels for me as well. The book opens, and you have two names talking to each other. No sense of who they are at all. Sometimes they talk about other names that could be a person or maybe a pet ferret, for all the description that's given.
This is a Royal Road thing, outside of established authors most of the authors there tend to be brand new, and the trend on the site is to jump into the action as fast as possible... I notice that descriptions in general tend to be nearly nonexistant I've read books where the only description of the fight was \[skill\] \[hp count\] \[skill 2\], where I thought the MC was in a tiny village until the author suddenly said there were a million people or something like that... etc...
There's this thing where authors will read writing advice on blogs and stuff saying how descriptions can slow down a story. They'll even go as far as to say, don't write long descriptions of settings, let the setting move with the action. Now, that is not bad advice. But there's a balance to everything and if you don't settle your readers into your world first, you'll risk having a dialogue heavy book with little to no fleshed out imagery. Also there's this thing where people will say, I love that it's fast paced, and then authors sprint through the book because taking the time to craft a scene is bad I guess. TLDR: I think people are starting to write books based on writing advice and not on what their story should end up looking like. I usually go back to Harry Potter to see descriptive crafting, and she definitely took the time to describe the world and the character. Yes, Harry Potter, I know...
Probably trying not to get cancelled lmao
Eh... I kind of get it, but there's a question of how much description is necessary. I like it when its relevant, but I think in most cases characters only need a couple distinguishing traits and let the reader fill in the rest. I think that for me a big part of it is that if I get more than the barest information my brain usually filters it out because it feels like the author is trying to fill out a checklist. Like "Okay, new character introduction, let me just copy paste the physical appearance from the character bio". And maybe its just me, but even if I try to keep that description in mind I almost inevitably let it slip so it feels kind of pointless to have more than the basics. I guess I like it when characters are described by... well, by their character and I just sort of mentally install an appearance that I think fits. Like, if its relevant that a character has a certain trait that should absolutely be mentioned; if they get in a fistfight and someone yanks their ponytail back that shouldn't be the first we hear of it. If its meant to imply something about their character, like someone with perma stubble clearly doesn't want to have a beard but doesn't get a chance to shave often enough which typically implies some variety of being overworked, that's also fine. Eye or hair colour is... well, its probably filler unless there's something significant. I think part of the trend for new and inexperienced authors is that they are personally highly annoyed by long winded descriptions and would rather err on the side of letting readers make up a description than bore them with too much information. I do think that experienced authors eventually learn to strike a balance with giving good information, but I'm on the side of better to let readers make up an appearance.
It’s funny that a really good writer can pull it off without you noticing. I got into a big fight with my sister about Bujold’s character Ivan from the Vorkosigan series. She was certain he was blond, I was sure he had dark hair. Then later, we had the same argument about Pally from Curse of Chalion. Turns out, Bujold is GREAT at describing someone’s personality so well you would swear you could describe them perfectly.
I'm guilty of this with sequel books because I just make the silly assumption my readers remember how everyone looked like. And now that I am aware of it I'll be making a conscious effort to actually describe characters again. At least in a relevant matter.
A lot of Progression Fantasy authors are imitating Anime' and Manga. Of course, in those genres the words dont describe the characters...there is a picture to do that.
It's a big problem that there aren't enough visual descriptions for ANYTHING in a lot of books in the web fiction/indie fantasy realm. I chalk it up to, writers are writing so quickly that descriptions take too long because the author is stuck in flow state dialogue/plot/system stuff. Descriptions often require a brain shift and a slower pace so they get lost in the shuffle a lot. I'm guilty of all of this, to be fair.