Appearances

I will now talk about how to write about the character's themselves. How to talk about their appearance and what words not to use. So this section is; appearances.

When you read a story, you want to know how a character looks but you don't want it all at once. Never say the appearance in the very first paragraph of the first chapter.

Example: My alarm rang out which signaled the hour I had left to get ready for school before it begins. My legs carried me to the bathroom mirror where I looked at my self. You may be wondering who I am so let me tell you; I am Karen Shae. I have dark blue eyes and brown wavy hair that runs to my shoulders.

Never ever do that. There is so many things wrong with that one paragraph. For one, the usage of the word "you" implies 2nd person point of view. Everyone usually writes in 1st person so there's absolutely no reason for you to use it. You stick to one POV and that's it. Second, I used the words "rang" and "begins" in the same sentence. There's nothing wrong with the words themselves but "rang" is past tense while "begins" is future tense. Like POV's you stick to one tense only. So it should be changed to "began." Third, we learn the main character's name by someone calling her or something similar. She doesn't introduce herself. It makes her look schizophrenic.

Lastly, what this section is mainly about; how I worded her appearance. I said it all at once which made it seem as if Karen Shae was explaining her appearance to herself. All it does is make her seem like she doesn't know her own eye color.

How it should have been written, last sentence; My eyes gazed around at my surroundings before I caught sight of something moving from the right. I swept my brown bangs from my face to see what is was. It turned out to be my mother staring in amusement at my blue eyes. "Karen, what are you doing?" she asked.

Now, how to word their appearance. For starters, hairstyles have names but they really shouldn't be mentioned. It doesn't really matter (or make sense) if the main character doesn't label people but still has an "emo" haircut. You describe their hair with "side-swept" bangs or similar phrases. Colors of the hair shouldn't be gone about into extreme detail either otherwise we'd have to Google every single eccentric color mentioned.

Brown, black, blonde is simple. Colors like auburn, violet, scarlet are kind of known. Colors like eggplant, Brandeis blue, chartreuse should just be avoided altogether.

Another thing to avoid; name brands. Authors can have a rich character with Calvin Klein's in their closet or Gucci bags attached to their arms at all times, but every single article of clothing should not have its own paragraph.

If you want the readers to know what you're imagining it as, just put a link at the ending. For a description, describe a dress as simple, don't explain every flower, pocket, or belt on it. Pants should not be said to be "skinny" or otherwise. Shirts, also, should not have designs explained. Simply mention the clothes to be for a band but don't say "I wore my All Time Low T-shirt that I got at their last concert." We read stories for the plot, not the character's (or author's) very specific music taste.