Thanks to everyone for these comments and suggestions. Questions like these tend to throw up such a lot of good advice...almost worth the subscription fee in themselves!
Caroline

I only described my MC in detail in the sixth chapter when he had to dress up to attract the opposite sex. Why didn't the cloths fit? How best to impress girls with thick hair and horn-rimmed glasses?

Puting his physical description into the humerous context of a night out made the task of telling the reader what he looked like easier.

I get bored easily when characters are introduced with lots of description...get on the the story!

Basically, the idea is to try and hide the description in the story by creating a recognisable prototypical outline, through the character's interactions with their world, which the reader can then colour in themselves

With my limited experience with writing, and considerable experience with reading I have to wholeheartedly agree with the above.

After all, what I'm doing when I'm writing is trying to draw the reader into my little world for however long it takes them to read what I write. I want them to be thinking 'looks like my uncle ken' not 'sounds like he looks like my uncle ken'

I know it sounds like a pernickerty distinction, and of all the repliers(?) in this thread I am almost certainly least qualified to make it. However; it is one that I've noticed has made the difference to me when I've been reading books.

When writing, of course, it's harder than it looked... I found that becasue *I* had a picture-perfect vision in my head of my MC, I wanted every reader to, too. It was almost an almost-bestial urge. "show them, show them!"

In the end, however, I noticed that it's worth remembering that your MC has a whole novel's worth of words in which to find his description, and many more interations with people "Nice hair, mate, lose the pony tail and you might pass for human..." and the world "Rubbing his head with the back of his hand, the misty memory of outgrowing the bathroom window drifted back from his 15th birthday..." than any of your other characters.

I also agree that less is more can work in your favour when your readers are looking for someway to internalise the character.

Just my $0.02

Thanks for that. I think you put it particularly well with the 'Uncle Ken' example! That really makes a lot of sense to me.

There's an interesting array of viewpoints here. I have to admit I'm inclined to under-describe characters a lot of the time (especially minor characters). With this thought in mind, I made a conscious effort to provide a paragraph or so of description for each of two lesser characters in one novel I sent to an agent. The comment that came back said that the characters in question were not very well described. So there's no pleasing some people, and it's a bugger if the people it doesn't please are the ones who are supposed to help you get published.

One trick I use to describe a MC (of which I tend to have 2) is to switch perspectives and let each of them appraise the other. Sometimes it seems to work, but other times it ends up looking as if I'm straining to add something that I think the reader wants.

A good source of OTT descriptions is Ian Fleming in the Bond stories. You have to have a really good knowledge of fashion and interior design to understand some of them, too. Which raises another point: using terminology that the reader might not be familiar with can leave them no wiser than if you didn't bother with a description.


Alex

'Not very well described' is a typically unhelpful comment.

It's not an agent's job to be helpful when they're turning you down, but that's typical of the difference between agents and editors operating as readers, and a good teacher's comment, which says in essence the same thing, but in a way that makes your brain start working. A teacher who pointed out that it was a bit tell-y, and that showing their characteristics in action might work better, would be helping their student to get somewhere. I think your mutual describing can work very well, Alex, not least because though it's something of a 'tell' about the describee, it gains immediacy and authenticity from also being a 'show' about the describer, revealing something indirectly about them in what they choose to describe.

Emma

...it gains immediacy and authenticity from also being a 'show' about the describer, revealing something indirectly about them in what they choose to describe.

That's a good point, Emma, and one I hadn't actually thought of in those terms. I've been aware, when I'm doing it, of it giving me the opportunity to show something of the appraiser's mindset and character, but I was tending to think of that as fortuitous rather than a driving consideration for doing it.


Alex

I don't have quite the same urge, Archgimp. In fact, sometimes less is more if you can leave out minor details other than the essential characteristics to the reader's imagination. The only drawback is that when your opus is filmed, some who read the book will be disappointed when the Tom Cruise character is not the ugly dwarf they imagined him to be! :-)