Still no work on the actual prose sadly, what with the court hearing. Spent some time trying to flesh out the basic attributes of my two lead characters, when I realized that as a romance novel, I should probably be a bit more particular in my descriptions of the characters. This lead to some quick internet research on the general shapes and variances of the face and various facial features.
I'm surprised I didn't find a consolidated list/guide for writers - most of the ones I found were on pages related to beauty tips and/or plastic surgery. For reference, here's the breakdown of what I've gleaned so far"
Face Types: square, heart-shaped, triangle (inverted heart shaped), oblong, elongated, round, long, diamond and oval. (From this site)
Eye Types: (based on distance) wide-apart, close-set, evenly-spaced; (based on size) small eyes, prominent eyes, bulging eyes; (other types) almond eyes, oriental eyes, round eyes, deep-set eyes, hooded eyes, oval eyes; drooping eyes. (Used different classifications but the types came from here.)
Nose Types: [Classical definitions] Roman (aquiline/hooked), Jewish (hawk), Greek (straight), leptorrhine (Caucasian/long and narrow), platyrrhine (African/broad and flat), cogitative (wide-nostriled), snub, turn-up (celestial); [Other words which may describe a nose] pert, button-nose (note - not bottle nose, unless your character is a dolphin), angled, aquiline, arced, arched, bent, broad, concave, convex, crooked, curved, depressed, droopy, flared, full, hooked, humped, narrow, pointed, round, sharp, short, small, small-tipped, straight, thin, undulating, wide, wide-nostrilled. (Classical definitions from this little treasure; many of the additional words from here.)
Hope this helps other aspiring writers as well. Let me know if you have anything more to add ^_^
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2 comments:
One area of caution here is that not all readers will be able to empathize with a straightforward description of appearance. The terms you mention are all well and good, but there's no guarantee that a reader will be familiar with all of them. I can describe a character as having "a leptorrhine nose set between two prominent eyes in the middle of an oblong face", for example, but I wouldn't be certain if that would evoke a clear image in the reader's mind.
Personally, I just go with indirect description and let the reader decide what the character looks like. Saying that a male character "could have passed for Owen Wilson in a good light", or that a female protagonist "would have been a model with looks to die for, were it not for the scar above her left eye" is usually enough for me. But it all depends on what one expects from one's audience, I suppose.
@sean: I agree, some of the terms are kind of esoteric - even the 'literal' ones like a triangle-shaped face are hard to imagine if one doesn't know what is really meant by that (one could easily imagine the Coneheads @_@).
Generally speaking, I'll probably use them in addition to, rather than in place of, indirect descriptions. Especially if I'm mixing cultural references a bit (using a local celebrity in a story that I'd like to be accessible even to non-Filipinos for instance) for greater clarity and particularity.
Oh, and welcome Sean - I think this is the first comment I got on any of my blogs :P
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