Character descriptions/body dimensions - Anyone have any example sites?

[Guest]

Hello everyone,

I find myself struggling with a persons facial features as well as the rest of the body dimensions. Now what I'm asking is do any other non native English writers have difficultly with writing in another metric system as their own, and do you use any sort of tools like website, perhaps a flash one where you can add body weight in a simple wire frame model?
Or a celebrity one?

Hope I was clear in my comment, its late here

 

[Darkniciad]

Really, you can get away with a lot of generalities.

Is the character's weight really all that important to the story? If so, do you really need to dictate it down to the ounce?

Same thing for breast size, cock length, etc. Unless it's vital to the story, there's no real need to give the reader a police description of the character.

There's something to be said for leaving it general enough for the reader to imagine themselves in the character as well.

 

[Bebeslut]

Since this is a porn site, most readers are going to assume most of the characters are fairly attractive, so you can get away with mentioning only one or two details.
I have one female character who I described as having a blond shag and an Elvis snear. Another whose distinguishing features are her tattoos. I have twin sister characters described only as "the most beautiful women on campus."
I think those are sufficient descriptions. Leave the rest to the reader's imagination.

 

[Weird Harold]

Hello everyone,

I find myself struggling with a persons facial features as well as the rest of the body dimensions. Now what I'm asking is do any other non native English writers have difficultly with writing in another metric system as their own, and do you use any sort of tools like website, perhaps a flash one where you can add body weight in a simple wire frame model?
Or a celebrity one?

Hope I was clear in my comment, its late here

If I understand the question, you're looking for quick conversions between mertric and english measurements? An inexpensive scientific calculator like those made by Hewlett-Packard or Texas Instruments makes conversions simple.

However, using units of measurement in your descriptions leads to "Wanted Poster" descriptions -- a description of a character dumped into one single block of text with more information than the reader can absorb readily.

The best way to describe a character is to consider the way people actually learn those details about people they meet -- they learn those details one piece at a time over a span of time as those details become relevant. Some of the details often found in a "wanted poster" descriptions never become relevant to the character or to the story.

When you see a person for the first time, they are essentially a bipedal shape with a few attention-getting identifiers -- large/medium/small, blonde/brunette/redhead, Male/female/androgenous, etc/etc/etc -- and nobody except a porn-story-character can identify height/weight/bra size from accross a crowed bar on first sight.

Add further details as they become available to your characters -- the shadow in the entrance to the bar becomes visible as the POV character's lover (whereupon the character will think about the physical/personality traits that they like about their lover and ONLY those details) or the POV character will focus on the interesting details that are most noticeable (eyes, nose, mouth, chest/shoulders, hips/waist, etc.)

Different characters will focus on different things: Some guys focus on breasts, some on legs, some on the butt, and one or two will focus on the eyes or face. Only decribe what the characters are focussed on and eventually you'll build up a fairly complete -- mostly relevant -- description of the character.

In other words, don't try to describe the face, describe the dominant feature of the face and leave the rest "vaguely facelike" until some other feature attracts notice and/or relevance.

 

[Bebeslut]

Meditate on what a great artist had to say about his art:

"I always listen to what I can leave out." -- Miles Davis

 

[sr71plt]

I read the wink as identifying this as a joke posting.