: Re: Should I need to add Face Description of all Characters? I am writing a novel. Should I need to add Face Description ( or the personality ) of all the Characters? Is there a template that

@Michele605

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Further to DPT's excellent answer, it's worth keeping in mind that a reader will expect your writing to be purposeful. In other words, if you've provided a physical description of a character, then the reader will assume this description is somehow pertinent. If there's a lot of irrelevant detail, at best this bogs down your narrative, and at worst distracts and annoys the reader.

For example, describing a character's close-set eyes, or full lips, or pinched nose, or cauliflower ears, or doe-like brown eyes, in each case provides an early hint about the character's personality.

Unusual features can also be an opportunity to add additional depth to the character. In William Kennedy's Ironweed, the main character Francis Phelan has a piece missing from the tip of his nose. This not only adds to the reader's image of Phelan as an unattractive alcoholic vagrant - in sharp contrast to the soft, warm-hearted man tormented by inner demons - but gives Kennedy the opportunity to describe how the disfigurement occurred, adding further depth to the character as well as an interesting narrative side excursion.

An unusual feature can also be used as a defining characteristic. In The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx, the main character Quoyle is described on just the second page as:

A great damp loaf of a body. At six he weighed eighty pounds. At
sixteen he was buried under a casement of flesh. Head shaped like a
crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ruched back. Features as bunched as
kissed fingertips. Eyes the colour of plastic. The monstrous chin, a
freakish shelf jutting from the lower face.

It's a bizarre image, but perfectly sets the scene for Quoyle's transformative journey. Other novels that come to mind where a character's unusual physical appearance is important to the story include John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (the central character, Ignatius J. Reilly, is a huge, obese slob); The Tin Drum by Günter Grass (unreliable narrator Oskar Matzerath is an adult who chose to stop growing at age three); and of course Harry Potter (with his famous scar).

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