I think I’m going to write the entire book without ever giving a physical description of the main character. All you really know is that his skin turns gray at the end of the 2nd Lichaf. But what color was his skin before? Were you assuming Eudo was white? Perhaps he was black, or brown or purple. Perhaps everyone in the book is black or brown or asian or turquoise or whatever. (Though they couldn’t be gray, as everyone regards gray skin as something only Derelicts can have.) Maybe there’s a wide variety of colors. Maybe there’s one particular color favored by the Federation, or maybe they’re exceptionally diverse. (All of this applies for other physical attributes as well, such as height.) Run that through your head for a moment: does the story seem any different when you imagine different skin colors? Why?
Just a thought.
Being vague with physical descriptions is actually an interesting concept. It gives the reader more freedom to let their imagination wander. The only problem is that readers like to have basics for their imaginations to work off of.
I think stories may seem different with differences like skin colors. It changes the entire view of the character (and I don’t mean this in a racist way). Races could change a variety of things, aside from skin color; accents, height, etc. Small details like that could have a big impact on a story.
Dear Jimmy,
I actually wrote one of my novels with the main character with minimal description and all I got were complaints from a reader that I wasn’t doing my job as a writer describing my character adequately. I wonder if other readers might feel the vague description also glaring and bothersome.
Warm regards,
Buffy
We’ll see. I’ll finish a full draft and see how readers react. If they don’t like the lack of description, I can always change it.