I got a lot of feedback on my post on physical descriptors for characters, A Nose by Any Other Name. Here are a few more that will jog your inspiration:
Face
- Brush of make-up and light touch of lipstick
Mouth, neck and chin
- Square chin
- Strong chin
- hanging jowls
- slack, hanging mouth
- long neck
- Adam’s apple
- Neck muscles were drumhead tight
- Beard gone to white
- Thick brown mustache gone to gray
Legs, feet
- bowlegged
- twig-like calves
- Pink toenails
- lateral displacement of the big toe bunions
- nails bitten and dirty
- thickened yellow nails
Hands, fingers
- fingers as thick as sausage—sausage fingers
- lighter patch of skin on third finger
- nicotine stains between the first and second finger of his left hand
- wrist cords bulged like roots of oak
Head
- Bald spot on top
- Bushy eyebrows
- eyebrows of white steel wool
- wore a ballcap
- a single bushy bar above the eyes
Hair
- Corn silk hair
- Blue-black hair
- shoulder-length silver hair with a jaunty clip, dark rimmed glasses, smooth unlined face
- Blonde hair trimmed close to the scalp
- Shaggy white hair
- Teased platinum hair
- Hair in a neat ponytail
- Unruly shock of prematurely white hair
- Cowlick
- bad case of dandruff
- light brushcut hair
- clipped her hair back in its usual twist
- salt-and-pepper hair was wet and freshly combed
- Hair tied in a severe school-marmish bun
- Hair a light sandy brown
Skin
- rashes
- Beauty marks
- tattoo of…
- lentigo
- Leathery skin
- Spongy skin
- Steroidal with bad skin
- Walnut dark skin that glowed
- Brush of make-up and light touch of lipstick
- Dimple
Multiple
- The pale curve of her slender neck and the way her long dark hair draped down her back
- looked like hell—purple bags under her eyes, fingernails bitten to the nub
Body
- Thickening at the waist
Shoulders, chest
- Big slope-shouldered man
- Wide sloping shoulders
- broad shouldered
- Plump shoulders
- Bowed back
- Burly man with shoulders like a ledge
- Ramrod straight and rock-jawed, with gunmetal eyes and shoulders that seemed mitered at perfect ninety-degree angles
- Tall and thin and wearing her hair shorter than the last time I’d seen her
Miscellaneous
- Comfortable looking 60
- lissome body
- Wolfish boy
- Solidly built
- Chubby, pear-shaped man
- Rail thin
- Muscle-bound
- lean muscular build
- Almost fat, always slovenly dressed
- he was taller than he looked and bigger
- Nearly mythic ugliness
- Imposing nearly to the point of intimidation
- A hundred pounds overweight with an orange streak in her hair
- handsome but certainly not memorable
- Pushing seventy
- Fit looking man in a tattered straw cowboy hat jammed atop his sun-bleached blond hair
- Heavy-boned farm boy
- Short, overweight black woman
- Big guy, white, maybe forty. Black hair. Wide neck
- Thick man with shabby hair
- Talk, spike-straight guy with a pinched face
- Medium height, pale, stick-thin and leggy with a gamin face under a layered mass of long black hair
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Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented:
terrific list!
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Have you heard of the cartoon Gargoyles? It’s one of the main characters on that show.
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First question: Who’s POV are you in? Are you the one in the coma? Is it a main character, or a friend of the main character?
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One of the characters in my story is in a coma. What’s a good way to describe someone who’s in a coma?
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