[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we are going to talk about descriptive characterization.
[00:24] Rachel: Yes. So I am really excited to talk about this because so far on our podcast, we have talked predominantly about a character's internal life. We've talked about the flaws that drive them, their motivations, why they do the things that they do. We've not yet spent time talking about their characterization in the sense of what they look like and how they show up kind of visually on the page, which is a very important facet of who they are as a character. I think a lot of writers approach these two things very differently, very separately. They have an idea of what a character looks like, and then they also have an idea of who that character is on the inside. And it feels in the creation of that character, those two things may be created at the same time, but they're not created necessarily as, like, a linked idea. Does that make sense?
[01:22] Emily: Yeah, totally.
[01:23] Rachel: So today I wanted to talk about, number one, developing the characterization of this character as they show up on the page visually and making sure that it is also tied to their internal life and what drives them as a character and who they are and why they are the way that they are. Yeah.
[01:42] Emily: And we're talking, right, not just about your point of view character, but, like, other characters they're interacting with as well. Yeah. Basically, we're going to break down. How do we describe what people look like?
[01:57] Rachel: What do you need in order to describe them? Do you have to go, like, balls to the wall and go down to the most minute details of what they look like? Does a reader need that and want that? Or do you go, like, super, super vague and let the reader fill in the blanks? And what's the sweet spot look like? Yeah.
[02:16] Emily: Love it.
[02:17] Rachel: Yeah. Okay, so that's what I wanted to talk about. Awesome. Before we jump in, this has always been, like, a super fun part of character development to me. But like I said, I've never quite tied it to the inside stuff. And as I was working with one of my clients, one of my one on one clients, the visual stuff is something that she struggles with, but the character, like, on the inside stuff isn't necessarily a huge struggle. So we often kind of would get the character feeling really good from a development and from a plot structure standpoint. But then as soon as she would go to write, she would always feel like she hit, like, a black hole, like a giant wall, because then she would go to write this character and have no idea how to actually describe them. So I put together this exercise for us to go through, to think about and what I want to talk about right now is a character's physical description. Their mannerisms, their personalities, their quirks and their habits. Kind of those things that sometimes feel tangential in order to bring a depth and a uniqueness to that character as they show up on the page. So as we're approaching this discussion, just like in real life, no human being is exactly the same as another human being. And as we're creating these things, as we're developing the characterization, our goal is to highlight kind of how our characters are different from one another while at the same time endearing them to the reader through their traits. So we want to define these things. We want to define what our characters look like and who they are in their personality so that we can build that onto the page. But we also want to bring here's the key intention and meaning to the pieces of that.
[04:13] Emily: Yeah.
[04:14] Rachel: This is how you start to form the bridge between their internal life, like their motivations and their goals and who they are with their external experience. What is that word? I think it starts with an E. I don't remember. Expression, maybe. Yes, their external expression. I don't know what happened.
[04:40] Emily: I watched it happen.
[04:42] Rachel: Mid word just was like, no, we're done. Anyway, that's what we're going to be starting out talking about is this bringing the intention and the meaning to developing them the same way that we bring intention and meaning to developing their internal life. And the beauty of that is that you can go as detailed or as vague as you want to as long as you're doing it with intention and meaning.
[05:13] Emily: Yeah, and I feel like that level of detail versus vagueness is very genre specific. Yes, you'll have some genres where you go and you'll see in our examples where you go a lot more in depth into the different details of a character because that relationship and romance is the one that comes to mind. The relationship between the two characters is based on, in some way, physical direction. Right. And so that physicality is really important, whereas in some literary stories, like we're going to talk about Addie, Le, Roux, you need a lot less of that because it's more metaphoric. Right. You want to leave more room for interpretation. So we will show you that in the examples that we're going to look at. But I think it all comes down to kind of how detailed you want to go with intention.
[06:06] Rachel: Yes, exactly. So as we're going through, we have a couple of different areas, like four different areas where you can start to brainstorm the characterization of this character. And then we are going to tell you how to inject the meaning, how to make sure that it's staying meaningful and relevant to this character and who you envision them as and what dynamic they're going to bring to your cast of characters. And then to the plot itself. Okay, so let's start first, we have examples and some of the things we're going to talk about touch on each of the four areas of characterization that I want to highlight today. So what do you think? Should we start with maybe let's talk first about physical description. Let's start there. That's like, the pretty easy the first one that comes to mind when you think about let's do it character visually. Yes.
[07:01] Emily: How much do we need?
[07:03] Rachel: What does that look like? So when I say physical description, I'm also thinking about their defining features, because here's my big lesson for you today. You do not need and I'll say this blanket for every genre. But like Emily just said, some genres go a little more specific and some go a little bit more vague. You do not need, like, a straight up physical description down to how long their fingernails are and how they've plucked their eyebrows. Like, you don't need it to that level.
[07:35] Emily: Oftentimes you don't even need eye color.
[07:37] Rachel: I'll just throw it out there. I know, right? Because I'm like, eye color is my favorite.
[07:44] Emily: Oh, I do it. I overdo it all the time.
[07:46] Rachel: I know. But physical description is like, what does this character physically look like and what are their defining features? Height, eye color, tattoos, hair color, body type, lips, cheeks, all those things, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm going to throw in a pro tip, actually. Let's read some of our examples first. Okay. Let's start with Charlie lastra. Okay. Love Charlie.
[08:22] Emily: I can read this one.
[08:23] Rachel: So this is from Book Lovers by yep.
[08:27] Emily: So this so the main character of Book Lovers is Nora, and she's an agent, a publishing agent, and she is meeting with a man named Charlie Lastra about potentially acquiring a book of hers. And she's never met him before, but he has a reputation. And Nora enters their lunch together in a very bad mood because she was just dumped, and she's very not into men right now. Yeah, this is really her first introduction to Charlie, but she does have in the back of her mind assumptions and judgments about him already, which you will see.
[09:03] Rachel: Okay, I'm going to read it.
[09:05] Emily: It's late in the day for lunch, so the crowd is thin, and I spot Charlie LASSRA near the back dressed in all black like publishing's own metropolitan vampire. We've never met in person, but I double checked the publisher's weekly announcement about his promotion to executive editor at Wharton House Books and committed his photograph to memory. The stern dark brows, the light brown eyes, the slight crease in his chin beneath his full lips. He has the kind of dark mole on one cheek that, if he were a woman, would definitely be considered a beauty mark. He can't be much past his mid 30s with the kind of face you might describe as boyish if not for how tired he looks and the gray that thoroughly peppers his black hair. Also, he's scowling or pouting. His mouth is pouting. His forehead is scowling.
[09:54] Rachel: Powelling that's such a good one. Okay, let me run through that real fast, and I'm going to call out a couple of areas. So the first thing that Nora says about Charlie is while he's sitting in the back. So that gives us one feeling about him. He's dressed in all black, like publishing's own metropolitan vampire that has nothing to do with what he actually looks like, but gives us such a cool visual, like introduction to who he is as a character.
[10:28] Emily: It's a vibe.
[10:29] Rachel: It's a vibe.
[10:30] Emily: And I want to come back to talking about vibes. We're going not for a police report, but for a vibe.
[10:35] Rachel: Yes, people, that's such a good way to put it. We don't want to use a character's characterization or physical description to just rattle off what they look like. It's all about how a character is absorbing them. What's the meaning of it? How are they interpreting? In this case, Nora. Nora is interpreting what Charlie looks like as a publishing zone metropolitan vampire. Already. If we just ended there, I'd be like, you probably have a pretty good visual of what that means.
[11:06] Emily: Well, I think we could argue that that is where she truly describes him.
[11:12] Rachel: Yes.
[11:12] Emily: And the rest of it is actually insight into Nora. But I'm going to let you take it before I explain before we go back to that.
[11:21] Rachel: So then fast forward a little bit. We get that he just got a promotion, which gives us a sense of who he is, but the physical characteristics that are listed about him stern, dark eyebrows, light brown eyes, crease in his chin, full lips, dark mole, boyish face. He looks really tired, and he has salt and pepper hair. Yeah, just those things. That's not a lot. It's in, like, what is this, like, two or three sentences? Then we get expression. Then we get he's scowling and pouting. He's powing. That's funny. But also he has what he physically looks like. Like you were saying, I want to let you talk about, like, Nora, but then we get how she's taking him in, gives life to everything that we've just talked about, what he looks like. If she just was like, oh, he has dark brows and light eyes and he's got a mole, we'd be like, okay, yeah, cool. But then it's like, well, he looks boyish, and he also looks really tired, and he's got salt and pepper hair. So we know that he's probably pretty stressed out all the time. He's also a vampire, so we know that he's probably not super jovial and happy all the time. And he's powing. Yeah. Okay.
[12:51] Emily: So what I love I love this description. It's one of my favorites to point to because really, we know nothing about Charlie. She knows nothing about Charlie. All she knows is rumors, and she memorized his photograph.
[13:06] Rachel: Yeah.
[13:07] Emily: Like, girl what? And so we learn more about her through her description of him than we actually learn about who he is. We do get a visual, and that's why this is right. It has dual purpose because we get a visual of him. But like you said, if we just listed those things, we wouldn't really care. But what makes us care is the fact that she's projecting. She's very upset. She's very tired, she's very overworked. And she basically was just told that she's a metropolitan vampire because she overworks and is crazy. Basically, her ex boyfriend just told her that as he broke up with her. And so she walks in and projects all of that onto Charlie. So she's analyzing him in a way that shows, like, oh, well, he's pretty. She admits that he's pretty. He's kind of mark.
[13:58] Rachel: Right?
[13:59] Emily: And that he's got these certain brows in full lips.
[14:02] Rachel: Right.
[14:02] Emily: So it's clear she's attracted to him, even though she's, like, very much not admitting it.
[14:06] Rachel: Yes.
[14:07] Emily: And then we get that she projects his tiredness. They're in the same industry. Like, she sees herself in him, and then she says he's scowling or pouting. And I think that's also a projection of what she's doing. And it's great because you later learn when she and Charlie discuss this moment, much like later in the book, that his family is going through at a family emergency right now, and he is, like, about to miss his plane because she's late to this lunch. And so he's going through all of these emotional things in this moment that she does not pick up on because she doesn't know him. And so it's so good. It's so good how she misreads him, how we get a visual through that, and how we learn about how she's feeling and how she sees herself through her description of him.
[14:58] Rachel: Yes. So if you take this at face value, you have what he looks like, but then what takes this to the next level is what it meant to Nora. So as you're planning, like, a character's description, their physical description, what they look like, it's not simply like, okay, stern brows, light brown eyes. You can make up any variation of what it looks like, and that would probably be fine. But the extra layer here is that when Nora interacts with Charlie and she takes in what he looks like, she is giving us so much more than just stern brown eyes or dark brows and light brown eyes and all those other physical characteristics. So think about not only how you're going to create this character and what they visually look like, but how someone else might take them in or how it's going to show up on the page. I used to do this, so when I kind of disparage this a little bit, just know that it's coming from inside of me. It's very common or it used to be common that when you have a first person or you have a character, if they're going to describe themselves, they have, like, a mirror. Exactly. Like, you know what I'm talking about, the mirror scene. They look at themselves in the mirror, and then they give a description of what they look like. And that's how the reader knows what they look like. Fine. I would say a lot of people now look at that and be like, oh, you don't have to do that. We can move away from that a little bit. That's where you get to start to see, like, you're just putting something on the page. So a reader knows what it looks like versus putting something on the page that has meaning to a character.
[16:43] Emily: Yeah.
[16:44] Rachel: And there's a difference between those things. So if you've caught yourself, like, trying to describe a character and their physical traits, they're defining features simply because you think a reader needs to do it. Go the next level. Go a layer deeper. Yeah.
[16:59] Emily: So I want to illustrate, though, because we say this a lot. We say, like, show the meaning to Nora.
[17:05] Rachel: And so I want to illustrate the.
[17:07] Emily: Meaning to Nora in this.
[17:08] Rachel: Right.
[17:09] Emily: The meaning that we're getting is we're getting that she's in a terrible mood, that she doesn't want to be attracted to this man, that she wants to judge him and dislike him from the get go.
[17:20] Rachel: Right.
[17:20] Emily: We're getting all of that from her. In this moment, she's like, I swear off met she's not even consciously doing this, but she's essentially saying, I swear off men, this man is a vampire. I will not be attracted to him. That's the meaning that we're getting in this. So just to kind of illustrate what we mean by that, and I think for, like, if you're doing this yourself, what I would ask is, in this moment, the moment when you're about to describe someone through your main character's eyes, what are they feeling? What is their mood, and what do they want, and how do they want to feel about the person that they're looking at? And if you can answer those questions, I think your brain will start to come up with ways that they can describe the person through voice and emotion and meaning that will add that second layer to your description, your physical description.
[18:12] Rachel: Yes, absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about we have two others that I want to talk about. Firstly, though, before we go to personality, which is our next layer of this, I want to contrast Charlie lastra briefly with Addie LaRue the Invisible Life of Addie Leroux. So in that book, Lovers is a straight up romance. It's a romantic comedy. That's where the relationship happens between Charlie and Nora. Then you take The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, which is more literary, and it does have romantic undertones. However, with Addie Le Roux, we basically get two physical descriptions about her. And that's it. We get that she has auburn hair, and we get that she has freckles in the shape of a constellation across her cheeks. Basically. You're not seeing me on the zoom. I think there's seven freckles. Seven freckles across her cheeks and her nose. That's it. That's basically all that we get. Maybe we get, like, one or two things splattered in here or there, but we get those two things for Addie. That's all we get about what she looks like, but we get a vibe about her, and we also get metaphor leaned into those two things. So I just wanted to highlight how a pro tip on physical description is like, you don't necessarily need five or six things. You can get away with, like, two things as long as they're carrying tons of meaning that's relevant to the themes of your book and that's driven across the rest of the story and that you constantly come back to as, like, the other character, like her romantic partner. Addie's romantic partner looks at her cheeks like he sees her her consolation. And it's like a part of the book. It's so much more than just, oh, she's got freckles. It's part of the fabric of the themes of the book. Yeah.
[20:13] Emily: Because Addie is cursed to be forgotten by everybody that she meets. But she lives forever. And so throughout time, basically the only thing people remember about her is her freckles. And her freckles show up in artists work across history, which is really cool. They don't remember her, but her freckles made an impression, and so it's a metaphor for her, making her imprint on the world even when people can't remember her.
[20:40] Rachel: Yeah. So if you go, like, heavier on the description, remember to come back to all of that either way, come back to that meaning about it. But just know that you don't need all of the things we described for Charlie to have a really solid thing you can get away, or you can still have a very effective and powerful and visually stunning description with hair color and freckles, if you're going to I.
[21:05] Emily: Don'T even think we get the color or eyes.
[21:08] Rachel: I don't think we do either. Yeah, I think it's just her hair and her eyes. Yeah, just her freckles. I mean, her hair and her freckles. Yeah. Saying too many things. Okay, so now personality is kind of our next category here. This is where I think it's super important to tie in a character's goals and their internal obstacle belief, which we've talked about on the podcast before. Here's why. Because we know that what a character wants and what they believe about the world drive all of their actions, and that drives their personality. If you take a character who believes that change is not safe, that's their internal obstacle belief. They are afraid of change. Every time that they've tried to change, something has gone wrong. That's their internal obstacle, belief. And then you pair them with a personality that's like jovial and outgoing and carefree. You're going to find some dissonance there. It's not going to always line up. You can probably bridge that with some well designed backstory scenes. But I mean, use those beliefs that they have about the world to inform their personality and vice versa. So what are their mannerisms? How do they carry themselves? How do they speak about themselves and speak about other people if you're having trouble? What are personality traits? That one was always I used to Google lists of personality traits to help me come up with what's my character's personality, but start with what it is that they want, what they're willing to do to get it, and what they believe about the world. And I think you're already going to start to see a visual of what their personality is. Yeah, to give you some extra help, there are, like, the big Five. Those are, in quotes, personality traits that are defined by Psychology Today, and they're on a spectrum. So the Big Five traits are usually labeled as openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. And then you have like, a spectrum along each of those different traits. So, for example, openness reflects how a person is receptive to new ideas and how robust and complex their mental health life is, basically. And then there's like a spectrum on that of intellectual curiosity and creative imagination and how open minded they are. And you could have someone that's on very closed, or you could have someone that's very open or somewhere between. So each of these different traits has that spectrum.
[23:55] Emily: Something that I like to do as like a research. I think that this can become a rabbit hole, so be careful and obsession. So be careful. But one of the places where I'll go to get inspiration, especially for secondary characters that I haven't fleshed out all that much, is Myers Briggs Enneagram and Zodiac Categorizations because they're all basically personality categorizations. So sometimes if you can find one of those quick Enneagram or Myers Briggs quizzes, and if you know your character's internal, then you know how they're going to act in certain circumstances. And so you can put that through and then read the reports of what they give you for ideas, just ideas on how those personality attributes can manifest as traits and behaviors.
[24:47] Rachel: Yes.
[24:48] Emily: So this is one of my favorite.
[24:50] Rachel: Things I think you're spot on with, like, this will be the most beneficial to you if you know, they're internal already and what purpose they're going to serve in the story and what they're trying to do. Otherwise, it's not that you can't do it the other way around, but otherwise you end up, I always felt like, very lost trying to come up. Who are they? I don't know. It could be anything. They could be anything. But if you understand at least a little bit of what they want and what they believe. You can drive it and come up with a much stronger end personality versus making up a personality and then trying to fit it like a wrong puzzle piece into your story that just isn't going to fit.
[25:30] Emily: Yeah. And you can get really unique stuff when you start to think about it that way. Like, unique personality traits that really set them apart and make them feel real.
[25:38] Rachel: Yeah.
[25:38] Emily: Okay, so what's the difference between personality traits and quirks and habits? Because I see that's the next on the list, and I'm dying to know.
[25:45] Rachel: Yes. Okay, so personality traits are like what we just talked about, but what I think about quirks and habits are, like, their special something about them that gives them that unique edge that characters usually carry. That it. That, like, makes them the special. The special. Why are they their hero? It might be because of a quirk that they have. So when I was creating this exercise for that client I was talking about, I actually looked this up in a couple of different character development resources. And quirks are an attribute or a feature, but not necessarily a physical feature or a skill that sets your character apart from others. So it's what gives them their special edge. So, for instance, with Katniss, it's her hunting, her both skills. That's what makes Katniss super special in The Games, is because she's got all those hunting and bow skills. And then for, like, Harry Potter, he's got his physical lightning scar, and that's his little quirk. He's got that thing, and that kind of sets him apart from the people around him. So I suggest to create an interesting or unique quirk that gives them a uniqueness that can endear themselves to readers. And this is where you can come up with something super fun, have it show up in their daily life. This isn't just something that you're just slapping onto them kind of like, randomly and then all of a sudden, oh, here my character knits. And then you're, like, halfway through the book. If they knit, awesome, but make that part of their personality. Right. Quirks also can be used to create or solve problems as long as it is intentional. So, like, Katniss's special bow skills, like those solve problems. But that's a very fully developed part of her personality on purpose because that gave her what she needed in order.
[27:40] Emily: To get to well, again, isn't PETA's I just watched this movie.
[27:43] Rachel: Yeah, right. Isn't PETA's that he can pick up.
[27:47] Emily: Like, he's really strong because he worked as a baker and he is used to picking up massive bags of flour. And so that's like, his quirk. Yeah, and that's how he fights.
[27:58] Rachel: You can get so many. It can be, like, literally anything. But I would not give a character tons of quirks because then they just seem like a superhero. Unless you're specifically writing a superhero story where they have a thousand quirks for a reason, but maybe one or two. They can also be good or bad in the most black and white of those terms. But I mean, one of the quirks that I saw when I was researching this was, like, terrible handwriting, and that can lead to miscommunication, but that's like, this person's hallmark thing is that they have terrible handwriting and they get made fun of for it. They could also be like a compulsive liar, where that's what sets them apart from other people. So we like to think quirks can also very much be that exciting, good thing, but they don't necessarily always have to be that way. You can Google tons of lists of these, but I always like to come back to, okay, what do they have it for? What are they doing with it in the story? How is it creating or solving problems or how is it setting them apart from other people?
[29:04] Emily: Yeah, it seems like there's two main things that you want to think about. You want to think about making sure that that quirk makes sense, given the backstory and personality traits that you define for them, because if they have a quirk that's not in line with their other personality traits, it won't make any sense. So it needs to be in line with their backstory and who they are internally and how they behave. And then also it needs to be like you need to have some purpose in the story itself, in the plot, in their ability to solve problems or cause problems.
[29:32] Rachel: Yeah, exactly. And I'll give you another example off the top of my head. I'm just thinking about right now. So I'm reading a mafia romance right now because it's so easy on Kennel, but it just like, download anything. Anyway, I'm reading a romance right now where basically all of the main characters are like, super badass killers. So how are you going to set them apart? What are you going to give them as a little quirk when they're all, like, the top of the line expert marksman in peak physical condition? But one of the male main characters is a really good cook, and so whenever they are having a relaxing moment, he's making food for them. And they talk about it as like, well, he has really good knife skills because he's a killer, but he cooks food in his off time because it helps him feel, like, grounded and connected, and he can focus on something with his hands without killing something. He's creating something. Yeah. So it's like a really cool piece of him, and he's the cook. And then the other characters have their own little quirk, too. But I really like how they highlight this really badass.
[30:43] Emily: It tells you so much. We haven't even read the book, and we already can see so much about.
[30:48] Rachel: Him, and he wants to be like a caretaker, even though. He's like a killer anyway. So you can do something like that and then have it play into the dynamic of a group of people, too. If this is going to be a quirk for them, it's interwoven part of their life. Yeah. Okay, next one. This is I'm going to add like an asterisk here for this last one. If you are writing a romance or you have a romantic subplot, this will be important to you. If romance is not included at all, it's a little less important. But I do think if you have any type of romance in your story, it's important to consider this as part of who they are, their type, who they're attracted to. And what I mean by that is what is their sexual orientation? What do they find stands out in another person physically and emotionally, and what would they say their type is? The reason why I want to highlight this is because just like with Nora, I think what we find attractive says a lot about us as characters. And it's important in romance or romantic subplots that these things are also interconnected to the story. So, for an example, if you're writing a mafia romance, your main character is like a badass woman who can take care of herself. Is she going to be attracted to a badass guy, like an alpha hole, an alpha ahole who doesn't care about anybody himself? Or is she going to be attracted to maybe someone who makes her feel safe, who takes care of her, who takes a little bit of burden off of her shoulders because she's like the backbone of this story. When you think about it like that, it becomes a little easier to make sure your characters gel with one another. And it also plays into that character's personality, like your first character's personality traits. Why do they like what they like? Why is something attractive to them physically or emotionally? How does that play into their beliefs about the world and their goals? And do they lead into that attraction or do they put walls up and try to avoid that attraction? And either way, why would they do that? Does that make sense?
[33:19] Emily: Yeah, it makes total sense. I'm thinking of Addie LaRue and how Henry is attracted to Addie because Henry is someone who really struggles to live fully and to embrace adventure. And Addie is all that she's lived for 300 years. She knows how to continue finding reasons to keep living, and Henry is struggling with that. And so he's attracted to her because she is filling something for him that he needs at a soul level, at a story level.
[33:49] Rachel: Exactly.
[33:50] Emily: Yeah.
[33:51] Rachel: You know, with this, too, is like, I think a lot of people everything you just described right now is an emotional attraction. Yeah, right. And that, I think, is where romance is super successful. I'm talking about like, a successful romance has more than just physical attraction. There is emotional attraction there. And that emotional attraction has baggage and meaning and purpose and XYZ. We are attracted to other people that fill the holes for us, right, that help us feel like better people or that, for whatever reason, we're attracted to them for a reason, and we need to know what that what that reason is. But it's not just you have you have a character who's physically attracted to dark, stern brows, right?
[34:40] Emily: So much more than that.
[34:42] Rachel: She's attracted to so much more than that. She's attracted to the fact that he's.
[34:45] Emily: Really good at his job. She's attracted to the fact that he looks nice. She's attracted to the fact that he's tired and takes his job seriously. Like, they're both career driven people.
[34:56] Rachel: And so you can see even in.
[34:58] Emily: The way that she describes how he physically looks and says he's pretty, yes, you can see all the reasons why she's attracted to him later and why they grow to fall in love.
[35:09] Rachel: That description is just so exactly because it's so much more than just physicality. It's the emotional connection, the emotional meaning. And that's where all of this creates that depth that just draws those readers in, and that's what gives you such the good visual. Like, before we started this call, we talked about how with, like, Addie LaRue, where we have just basically two very basic descriptions of her, but you look at fan art, and it looks so similar. Like, people just get it. They get the vibe because of how it's presented to them on the page as so much more than just, oh, she has auburn hair and freckles. Yeah, right. It's like all of the meaning that's wrapped up in that and how other people see her and how she sees herself. It gives you such a strong visual, and that's all part of personality traits, and that's part of quirks, and that's part of how people view attraction to the vibe. Personality traits. We're repeating ourselves now. All right, so those are kind of the four categories that I really love to dive deeper into descriptive characterization before we wrap up. Anything else to add?
[36:25] Emily: I don't think so.
[36:27] Rachel: Okay, awesome. Well, then, if you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[36:36] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character art. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[36:45] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
