15 Examples of Character Descriptions by Great Authors

To write great character descriptions, you must study the masters. Looking to examples set by great authors can help inspire you and provide direction for your writing.

Deliberate Practice is also critical in developing your skills. Take the time to analyze the way authors depict and describe characters, paying close attention to the words they use and the techniques they employ. Then, practice writing your own character descriptions, honing your craft with each attempt. With patience, persistence, and a willingness to learn, you can develop the skills needed to create captivating character descriptions that captivate your readers.

In this article we'll first summarize how to describe characters in fiction, then take a look at what we can learn from reading examples of character descriptions by great authors, before giving you 15 examples of character descriptions by great authors.

Before we start ...
do you want to write fiction faster,
while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? 

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How To Describe Characters in Fiction

I want to make the characters in my story come alive. How do I write character descriptions in a story? Consider 3 layers of character description as illustrated in the diagram below:

• SKIN - the “surface” level, the externals

• FLESH & BONES - “below surface”, things you could research about a character

• SOUL - the “deep core” that you could only know if the character reveals this to you (or you steal their private journal)

In addition, you should consider:

• TAG & QUIRKS  - a main “tag”, something that will be memorable and immediately paint the character in the readers’ mind, along with other "quirks" to flesh out the character
  
  
• LAYER CAKE - layers, things that are unexpected at every level: surface, below the surface, and deep core
  
  
• ACTION - describe your character in action
  
  
• CONTEXT - who is the character in context of the story and in relationship with other characters?
  
  
• WEAVE - weave in the character description, sprinkling it, scattering the information seeds over time as the character takes part in the story
  
  
• CHARACTER ARC - how does the character description change as the character changes during the story?

Check out this article to delver deeper into writing character description:

It's Alive! How to Write Character Descriptions 

What We Learn From Reading Examples of Character Descriptions by Great Authors

As a writer of fiction, you can learn a lot from reading examples of character descriptions by great authors. Through their writing, you can get a sense of how to develop your own characters, making them more vibrant, unique, and memorable to your readers.

One of the key takeaways from reading great character descriptions is the importance of including detailed information and specific facts. This means going beyond the surface level details of physical appearance and delving into the character's personality, history, relationships, and motivations. By providing readers with a full picture of your character, you can create a more immersive reading experience that draws them in and makes them invested in your story.

Another aspect to pay attention to when studying character descriptions is the use of language that not only describes what the character looks like, but also evokes a sense of mood, tone, and emotion. By choosing words and phrases that convey a specific feeling or atmosphere, you can create a more nuanced and engaging portrayal of your character.

Overall, reading great character descriptions can teach you a lot about the craft of writing. Take the time to analyze how great authors approach character development, and use their insights to inform your own writing. With practice and attention to detail, you can create characters that come alive on the page and capture the imaginations of your readers.

Now, on to the examples. 

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1. Dashiell Hammett: "The Gray Man" (from "Red Harvest") 

Dashiell Hammett is a master of the "hardboiled" style of writing. The character he is describing (tagged as the "gray man") is a relatively minor player in "Red Harvest", but a great example of the hardboiled style which is fast-paced, earthy, vivid, and slangy.

Before we even get to the "gray man", notice the way Hammett introduces the "thirty or forty men and sprinkling of women" in the first paragraph. In one sentence he gives us quick tags of a whole crowd (or "congregation"):

• Men from the mines and smelters still in their working clothes
• Gaudy boys from pool rooms and dance halls
• Sleek men with slick pale faces
• Men with the dull look of respectable husbands
• A few just as respectable and dull women
• Some ladies of the night

Instead of just describing it as a "crowd of people" he paints a picture of people from all walks of life (people who would not normally be in the same place) as they are gathered around the Police Department.

Then the "gray man" is introduced (we will later learn that his name is Bill Quint and that he's a Union organizer). He's not quite part of the crowd, standing "on the edge of the congregation." 

Hammett uses "gray" as the repeated tag, but with the "layer cake" of the "red Windsor tie" as a contrast. That red tie makes the rest of him even more gray by comparison. 

We get some additional clues about his appearance:

• Rumpled clothes
• Square-set
• Thick lips
• Broad face, thick-featured and intelligent
• Age - around 30

We also get some clues about the gray man's personality:

• Cautious and deliberate ("he looked at me carefully" ... "as if he wanted to be sure that the information was going into safe hands")
• Hard, perhaps dangerous ("His eyes were as gray as his clothes, but not so soft.")
• A quick-witted wise-guy - in reply to the question "Who shot him?", he says: "Somebody with a gun."
• Intelligent - his face is described as "intelligent" and we see that he is thoughtful and quick-witted

 2. Megan Abbott: "Gloria Denton" (from "Queenpin")

Continuing in the hardboiled style: Megan Abbott is a student of the form — in fact, she has a Ph.D in Literature, where her thesis was about hardboiled fiction, which she later used as the basis for her non-fiction book "The Street Was Mine".

"Queenpin" is an Edgar Award-winning novel set in the traditional hardboiled era (not specified, but probably 1940s or 1950s), told by an unnamed narrator, and focused on the central character of the (fictional) mob Queenpin, Gloria Denton. 

Notice how Abbott uses a "tag" about Gloria right in the first sentence: "I want the legs" — and then contrasts the youthful appearance of Gloria's legs to other features that show her true age ("the slightly worn hands", "the beginning tugs of skin"). 

Woven throughout we also get a description (of sorts) of the unnamed narrator. This is not a physical description, other than that she has "skinny matchsticks" legs and is in her twenties, since — compared to Gloria (who is in her 40s) — the narrator is "two decades her junior". What we really get is the narrator's "soul" (her deep core wants and needs), starting from that first sentence ("I want the legs"), signaling that she wants to be Gloria, to become the Queenpin herself ("I wanted more. Give me more.")

3. Zadie Smith: "Clara Bowden" (from "White Teeth")

Moving on from 1940s and '50s America to 1970s London, the description of Clara Bowden from Zadie Smith's "White Teeth" uses a memorable tag which is also a great example of a "layer cake" (something unexpected): Clara is described as "the most beautiful thing he had ever seen" and then ... 

• "She gave him a wide grin that revealed possibly her one imperfection. A complete lack of teeth in the top of her mouth." 

Clara is also a great example of using a character's voice (in this case a Jamaican immigrant's accent) as part of the description:

• "Man…dey get knock out,” she lisped, seeing his surprise. “But I tink to myself: come de end of de world, d’Lord won’t mind if I have no toofs.”
  
  

4. Neil Gaiman: "Mr. Vandemar, Mr. Croup, and Mr. Ross" (from "Neverwhere")

We're still in London, but the strange and magical London of Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere."

The standout part of this description is the tongue-in-cheek address directly to the reader: "There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart", followed by:

• Height - "Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup"
• Eyes - "Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar’s eyes are brown"
• Accessories - "while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelry"
• Unexpected (and somewhat nonsensical) juxtaposition - "Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry" — we would have expected that the contrast would be that Mr. Croup likes words and Mr. Vandemar is a man of few words (and we already know that Mr. Croup "likes words" from the interactions above, where he's quite wordy, in contrast to Mr. Vandemar's one-word "Sings?"), but instead we get the strange, unexpected, incongruous "contrast" that Mr. Vandemar is "always hungry"
• Punchline - "Also, they look nothing at all alike."

Mr. Ross is described as "huge", "grubby", "quite hairless", and in contrast to the other two men's "elegant black suits", he wears a "filthy T-shirt" and "crusted blue jeans." 

We are told that all three men are dangerous, in that Mr. Ross "liked to kill things, and he was good at it" but Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar are amused by this, implying that they are much worse — Ghenghis Khan to Mr. Ross's "young Mongol who had recently pillaged his first village or burnt his first yurt."

We also know that Mr. Ross is a patsy, unaware that he is about to be used by the other two killers (like a canary in a coal mine) — "He was a canary, and he never knew it."

5. Tony Morrison: "124" (from "Beloved")

In "Beloved", Toni Morrison gives us a haunted house as a character: "124" (full name: "124 Bluestone Road") who later in the novel will incarnate as the ghostly "Beloved".

We get a little bit of external description of the house (it's "gray and white"), but mostly it's the "soul" of the house we get to know: "spiteful", "full of a baby's venom", "the lively spite the house felt for them". 

6. Gillian Flynn: "Libby Day" (from "Dark Places")

From the first line of "Dark Places", Gillian Flynn describes the deep core ("soul") of the main character, Libby Day, making her key characteristic ("meanness") real, tangible:

• "I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it."
• "Maybe a grudging curve of the lips where a smile should be. Maybe."
• "Draw a picture of my soul, and it’d be a scribble with fangs."

We also get hints of the backstory, explaining (in part) her meanness: that's she's an orphan, her whole family murdered, and that perhaps ... "It's the Day blood. Something is wrong with it."

7. Harper Lee: "Dill" (from "To Kill a Mockingbird")

The description of "Dill" (full name "Charles Baker Harris") from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" is done completely through dialogue. 

In the back and forth between Dill and Jem, we get just enough physical description. Dill is very small, seven years old, but small enough to be four-and-a-half years old. Mostly we get Dill's precocious spirit.

Fun fact: Dill was based on Truman Capote who was a childhood friend of Harper Lee.

8. John Steinbeck: "Tom Joad" (from "The Grapes of Wrath") 

Tom Joad is the main character in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath". When we first meet him, he is newly released from prison, where he was convicted of homicide (in self-defense). But in this initial description, we don't get that background, and we don't even get his name (he is just "the hitch-hiker" for several pages).

What we get is a very detailed external description, first his face, then his hands, then his overall shape in the way he fits into his clothes. Now that you know he's just been paroled from prison, the clues are there in the brand new (but cheap) clothes, issued to him as he was released.

9. Alice Walker: "Shug Avery" (from "The Color Purple")

In "The Color Purple", Alice Walker writes in the form of diary entries addressed to "Dear God" by Celie, a 14-year old Black girl living in Georgia at the beginning of the 20th century. 

Shug Avery is described by Celie as glamorous :

• "She got on a red wool dress and chestful of black beads."
• "A shiny black hat with what look like chickinhawk feathers curve down side one cheek, and she carrying a little snakeskin bag, match her shoes."
• "She look so stylish it like the trees all round the house draw themself up tall for a better look."

At the same time, Celie can tell that Shug is a mess:

• "Now I see she stumble, tween the two men. She don’t seem that well acquainted with her feets."
• "Close up I see all this yellow powder caked up on her face. Red rouge."
• "She look like she ain’t long for this world but dressed well for the next."
• "Under all that powder her face black as Harpo. She got a long pointed nose and big fleshy mouth. Lips look like black plum."
• "Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle."

And Shug is mean:

• "Eyes big, glossy. Feverish. And mean. Like, sick as she is, if a snake cross her path, she kill it."
• When she looks at Celie: "You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain’t believed it."

So from the beginning we have a complex character in Shug Avery. As the reader, are we supposed to admire her, pity her, fear her, hate her? Yes, all of that, and eventually we (and Celie) will love her. 

Shug Avery is a great example of a flawed character, complex, believable, and memorable.

10. Raymond Chandler: "Carmen Sternwood" (from "The Big Sleep")

In Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep", private detective Philip Marlowe has been called to the mansion of General Sternwood. Here he meets the youngest daughter, Carmen Sternwood. Some of the standout parts of the description:

• "She walked as if she were floating."
• "Her eyes were slategray, and had almost no expression when they looked at me."
• "She came over near me and smiled with her mouth and she had little sharp predatory teeth, as white as fresh orange pits and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin too taut lips."

• "Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her."

• "She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air."

11. Hilary Mantel: "Cardinal Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell" (from "Wolf Hall")

In Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize-winning "Wolf Hall", the story is told in close third-person from the point of view of Thomas Cromwell.  

In this scene, we get a nice portrait of Cromwell's patron, mentor, and friend, Cardinal Wolsey:

• "He makes a great, deep, smiling sigh, like a leopard settling in a warm spot."
• "The cardinal, at fifty-five, is still as handsome as he was in his prime."
• "His height impresses; his belly, which should in justice belong to a more sedentary man, is merely another princely aspect of his being, and on it, confidingly, he often rests a large, white, beringed hand."
• "A large head — surely designed by God to support the papal tiara — is carried superbly on broad shoulders;" 

The description of Thomas Cromwell is within the same scene, a few pages later:  

• A little over forty years old
• "He is a man of strong build, not tall."
• "Various expressions are available to his face, and one is readable: an expression of stifled amusement."
• "His hair is dark, heavy and waving, and his small eyes, which are of very strong sight, light up in conversation."
• And then, after these preliminaries, comes a great flurry of description that shows Cromwell to be a man who is capable of handling himself in any situation: "His speech is low and rapid, his manner assured; he is at home in courtroom or waterfront, bishop’s palace or inn yard. He can draft a contract, train a falcon, draw a map, stop a street fight, furnish a house and fix a jury. He will quote you a nice point in the old authors, from Plato to Plautus and back again. He knows new poetry, and can say it in Italian. He works all hours, first up and last to bed. He makes money and he spends it. He will take a bet on anything." 

12. Joyce Carol Oates: Marilyn Monroe's absent father (from "Blonde")

In "Blonde", Joyce Carol Oates tells the fictionalized story of Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson. 

Marilyn Monroe never met her father, but in this scene, her mother, Gladys, shows the young child Norma Jeane a photograph of the absent father:

• "You have his sexy blue eyes."
• And then in a rhythmic chant that repeats "the man": "How long, then, mother and daughter stared! In reverent silence contemplating
  • the man-in-the-picture-frame,
  • the man-in-the-photograph,
  • the man-who-was-Norma-Jeane’s-father,
  • the man who was darkly handsome,
  • the man with sleek oiled wings of smooth thick hair,
  • the man with a pencil-thin mustache on his upper lip,
  • the man with pale shrewd just-perceptibly drooping eyelids.
  • The man with fleshy almost-smiling lips,
  • the man whose gaze coyly refused to lock with theirs,
  • the man with a fist of a chin and a proud hawk nose and an indentation in his left cheek that might have been a dimple, like Norma Jeane’s. Or a scar."

13. Charles Dickens: "Ebenezer Scrooge" (from "A Christmas Carol")

In "A Christmas Carol", Charles Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge with words that paint a picture of the cold, miserly man:

• "... a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone"
• "... a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!"
• "Hard and sharp as flint...."
• "... secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." 
• And then a flurry of words that describe his coldness: "The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."

In the dialogue with his nephew, we then get the verbal "tag" that will be repeated throughout the story:

• "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"

14. Jane Austen: "Mr. Darcy" (from "Pride and Prejudice")

In "Pride and Prejudice", Jane Austen contrast the pleasant, easy, lively, unreserved Mr. Bingley with the proud, disagreeable Mr. Darcy.

First, Mr. Darcy is admired, based on his physical appearance and social status:

• "Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien, and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year."
• "The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Bingley, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening..."

But then ...

• "... his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud; to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend."
• "His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and everybody hoped that he would never come there again."

15. Leo Tolstoy: "Natasha Rostova" at age 13, 16, and 21 (from "War and Peace")

In Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" we see the character Natasha Rostova go through a character arc.

13-year old Natasha is described as:

• A "black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl"
• "... not pretty but full of life"

16-year old Natasha, dancing at her first ball, is even more exuberant and full of life:

• "Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet in their white satin dancing-shoes did their work swiftly, lightly, and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic happiness."

But then, at 21, Natasha is changed at her core:

• "She had grown thin and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable: she was unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life, when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly interrogative.”

Resources

MY FAVORITE ALL-PURPOSE RESOURCE

The Writer's Treasure Chest - everything in one place, curated, organized, this is a great reference for all things writing craft, with tons of prompts, plot/character generators and other tools to inspire you to write a great story with complex, believable and memorable characters.

RELATED ARTICLES

As you write your (flawed) characters, here are some articles that will be helpful as you work on all the aspects of the writing craft and your writing process: 

• Write Fiction Faster! — How to Speed Up Your Story Writing 
  
  
• Need a Great Idea for Your Next Story? Try the Story IDEA Formula
  
  
• From Idea to Story: 3 Methods to Develop Your Story Idea 
  
  
• How to Write Characters Who Stick in the Reader's Mind 
  
  
• What Makes a Good Story? — Great Scenes! Here's How to Write Them
  
  
• Flash Fiction: How To Use It To Supercharge Your Writing 
  
  
• Blast Through Writer's Block: How to Get Unstuck 
  
  
• Find Your Stagecoach — How to Master the Art of Writing Fiction

FREE COURSE, GUIDE AND WORKBOOK

Do you want to write fiction faster, while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? Check out this link to the "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook, which comes with a companion course with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.