Q u o t e:
"(...) to give a description of the outer characteristics of your character. Therefor this description should only contain features that other characters can recognize by sight. This does not include the background story or anything that another character can only know with further knowledge of your character's mind or past."
So what makes a "good" description, keeping the above in mind? I don't claim to be an expert or authority, but here are my thoughts. Constructive feedback is more than welcome!
The two basic principles of this guide are:
1) The description should be as long as necessary, but as short as possible.
A single, concise paragraph can contain as much as or more information than a whole page of flowery prose while also being better at getting the point across, and easier for others to remember. In my experience, the most common cause for overlong description is cramming the character's backstory into it. If you avoid that and your description still fills half the screen or more, consider shortening it. What features really need to go into the description to give the desired impression, and what is fluff and could be left out? Could the necessary parts be phrased in a more consise way?
2) Remember that the viewer is an observer, not a mind-reader.
Observers know only what they see, hear or smell now, not what happened to your character in the past or what is on your character's mind. So it is a good idea to limit your description to physical attributes and consistent, recurring habits and resist the temptation to include an explanation for everything. If a feature in the description catches someone's attention, they will ask about it -- creating a nice springboard for RP which wouldn't exist if the description already spelled out everything there is to know about a character.
Some examples to illustrate the point:
Bad: "He has a scar on his left palm because his evil uncle tortured him with a hot poker."
Better: "He has a scar on his left palm that looks like a deep burn mark."
Bad: "Her golden locket is a priceless heirloom that has been in the family for ten generations. Every time she thinks about her family, she plays with that locket and hopes they are all doing well."
Better: "She wears a golden locket which looks well-worn but also well-cared for, and which she touches fondly from time to time with a slightly absent, wistful smile on her face."
(Even better would be to simply write "She wears a golden locket which looks well-worn but also well-cared for" and remember to play out touching it with an absent, wistful smile in /emotes.)
What (not) to include?
In the interest of keeping the description short, there is no need to include any aspect of your character that matches the in-game avatar or has another in-game representation. An observer already would already know that, for example, she has long black hair tied into a ponytail. And if she has a feisty worg pup called Scruff who follows her everywhere, taking the pet out and playing its antics and your character's reactions in /say and /emote is far more poignant than a line in her description.
Here are some things I'd avoid putting in a description:
- hair, eye and skin color (unless they differ significantly from the in-game character model)
- clothing
- pets and mounts
- peculiarities of speech: a dialect, stutter, lisp, etc. (these are best played out)
And some things worth including:
- the character's voice (rough, musical, loud/soft, etc.)
- what he or she smells like
- jewelry, unless it's already visible on the in-game avatar
- the general state of the character's hair and/or clothing (dishevelled, well-groomed, etc.)
- posture (straight and confident, slumped, etc.)
- height, weight and body type
- how old or young the character looks
With regard to the last two points, though, it is better to give a rough estimation rather than precise figures since an observer is likely unable to discern the exact height, weight or age. Phrases like "tall for a dwarf", "muscular and heavyset", "youthful" or "apparently in his late middle age" work much better.
Some other points of consideration
1) First and foremost, is the description logical and appropriate for the setting? For example, night elf women are tall and athletic, so it would make no sense to write that your Kaldorei is "tiny and delicate, even for an elf". Check the lore to see if your image of your character makes sense or not.
2) As always, avoid power-emoting, also known as god-moding or powerplaying. This refers to any attempts to take control away from other players and dictate how their characters view or react to yours. Two recurring examples of this problem are "she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen" and "his mere presence makes everyone uneasy". We all want others to get a "proper" impression of our characters, but we cannot force it. Besides, not everyone reacts to a given person in the same way.
3) [Courtesy to Miriah of Scarshield Legion] Terms of aesthetic worth (such as beautiful, pretty, handsome, ugly, plain etc.) are entirely subjective, even among members of the same race -- and even moreso when you keep in mind that WoW features vastly different species. What is "beautiful" to a human would leave a night elf, troll or draenei cold. Instead of using such "empty" words, try to describe just what you think is attractive or ugly about your character. This could be a glossy, healthy coat for a Tauren, a troll's big, lovingly polished and sharpened tusks, or a pock-marked, scarred, broken-jawed wreck of a face. Remember to keep the description short and to the point, though (see point 6, below).
4) Be extremely careful with the word "you". It can be perfectly harmless, but it can also make your description skirt close to or slide straight into power-emoting. In my opinion, it's always better to find an alternative way of phrasing a sentence.
5) Avoid sentences that describe your character reacting to an observer. For example: "She gives you a dazzling smile as she notices you looking at her." It is quite unlikely the character would do this even when she is fighting for her life against a bunch of ogres, involved in a tensely dramatic or tragic RP situation, or if the person looking at her is a stinking, partly decayed walking corpse from the opposite faction.
6) Keep your feet on the ground. Flowery, purple prose or excessively dramatic phrasing tends to not only bloat a description needlessly, but can also evoke undesired reactions in the reader. Hands up, who here has not laughed out loud at various over-the-top descriptions of female characters who are so impossibly beautiful that they come across as the author's personal pornographic fantasy, or male characters who are described as so impossibly scary-cool that they could wilt Wolverine, Sargeras AND a whole coven of vampires with a single sneer? Less can be more, sometimes.
7) Keep secrets secret. If your character is hiding something, don't put it in his description or title for all to see -- or if you do, at least don't get upset when random people react to it. Also, keep in mind what is visible to observers and what is not. Unless your character runs around naked, others would not see that he has a tattoo of a red dragon on his butt.
8) Lastly, please proofread your description. Nobody is perfect, but an honest attempt to use your best grammar, spelling and punctuation is a sign of courtesy in a text-based environment and can help viewers form a good first impression -- while a garbled mess of leetspeech without capitalization and punctuation is sure to put a lot of people off immediately.
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