Physical Description and my Super Secret Summer Scheme

Today we're going to talk a little bit about description. As a storyteller, I think description is one of my weaknesses (though let's be fair, my strongest strength is an average to below-average command of plot...). I've noticed it more and more in my RPGs which makes it really hard to set a good mood. I noticed this very strongly the other night when I was using a description from a module, for a body orchard (a grove of trees etc. which are basically made out of human flesh. Flowers w/ ears, trees with eyes and blood running down the trunk...it's a poignant image.)

So the trick of course is to balance plot and exposition. Margaret Roland wrote a post about this last week in the Magic District blog. Her big comment was that you have to balance what hte reader needs to know and what the reader already knows. Stephen King mentions in his book On Writing that adverbs should only be used if they change the readers perception of the event. Chuck Wendig makes a similar post in his blog post on physical description. His argument is that you pick one salient feature of your character, something that's exaggerated, and bring that description into play. What distinguishes your character from any other person. Jim Butcher mentions similar ideas in his post on Characters, between his arguments for exaggeration and his tags & traits model.

So I've come up with a plan to help with this, at least with my characters. We'll try and talk more about scenes and scenery in another post. So for characters, I have a hard time holding a good image of the character in my head. Certain aspects are usually exaggerated traits stolen from people I know IRL, which is a dangerous road to walk down since if they don't like the character, that's an issue. So despite my complete lack of any artistic ability, I'm going to try and create a visual representation of some key characters. Probably going to select a few characteristic poses, and maybe a couple other aspects. I'm going to use Blender, an open source 3d modeling software. I've been watching tutorials in much of my spare time for this week, and I think I've got a handle on the workflow and controls. I started modeling a simple cruciform sword, and I might post it online once I've added some more detail to it.

The trick with modeling people, at least at first from what I've seen from these tutorials, is working from a good set of reference images. At least 2 shots, one from the front and side in the same pose. The one people seem to like to work with is the Da Vinci pose, that he used to illustrate the proportions of hte ideal man. The problem is I haven't managed to find some reference images, and there's a few reasons I can't really ask anyone, most obvious being that the less clothes the better.

So the current plan is to try and get some generic body references, and then use whatever pictures I have (either on my hdd or facebook), to try and get some better individual detail. So my homework for the week is going to be to try and find images I can use for the bodies, one stock male and one stock female, and then we'll see about modeling that first. The other thing I'm doing in the short term is starting to think about poses, and props, for each of the 3-4 characters I want to model. Current plan is my 3 protagonists and my main antagonist, and then I'll go from there. May also do the lead character from my short story, but we'll see how things go.