Saturday Seven! (Rapture)

It's Saturday Seven!

This week I've chosen a scene from RAPTURE by Jacqueline Frank. Daenaira has grown up being treated like a slave and betrayed time and again by her family. She's chosen as the new Handmaiden for the head priest of Sanctuary.

During her first meeting with Magnus, he informs her of her new role and the responsibilities that come with being his new handmaiden. She thinks it's just another form of slavery, the rules set just another way of controlling her. They argue...

"We haven't settled this!" she hissed at him. "Don't you dare walk away in the middle of an argument."
"What are you going to do if I do?" he snapped irritably. "I'm done. We'll talk when you are rational and clothed."
"Oh! Fuck you!"
That mouth. Quite the weapon, just as he had suspected. And just distracting enough for her to throw all her kinetic force into a huge shove that sent him staggering back off balance.
Magnus hit the bath with the most satisfying splash Daenaira had ever heard. Uniform, weapons; the whole kit and caboodle. She probably shouldn't have jumped and cheered. She should have been running really fast. Instead she waited for him to surface, hands on her hips and a smug smile on her lips.
"That will teach you to brush me off, you big jerk. And for making me swear at a priest!"
She held her chin up and marched back to her room. She found her blouse on the floor and tugged it on quickly. This time, there was no way he could be silent as he approached her. For one, he was streaming water. For another, he was rip-roaring mad, and there was no mistaking it in his step. Just as he reached for her, she figured they were going to kill each other. They were both so dominant they would end up tearing each other apart to make a point.

RAPTURE
The Shadowdwellers live in a realm of darkness and sensuality, where order is prized and sin must be punished. Yet for Magnus, the head priest of Sanctuary, salvation rests with the one woman who will entice him into breaking his every rule…
She was his ultimate temptation... 
Magnus is a man of contradictions—a spiritual leader in a deadly warrior’s body. Rules and order are for enforcing and visions must be followed—even if that means freeing a beautiful slave and making her his reluctant handmaiden. But she isn’t the only unenthusiastic partner. Betrayed once before, Magnus can barely bring himself to trust another woman.
Yet everything about Daenaira’s fiery innocence compels him time and again to cross every line he’s ever drawn for himself.
Daenaira grew up hearing tales of the fearsome priest named Magnus. But no one can convince her that men of honor truly exist. She soon learns that Magnus is very real—every inch of him—and so is the treachery that surrounds them. Beneath Sanctuary’s calm surface, an enemy is scheming to unleash havoc on the Shadowdwellers, unless Magnus trusts in a union ordained by fate, and sealed by unending bliss…

CRAFT: Weaving character descriptions into narrative

As a beginning writer one of the things I had trouble with was describing my characters, so the reader could form an impression of them, but without resorting to using cliched or boring descriptions or clunky narrative.

Cliched descriptions might include:

• her lips were as red as rubies
• he was tall, dark and handsome
• she had long, red hair that fell to her waist
• the color of his eyes reminded her of the sky

(and I'm sure you can think of others).

Clunky narrative reads like a checklist of attributes or something you read in an encyclopedia, eg. starting at the head and descending to the toes.

The downfall of doing it like this will do a couple of things to your writing. A heap of narrative inserted into the body of story runs the risk of slowing down the pace. And if it reads like an encyclopedia list of attributes it might also pull the reader out of your story.

But how can you insert character descriptions and avoid this? The best way - check out your fav.author's books to see how they weave it into their books.

Here's a few examples descriptive narrative from some of my favourite author's work.

EXAMPLE 1 - the first comes from Denise Rossetti's THE LONE WARRIOR (Ch.1)

Death padded in pursuit, slipping through the double shadows without a sound. Like the worst nightmare Mehcredi could imagine, except this was all too horribly real. How much longer she could elude him, the man with the hunter's face?

Panting, she glanced over her shoulder at the dark figure pacing behind. As he drifted from one patch of shadow to the next, something pale gleamed where the light of the Sibling Moons tangled in his black hair. Feathers worked into a long braid, and . . . bones?

Were they finger bones?

We're in Mehcredi's POV and she's fleeing from another person - see how we already have an impression of this person from this description yet it's part of the action, not a "laundry list" of features?

Denise has woven the description into the narrative and used a question to make it stand out.

The shock thrilled down her nerves, making her head swim and her vision blur, but her long legs carried her away at a swift, stumbling run, lurching down a narrow alley, deeper into the reeking slum the people of Caracole called the Melting Pot.

 Again - action coupled with a description, this time of Mehcredi - the inference is that she's tall.

Turning to fight never entered her head. Gods, she'd barely scraped through the First Circle tests as it was, and her first real commission for the Guild of Assassins had been an unqualified disaster. No, she wouldn't have a chance.

Mehcredi uses a curse-phrase "Gods", and from the way she thinks of herself we know she's not a very good assassin.

She couldn't hear his footfall, couldn't detect any movement, but his presence behind her was a tangible force. Every cell in her body sensed him with the animal instinct of the hunted—his predatory focus, the grim relish with which he anticipated her death.

See how her impressions of him tell the reader something more about him?

From her left came the frantic click of claws on the cobbles, a soft whining noise. That damn dog! She might as well wave a flaming torch above her head and be done with it.

"Get lost," she hissed, glancing around for something to throw. "Scat!" But the little animal only skittered aside, continuing to flank her.

Mehcredi twisted and doubled back. One hand pressed to the stitch in her side, she reeled around a corner and inevitably, there he stood, waiting pitiless. He wasn't a great deal taller than she was, but much broader. Lithe and strong and graceful, where she was long-boned and clumsy and doomed.

Narrative again, but this time Denise has drawn a comparison between her two characters so we get more of a description of both.

She opened her mouth to shriek, to plead, but long-fingered hands fastened around her throat.

One simple description in an action sentence.

As he slowly increased the pressure, digging painfully into the soft flesh under her jaw, the man smiled, lips pulling back from white teeth.

Same again.

The expression gave him an eerie, chilling beauty. He could have been an avenging angel or a handsome demon. Either way, those elegant brutal hands were the sure instruments of her death.

More narrative and from this we know this guy is good looking.

EXAMPLE 2 - from THE LONE WARRIOR by Denise Rossetti (Ch.1)

"Your skin is fine enough, I suppose. And your coloring is certainly unusual. Silver eyes are rare in the Isles and unknown in Trinitaria." He made his face bland. "You'd bring good creds in a southern slave market."

Denise uses dialogue this time to convey and build a physical description of Mehcredi.

EXAMPLE 3 - from RAPTURE by Jacqueline Frank (Ch.4)

Dae (the heroine) is confronting Magnus (the hero) over how he's to treat her.

"Because of that bitch that bit you?"
That made him smile for some reason. He supposed it was the way she stripped the bullshit away from everything and laid it all out the way it was. He could get used to that. Although he wasn't sure about the rest of Sanctuary.
"Yes," he agreed.
"Well, just keep in mind, I'm a whole new kind of bitch, okay? And I won't bite unless one of two things happens."
"I'm listening."
"First, you don't ever try to cut my balls off just so you can be top dog over me. I won't do it to you if you don't do it to me..."

Listen to the tone of Dae's dialogue - what's the impression you get here of her? Strong, a bit rough round the edges, a woman not afraid to stand up to someone?

The author has done this through the use of dialogue AND she's made it a part of plot in the story rather than as something entirely separate.

So, go dig out one of your favourite reads, analyze how the author inserted a description of their character, then try it out yourself.

Have fun!