

Perhaps the person being described is in fact thoughtful or perplexed. However, gloomy is a judgment based on the POV character’s opinion. A point-of-view character might describe someone’s face as gloomy. Opinion adjectives reduce word count by telling rather than showing. Opinion Adjectives Excel for Flash Fiction or Action Scenes Study this mini-list, and then develop your own unforgettable descriptors.īestial, bulldoggish, canine, feline, ferret-faced, frog-faced, hawkish, hoggish, hog-jowled, horse-faced, horsey, leonine, rat-nosed, ratty, reptilian, simian, toad-faced, toady, vulpine, vulturish, weasel-faced The face of a CEO whose company practices unscrupulous business tactics might be labelled vulturish, while her sycophant assistant is identified by his toady or toad-faced features. The following are just a few of the many colors that lend depth to characters:Īlbino, anemic, blanched, bloodless, bluish, brown, cadaverous, colorless, crimson, dark, faded, fair, florid, flushed, freckled, green (because of nausea, perhaps), grey, olive, pale, pallid, pasty, pink, purple, red, reddened, rosy, rouged, rubicund, ruddy, sallow, scarlet, scorched, sooty, sunburnt, swarthy, tanned, tawny, wan, waxen, white, yellowĪnimal Adjectives Build on Pre-Conceived PerceptionsĪ miser might be ferret-faced, whereas a glutton could be described as hoggish or hog-jowled. Here are a few shape adjectives to get you started:īlocky, box-shaped, broad, cube-shaped, cubic, diamond-shaped, egg-shaped, expansive, flat, hatchet-faced, heart-shaped, irregular, long, marshmallow-shaped, moon-round, narrow, oblong, oval, pumpkinesque, pyramid-shaped, rectangular, round, square, triangle-shaped, triangular, wideĬolors: Another Tool in the Wordcrafter’s Creativity Palette Irregular features could hint at a nonconformist. Someone with a blocky or cubic face might be a stubborn conservative.

This post provides more than 500 ways for wordcrafters to depict faces.Įxploit Facial Shapes to Augment PersonalitiesĬharacters’ faces can mirror their minds and temperaments. That raises the question Pablo Picasso posed: “Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?” It’s usually the first thing people notice when they meet someone, and is often the body feature they rely on to make snap judgments. Jerome said that the face is the mirror of the mind. (Discover even more words in The Writer’s Body Lexicon.)
