Writing help

[Mango]

I wrote a description of two girls for a story I plan on writing. Please note that the description of the girls are from a perspective of someone else who has a crush on them not touching them. I’d love if people could give me tips on how to make them seem more detailed. I’d love literary devices. Please note the dark yellow I was describing was the color of yellow that an emoji is.

Girl 1: Her freckled pale skin was sparkling in the sunlight. She had the prettiest light green eyes; the kind of eyes you could get lost staring into. Her face was beautiful, she had a little bit of sparkly, natural make-up and a cute button nose. Her eyebrows were on fleek and her lips were pursed into a small smile. Her curly red hair was pulled into a low ponytail clipped with a sunflower hair clip that matched her white romper with sunflowers on it. She was wearing cute sunflower earrings to match her outfit. Her nails were painted yellow. She was wearing a pair of Burkenstocks.

Girl 2: the roots of her hair were dark brown, it was dyed blonde, but the tips of her hair was a dark yellow that looked quite unnatural. Her hair was quite short, it was no longer than two inches below her ears. Her hair was a bit puffed up and messy. She had dark brown eyes, they were soft like a cow’s eyes. She was wearing a white tee shirt and a pair of overalls with the left shoulder strap hanging down instead of being clipped. She had a purple hand print on the front pocket that appeared to be done with paint. She was wearing dark brown hiking boots. She had a red and green flannel tied around her waist.

[Dust]

@Okapi


My best advice is that sometimes less detail is better!

You should try to give the reader a mental image rather than list off every single trait and detail about them. It's good for your writing development to learn how to describe people without going into insane amounts of it! Of course - there's nothing wrong with long descriptions, occasionally, but you generally want to stray away from taking a whole paragraph for one character. Give the reader a little creative freedom! Anything you want set in stone make obviously clear, but maybe do so through more appealing sentences Otherwise, give loose descriptions - you don't need to specify hair length or anything of the sort UNLESS it's a DEFINING feature.

As an example of Girl 1:

"As the warm sunlight graced her freckled skin, I couldn't help but notice the beautiful shine of her eyes - light green pools of depth that I couldn't help but get lost in. Everything seemed perfect about her. Maybe I was just biased, but the way she managed to tone her make-up to contour her face was phenomenal! Not to mention, the cute curve of her button nose. As she pursed her lips into a small smile, I felt my heart leap from my chest, my cheeks reddening with rosy warmth."

and so on and so forth. You know? You want to set the scene, have interact with the characters and display their inner thoughts (if you're writing in first person, however it can work in third!).


The use of "her" is waaaayyy too much. Generally speaking, reading the same first word over and over again is quite dreary to readers. Try to explore more possibilities by starting them differently! While you've done a good job avoiding run-on sentences, you can definitely lengthen them.

That's all I can really think of right now.... but that's the advice that came to mind immediately o: