Describing CoC

[pleasure_past]

Is it okay to describe black characters as black as long as that's not the only description I give of them and I also describe the white characters as white? I realized recently that I did this with my NaNoWriMo-which is never going to see the light of day anyway, for lots of other reasons-and assumed it was okay as long as I didn't treat "white"

Comments

[guruburu]

I don't think calling someone Black is inherently bad, so long, as you rightfully state, white isn't assumed to be the default. It really depends on the context or wording-are you calling out their race in a place that doesn't really make sense? Are you relying on "Black" to be the entirely of his physical description? (i.e., a writer forgoing all the purple prose of "shimmering pools of blue" and "gold, silken locks" and simply saying "Mary was white"). Black could be the starting point, but really, if you think about his appearance, and you describe it vividly, could anyone mistake your character for anything other than Black if you didn't specify his race? Try describing him in this way and see if it can stand on its own. Do you have a short excerpt that you could share

[pleasure_past]

Thanks!

The day you posted this reply I went off to my father's and didn't take my laptop, but I'll post some when I get back. Thanks for your thoughts on the issue.

He knows absolutely nothing about his past, and his parents are the sort to get really defensive whenever it's brought up. He won't be getting any help from them. I could speed up his research into his past a little bit, so that I can fit a lot more in a lot sooner, though, and that will probably help drive the point home.

Thanks again for the help!

[pleasure_past]

Alright, so I skimmed what I got done of my NaNo before I quit and found the scene where this particular boy and his (white) foster brother are first introduced. Please keep in mind that this is NaNoWriMo, so I probably wrote it at midnight thinking "must get 2000 words before I go to sleep..." and it's admittedly not my best work.* Because of the circumstances under which my PoV character met these boys, a lot of the description in those paragraphs was actually about their injuries, but I've cut that. It's still the longest physical description they get in one place, though, since I'm admittedly not big on physical description. I know I need work on describing more specific skin tones for characters of all races. (-.-') I also changed out the names, just because in hindsight I'm kind of embarrassed of them.

He was the shortest of the three by at least six inches, and Alice could tell even though their winter coats that he was the scrawniest. He had a round face with dark eyes, and Alice didn't think she'd ever seen darker skin

[guruburu]

I'm admittedly not big on physical description. I know I need work on describing more specific skin tones for characters of all races.

I prefer to give less than more, or at least drop these details throughout a scene and build a character's portrait as I go along. If you feel it's too awkward, stick to what works for you.

If you notice in your excerpt above, you have a string of colors - blond, blue, and navy - in a single sentence. I know this is NaNo writing, but consider when you're relating to friend a funny story of a person that you know but they don't - how often do you describe to them their skin tone, unless it's relevant to the story? The main goal is for you to tell this person the story, but you want to give them just enough information about the character so they can understand the story. Compare:

Dave is this really tall, meaty guy, and I saw him the other day driving around in a Mini Cooper!

to

Dave is this really tall, perhaps eight or nine inches taller than me, meaty guy with tan skin, mousy blond hair, and

[donald_r_oddy]

Am I correct in thinking you are talking about the same character? If so who is thinking of a Korean as black? That seems to be a white USian viewpoint as I've never heard it from anyone else

[pleasure_past]

Oh no! They're different characters; The black character in question was in my NaNoWriMo and the Korean character in question is in something I'm working on now. The PoV-character is actually a white Canadian in her late teens, but I don't think she'd make a mistake like that. This character actually is black, and the PoV character notices an "African" (she isn't the sort of Character who would be able to tell anything more specific than that, but if I'd ever gone farther with the story, I'd have liked to drop hints that he's South African) accent.

I wasn't going to let him learn his birth name, but I suppose if I did a scene from one of his parent's PoVs at the start of the story, I could work it in.

Thank you!