How J K Rowling Describes a Character

He had a lighting bolt scar on his head, with messy hair and thick glasses fixed in the middle with sellotape.

I didn’t look in a book or online for that description, I drew it from my memory whole as a description on Harry Potter. When you think about it, that is pretty amazing. I read the Potter series years and years ago, and although I’ve reread it in the last 5 years, It was way back in 2015. So how does Rowling write such vivid physical descriptions?

Who wore half-moon glasses in the series? Who had bushy brown hair? Which character had lank, greasy hair? Whose eye could look inside their own head? In each case, you can easily name these characters based on their unique (in the series) physical descriptions.

So how does Rowling leave us with these indelible characters? She adhears to a simple rule:

“If you want to write a physical description of your character that sticks with your audience, focus on the single most interesting characteristic, and build your character around that.”

P. S. Hoffman

Harry Potter had a lighting scar on his forehead – and the other physical descriptions of him begin with features adjacent to it. Dumbledore’s glasses, Snape’s hair, Mad Eye Moody, and even relatively normal Hermione Grainger with her bushy brown hair all had unique features. And those features didn’t just describe their looks. Hermione’s hair suggests she isn’t a girl who thinks beauty is the most important trait in a person. Mad Eye’s eye shows how paranoid he is. Snape’s hair is an indication of how Harry sees him. What Rowling is doing is describing the character physically, but also showing the reader what the character’s personality is like in some way, sometimes through Harry Potter’s eyes.

I’ve been trying to do this in my current work in Kingdom of the Lion. My main character, Pryad, has wild black hair that looks like a lion’s mane. Shadanar is the size of an auroch or oxen and Zababu has a face that looks fairly hawk-like. I have mentioned these once or twice in the first chapter, so how do I go on to develop and cement these descriptions in my reader’s minds?

Well, I shouldn’t let an opportunity to mention these features pass by. Rowling uses every opportunity to cement these descriptions in every scene that characters appear, especially earlier in the series.

I used to write descriptions of characters like a laundry list of normal attributes. Reese, the Main Character from my first (and as yet unfinished) novella, had a Burberry cap, tracksuit with a broken zip, and a narrow, weaselly face. Other characters were less descriptive than that – one having dark skin, curly brown hair and brown eyes. YAWN!

When you read a list like this: Height; Hair colour; Eye colour; Skin colour; Body shape; Mouth shape; Nose shape, fingernail shape, hair length, etc.

Does this actually help you visualise a character? Rarely.

P. S. Hoffman

P. S. Hoffman, in their great article about describing characters, points out that most readers skim over these sorts of lists, read the words, forget the words and insert their own ideas instead. And they should since there is nothing there for them to hang their imagination on to.

Ellen Brock opens her video with examples from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone quite independent of P. S. Hoffman’s advice. Ellen expresses the same or similar sentiments about one of the real strengths of J K Rowling’s craft.

What do you think of this advice? Do you have any hints or tips on describing your own characters in stories? Does it matter if you are writing a short story or a novel?