# How to describe height?



## Zachery Richardson (Jun 5, 2011)

So I'm starting the second draft of my novella, and I'm getting a little stuck on describing a character's height. Normally when I write, I'll just fire off a quick 5'6" and move on, but I distantly remember reading somewhere that using numbers like that is frowned upon in literature, and so now I'm kinda stuck. I'm currently describing her as "five-and-a-half foot", but this feels a bit clunky to me.

Anyone have any input/suggestions?


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

I'd say "five and a half feet." If I recall correctly the input I got the last time I asked, I don't think you want to use the hyphens unless "five and a half feet" is modifying something else, as in "his six-foot-three frame." So she'd be "five and a half feet," but you could say "her five-foot-six body." It also works to describe someone as "three inches over six feet," or "an inch short of six feet," but that doesn't work as well when there is a half foot involved.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

Zachery Richardson said:


> So I'm starting the second draft of my novella, and I'm getting a little stuck on describing a character's height. Normally when I write, I'll just fire off a quick 5'6" and move on, but I distantly remember reading somewhere that using numbers like that is frowned upon in literature, and so now I'm kinda stuck. I'm currently describing her as "five-and-a-half foot", but this feels a bit clunky to me.
> 
> Anyone have any input/suggestions?


I would just put, "She was a little taller than average."


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## Carol (was Dara) (Feb 19, 2011)

I tend to use vague descriptions like "tall" or "short" but I think that's more acceptable in some types of books than others. In a romance I probably couldn't get away with my usual habit of describing people as fair or dark. Readers would expect a deeper level of detail.


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## Zachery Richardson (Jun 5, 2011)

MegHarris said:


> I'd say "five and a half feet." If I recall correctly the input I got the last time I asked, I don't think you want to use the hyphens unless "five and a half feet" is modifying something else, as in "his six-foot-three frame." So she'd be "five and a half feet," but you could say "her five-foot-six body." It also works to describe someone as "three inches over six feet," or "an inch short of six feet," but that doesn't work as well when there is a half foot involved.


Thanks for this. 

For clarity's sake, the mostly full sentence is "...leaning her athletic, five-and-a-half-foot frame against the side of her car." Judging by your examples, I would think the hyphens here are acceptable?


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2013)

I wouldn't say it's _wrong,_ but I personally don't see the need for the hyphens. They'd possibly be a little distracting to me compared to just 'leaning her athletic, five and a half foot frame.' And I see a great opportunity to post an excerpt! Two mentions of height:

To anyone watching not in the know, it would have looked like Freya was being severely bullied by seven foot two motorcycle gang leader Chase Young.

[and]

She peeled her mere five foot seven body off the hood and stood.

_Edited. Other peoples' threads are not promotional opportunities, nor is promotion acceptable in the Writers' Café. The above is sufficient for the purposes of this thread. Thanks.--Betsy_


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## MegHarris (Mar 4, 2010)

> I would just put, "She was a little taller than average."


I'm five foot six, and alas, I believe it is dead average. You'd have to look it up to be sure. (My daughters, however, are five foot ten and five foot eleven... slightly taller than average. )



> I wouldn't say it's wrong, but I personally don't see the need for the hyphens.


I asked about it here, because I couldn't figure out why I sometimes used hyphens and sometimes didn't, and the mostly agreed-upon answer was that if it was a modifier (ie, "her five-foot-six frame") then hyphens should be used. You don't use hyphens if you say "She was five foot six," though.


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2013)

MegHarris said:


> I asked about it here, because I couldn't figure out why I sometimes used hyphens and sometimes didn't, and the mostly agreed-upon answer was that if it was a modifier (ie, "her five-foot-six frame") then hyphens should be used. You don't use hyphens if you say "She was five foot six," though.


Ah okay, seems a little distracting though so hopefully nobody will give me a bad review for sticking with the hyphenless way.

I'd agree that five foot six would be considered average and five foot eight would start to be 'tall.'


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## Harry Dewulf (Oct 4, 2010)

For all measures, even for characters' height, I generally advise writers to avoid measurements, and use a description of action or some trivial event to give the reader an impression of the character's height, or whatever the measurement might be. 

There are two reasons for this. 1) when you meet someone for the first time, you don't whip out the tape measure unless their height becomes the subject of controversy, and 2) you get an immediate feel for their height through comparison with familiar objects. Bar stools are always good for this: doorways, windows, chairs; familiar dog breeds.

This also makes the description feel more organic, and more like it's part of the process or events of the book, rather than a "photofit timeout" where you give a description to a sympathetic desk-sergeant.

Speaking for myself, I'm hopeless at imagining someone's height from a measurement in inches, so these tend to be immersion breakers for me. Another poster suggested "taller/shorter than average" and this is a really useful dodge. If the height becomes important later on, events and situations will give you an opportunity to further develop the precision.


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2013)

Harry Dewulf said:


> There are two reasons for this. 1) when you meet someone for the first time, you don't whip out the tape measure unless their height becomes the subject of controversy, and 2) you get an immediate feel for their height through comparison with familiar objects. Bar stools are always good for this: doorways, windows, chairs; familiar dog breeds.


But what about when the height being mentioned is the POV character's or that of someone they know really well? Measurements would seem appropriate there.


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## Zachery Richardson (Jun 5, 2011)

glutton said:


> But what about when the height being mentioned is the POV character's or that of someone they know really well? Measurements would seem appropriate there.


This is precisely the case in my novella, as it's first-person, and the character being described is the MC's little sister.


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## Cherise (May 13, 2012)

MegHarris said:


> I'm five foot six, and alas, I believe it is dead average. You'd have to look it up to be sure.


Five foot four seems to be the world average for white women. Five foot six is the average in Lithuania, Austria, and Germany, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height

OP:

There you go. Put five foot six.

"...leaning her athletic, five-foot-six frame against the side of her car."


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## Eric C (Aug 3, 2009)

Depends on voice.


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## Harry Dewulf (Oct 4, 2010)

glutton said:


> But what about when the height being mentioned is the POV character's or that of someone they know really well? Measurements would seem appropriate there.


I'd be inclined to suggest that if it is first person, of someone where the narrating character would be reasonably expected to know the measurement, _avoiding_ the measurement would be weird. In which case _I_ prefer to see it written out in words, and the unit "foot" given as a singular invariant, but maybe that is because I is British.

Coincidentally, my latest blog post is on character descriptions.


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## Jan Strnad (May 27, 2010)

You should always indicate height in the metric system, because that is what more of the world uses.


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

All my heights tend to be relative to the VP character.


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## ElisaBlaisdell (Jun 3, 2012)

Mathew Reuther said:


> All my heights tend to be relative to the VP character.


In a household or kitchen environment, there's lots of opportunities to indicate relative height.

_Who the #$)*# put it up there, and where is the #%(*@[email protected] step stool!_

_There is little in my life that I can feel smug about, but every few days I take a moment to gloat that I don't even care if there's a step stool where I'm working._


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

Yeah, so I have a tall VP character a lot of the time, but his partner is also tall, but even more massive. So he refers to his partner in terms of mass quite often, and will contemplate that even though he's taller, his partner is more imposing.

Environments offer opportunities. Also the ability to say he was fairly tall, but I still looked down on him. Or Below aberage for a women, which made her tiny compared to me or the like.


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2013)

He sounds very tall.


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## Mathew Reuther (Jan 14, 2013)

For hard reference every character is given a height, of course. But I don't use the numbers in the text. So I have a 6'3" character, one just over 6 feet, one at 5'9, one 5'8, a 5'6 (female), a 5'0" (who happens to be referred to as tall: he's a dwarf) . . . that's my battery of 6 major detectives. So there's four tall characters in here, and two average.


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## Guest (Mar 18, 2013)

I vary with regard to the description, sometimes I use actual numbers and sometimes I don't. In the latest novella that I haven't published yet only the female MC's object of fangirlish infatuation (THE CHAMPION!) has a given height of 6'3 while one of the other major characters is just described as 'tall' (for a woman), and another a head taller than the aforementioned 'tall' woman. The MC who's described as not being tall by any measure I imagine to be about 5'5, she is towered over a lot lol.

In the infamous tales of the Rosy one Rose is 6' and taller than the average man and most supporting characters, but shorter than almost every other elite warrior.


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## Terrence OBrien (Oct 21, 2010)

> "There are two reasons for this. 1) when you meet someone for the first time, you don't whip out the tape measure unless their height becomes the subject of controversy, and 2) you get an immediate feel for their height through comparison with familiar objects. Bar stools are always good for this: doorways, windows, chairs; familiar dog breeds."


Agree. But when you later ask me how tall the guy at the bar was, I say, "about five six."

If we already have Jones as a reference, I might say, "He was a few inches taller than Jones, but Jones had about fifty pounds on him."


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## Harry Dewulf (Oct 4, 2010)

Terrence OBrien said:


> Agree. But when you later ask me how tall the guy at the bar was, I say, "about five six."
> 
> If we already have Jones as a reference, I might say, "He was a few inches taller than Jones, but Jones had about fifty pounds on him."


This is completely true, and solves the problem in another way, since in both cases you've put the measurement into a meaningful situation. In first person I suspect one of the main reasons people get hung up on physical descriptions is because Spade and Marlowe are so meticulous in their observations, but there is a reason for this: they expect to either take a beating from, or hand one out to, almost every man they meet, and so actively size them all up.

If your protagonist is a warrior of any kind, then he or she is likely to assess the threat level of everyone they meet, which in itself can become wearing for the reader, but is a defining characteristic of the protagonist.


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## 54706 (Dec 19, 2011)

I usually describe height in relation to the narrator, but that's easy to do when you write in first person.

In the two 3rd person books I did, I described them in relation to another character.  "She had to crane her neck to look up at him." or "She was shorter than anyone in the room."  <<<  That kind of thing.  Exact measurements aren't necessary and actually sound too sterile in my type of books (YA) whereas in a crime thriller it might be appropriate.  You could probably do, "Well over six feet" or something like that if you wanted to be more precise and yet remain a little poetic at the same time.


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## 54706 (Dec 19, 2011)

Zachery Richardson said:


> This is precisely the case in my novella, as it's first-person, and the character being described is the MC's little sister.


I have little sisters and my daughters have little sisters (one of them, anyway), and we always described our sisters like this:

"She came up to/is level with my chin/shoulder/waist/eyebrows" Always! Of course every family is different.


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## Harry Dewulf (Oct 4, 2010)

ellecasey said:


> I have little sisters and my daughters have little sisters (one of them, anyway), and we always described our sisters like this:
> 
> "She came up to/is level with my chin/shoulder/waist/eyebrows" Always! Of course every family is different.


What's great about this, though, is that even if the reader is very tall/very short, it conserves the relativity in a way that will increase intimacy/sympathy.


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## 54706 (Dec 19, 2011)

Harry Dewulf said:


> What's great about this, though, is that even if the reader is very tall/very short, it conserves the relativity in a way that will increase intimacy/sympathy.


Yes! Yes! ^^^ this, absolutely. For sisters, it's a big deal, how they compare in height. My girls are always measuring each other up, seeing how quickly the little one is catching up, and now how we know she will probably overtake her big sister in height. It causes all manner of disagreements and teasing in our house. It's ever so much richer than saying "She was 5'1 and I'm 5'4"."


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Zachery Richardson said:


> So I'm starting the second draft of my novella, and I'm getting a little stuck on describing a character's height. Normally when I write, I'll just fire off a quick 5'6" and move on, but I distantly remember reading somewhere that using numbers like that is frowned upon in literature, and so now I'm kinda stuck. I'm currently describing her as "five-and-a-half foot", but this feels a bit clunky to me.
> 
> Anyone have any input/suggestions?


If I'm writing third person (I usually am) and I need to get the POV character's height into the text for some reason I would try something like this:

*She watched him hammering the heavy bag working hard to lose the mad she'd given him. He was a head taller than her and powerful, making him about six one... blah blah*

This way we get an impression of a woman around five six or seven watching him without saying it or too many numbers close together.


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## Harry Dewulf (Oct 4, 2010)

markecooper said:


> If I'm writing third person (I usually am) and I need to get the POV character's height into the text for some reason I would try something like this:
> 
> *She watched him hammering the heavy bag working hard to lose the mad she'd given him. He was a head taller than her and powerful, making him about six one... blah blah*
> 
> This way we get an impression of a woman around five six or seven watching him without saying it or too many numbers close together.


But you could lose the last clause and it would make both sentences more powerful. You could even reflect back onto the image in the previous sentence:

_She watched him hammering the heavy bag working hard to lose the mad she'd given him. He was a head taller than her and powerful; the bag jumped and rattled on its chains._


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## Betsy the Quilter (Oct 27, 2008)

markecooper said:


> *She watched him hammering the heavy bag working hard to lose the mad she'd given him. He was a head taller than her and powerful, making him about six one... blah blah*


In this situation, to me as a reader, the "making him about six one" isn't really necessary..., it's the "head taller" that's pertinent. It doesn't matter to me, I don't think, if they're 4' 9" and 5'3" or 7' and 7'6" He's significantly taller than she is.

But I agree, there are situations (and maybe the passage quoted is one, I don't know the MC), where it would be believeable for the character to be thinking in those terms--detectives, cops, etc. I probably wouldn't think it odd in those cases.

Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but in the JD Robb _In Death_ books, I don't think she ever gives an exact height for her detective Eve Dallas, but she's tall. Seems to me the sense of height is usually indicated by her looking eye-to-eye with some perp or something.... Just a thought...

Betsy


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