Kaitlyn/Kathy here with your Wednesday writing tip.

I’m a list-maker. To-do lists (such a nice feeling when you cross things off!), lists of books I want to buy as soon as they are published, and to keep this post focused on writing, lists of descriptive character traits.

If you want to create memorable characters, especially the minor ones who may turn out to be important as the mystery develops, it helps to make them distinctive in some way while at the same time avoiding putting a neon sign over their heads that says PAY ATTENTION! I recently found a list I made ten years ago when I was writing historical mysteries. It is a collection of “details to use in describing characters.” The idea was to refer to it on those occasions when I felt a description I’d written in my current work-in-progress was, well, bland.

I broke it into categories like build, eyes, ears, mouth and teeth, nose, voice, complexion, face, fingers, hands, hair, gait, laugh, and smell. For example here’s the list for voice:
soft-spoken
nasal whine
sniffles
sultry
slow, measured speech
repeats everything twice
hoarse smoker’s
raspy
deep baritone
clipped speech
lazy drawl
careful of words

And for noses:
hawklike
broken veins in
bulbous
beak of a
bump on the bridge of a rather long nose as if from a break
large, slightly flattened
Roman
aquiline

My tip: Create your own lists to suit the kind of writing you do. And a warning: Don’t go overboard. Not every minor character needs to stand out.

Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett has had sixty-four books traditionally published and has self published others. She won the Agatha Award and was an Anthony and Macavity finalist for best mystery nonfiction of 2008 for How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries and was an Agatha Award finalist in 2015 in the best mystery short story category. In 2023 she won the Lea Wait Award for “excellence and achievement” from the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. She was the Malice Domestic Guest of Honor in 2014. She is currently working on creating new editions of her backlist titles. Her website is www.KathyLynnEmerson.com.