Describing a Character’s Physique {Writer’s Toolkit / Wordbank}

[None of the quotes below belong to me. They are intended to be used as references for influence and not to be copied directly]

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Hope you found this useful! I’ve also attached a text-based copy below. In the meantime, why not journey into Euvael?

GENERAL BODY TYPES 
Stature (small stature)Frame (“Large of frame”)
“Outweighed me by a solid twenty pounds”

“Looked like a barrel with a beard”

“The troll looked like a wall with a bowtie.”
pear-shaped
Scraggly (thin and bony)
Frail
Rawboned
Hale (of a person; esp an elderly one; strong and healthy)
Trim waist
__-bodied; (thick, able, etc)Featherweight (one that is very light in weight)
Figure remains trim
Narrow build
“Her petite body”
“Stringy teenage girl”
Buxom (of a woman) plump, especially with large breasts.
“Only now did I realize that he was a small man, his diminutive frame dwarfed by the three Romans (or big when closer up)”
“Stood as a wisp of a man”
“tall, angular form”
“narrow-chested”
Scrawny/weedy Diminutive
puny
Willowy (tall, slim, and lithe; positive for lanky | willow-limbed girl)
Curvaceous (esp of a woman’s figure; having an attractively curved shape)
elfin (small and delicate, typically with an attractively mischevious charm| N an elf)
Square-built
Sturdy (strongly or solidly built; sturdy woman)
small-statured
Broad-framed
Broad back
Big-boned
Heavyset
“He was a wide lump of a man,”
Thickset
Burly
Bullnecked
Coltish (tall and thin)
Pigeon-chested (having a narrow chest that sticks out more than usual)Shrimpy
Svelte (slender and elegant)Gawky
Lean as sinew
Wiry (lean, tough, sinewy”
Incurved (belly)
Sunken chest
Rangy (tall and slim with long, slender limbs | “rangy to the point of gauntiness”)
Shapely (esp of a woman; well proportioned |”shapely of limb” | shapely shoulder)
Raw-boned (having a bony or gaunt physique)
Skinny, boyish build
“slim-built”
Crookbacked
Hunchback
Bowed back
Swayback
Shrunken
Spindly (long or tall or thin)HEIGHT
“When seated, he came up only to her bosom”
Two fingers taller
“So tall that when he bent to sahke hands with Ms. McDermott, he looked like a guy greeting a child in a grown-up’s dress”
“He drew himself up to take full advantage of the two inches he still had over Wolfram.”“Frowned over Melody’s head”
“She stood only shoulder-high to St. Vier.”
“So short he came only to Mamercus’s chest.”“When seated, he came up only to her bosom”
“He overtopped Keilan by a head”
Small-statured
“Half again as tall as Clay”
““Even from the tub, he seemed to look down upon him”
“The barbarian’s thigh was thicker than Drizzt’s waist.”
“Crispin, who stood shorter by half a foot”
“This was one of the rare times the twelve inches separating her face from her husband’s did not feel like an impossible distance”
“The top of his head barely reaching my chin”
“Had a few links on Thistle”“Put her about on a level with his ribs”MUSCLE
Muscle-bound
Brawny
Beefy
Muscled Corded with muscle Bunched his muscles
Well-muscled | hard-muscled “muscles squirming in his arm”
His corded shoulders
“Display dark-skinned arms that were almost as thick around as my legs”
His rippling forearms
Bull-muscled
“The telltale sign of a man who had wielded a sword in earnest: the forearm of his right arm, his sword arm, swelled larger than the left”
Thickly muscled
Well-defined muscles /
muscles, just starting to lose their definitionArms like fat snakes having a race up a tree
Chiseled from stone
“The powerful muscles of his back shifted beneath his clothes”“their calves all thickly carved with muscle”Ropes of muscle
“Arms forged from years of work”
“body bulging with muscles” | bulging at the seams
With spear-throwing shoulder muscles



SHOULDERS

With spear-throwing shoulder muscles
High shoulders
broad shoulders
Wide shoulders
Stoop-shouldered
Dimpled shoulders
Broad across the shoulders
_-shouldered (broad-shouldered | stoop-shouldered)
Shapely
His right shoulder was higher than his left
Uneven set of my shoulders
Slim-shouldered
“Broad-shouldered back looking more like a wall or something she should hang art on”



FAT
Roger weighed two hundred and _
Porcine (physical face) / moon face / heart-shaped / round /
Full-cheeked
Thick neck
Chinless
Top-heavy
Swollen belly
Portly
Man-breasts
His collection of chins
Saggy
When he spoke, his jowls danced
The underside of her fat arms wiggled
Rotund
Potbellied
Kettle-bellied
jowls/jowly
“Chin vanishing into his fat neck as he looked down sadly at the pyre”
Whose over-abundant flesh struggled with the confines of her gown
plumpCorpulent
Pudding-faced
Round in figure and face
His belly strained beneath a doublet
Bulk distending the sheet
“…a long parchment scroll resting like a relic in his walrus arms.”
Pudgy
Flabby
Paunch
“slack stomach that rolled over the edge of the basket she was carrying”
“Chins jiggled when she laughed”
Rolls of fat
Face as fat as a flounder
Fleshy
Dewlaps (a fold or flap of skin on the neck of some animals | loose flesh on the human throat)

“His many chins swelling expansively over his fur collar”

“With a beard on both his chins”

Man-tits
“He was a wide lump of a man,”
“He is a big man, a bear who’s been shaved and taught to walk upright”

“Wide, round belly that kept him far from the sink even while he shaved”“He bends over his gut and palms the ball”



SKINNY
gaunt

His concave chest
Protruding ribs
Underfed
Lean as sinew
“hunger-thinned features”
“I can see the pronounced V of her collarbone”
He can see the blade of her hipbone
“His ribs stood in circular ridges”
“I could see every bone in his ribcage”

“little spines poked against the pale flesh of his back like miniature stegosaurus scales”

“knobs on her spine”

“Her cheeks were sunken, bluish in color from the shadow of the cheekbone upon their poor cavity”

Sunken cheeks