A portrait sketch of an Africana warrior or fighter.
What do scars tell us about someone’s past?
I think they tell us quite a lot. Small details like that can hint at a story—a fight, many fights, a lesson learned, or many lessons learned.
One of my favorite character descriptions in recent memory comes from Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself. Logen Ninefingers is described as having a face full of scars, a broken nose, a chunk missing from one ear, and a missing middle finger on his left hand—which is exactly where his name comes from.
You learn so much about him from that simple description. So much of his past is written directly onto him.
It’s a wonderfully crafted bit of characterization that taps into how quickly we form stories from a single glance at a person. We instinctively read the marks people carry.
Though sometimes… a person’s story is far more complicated than what their scars alone might tell us.
