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Describing Black Hair in Fantasy (Locs, Braided Styles, etc)

Image: Describing Black Hair in Fantasy, Braided Styles

How do you describe afro hairstyles in a world where the words don’t exist?

My advice for describing afro hairstyles effectively in fantasy is to:

Describe the style
Use words from the term in the description
Have someone read it; do they know what you’re describing?

Describe the style.

What does this hairstyle look like, exactly? What is a braid? What are locs? How do you braid, or how do you form this particular type of braid?

Look up existing descriptions of the term, and use language from the definition. Combine, reword and trim as necessary. There’s no need to be wordy. A well-constructed sentence or two should serve its purpose.

Great sources are everything from hair glossaries (especially those found on Black hair websites) natural hair vlogs, and even the thesaurus.

Here are some word associations to play with:

General Textures & Looks

Tight
Loose
Thick
Thin
Dense
Light
Heavy
Springy
Silky
Sheen
Porous

Afro Texture and Curls

Afro / Fro
Cloudy
Coils
Corkscrews
Crimped
Curly
Natural
Poufy
Ringlets
Spirals
Texturized
Wavy

Braids

Crossed
Folded
Interlaced
Layered
Looped
Plaits/Plaited
Rolled
Woven

These words can help be more specific with the look of their hair/hairstyle. Tight, tiny braids. Cloudy puffs of hair in twin pigtails.

Use words from the term itself in the description.

Readers should get an “aha” moment when you do this. Twisted hair probably mean twists. Bantu knots resemble knots.

Cornrows:

Cornrows get their name from rows of corn with connections to African chattel slavery. Say you have a character with this style, but those historical connotations don’t exist in this world , or corn isn’t something your character would know about. There are still ways to make the connection.

Example: “She wore her hair in neat rows of braids along her scalp.”

The key word here is rows.

Assuming you can use a part of a word that does exist in your timeline, use it for the strongest connection to its real world counterpart. See the next example:

Locs (dreadlocks)

Another Black hairstyle with history to its name, it may not make sense to use the term in your setting (and also, due to that history, “locs” is preferred term) However, you likely could still slip the word “lock or locked” into your description to clarify for readers what you’re getting at.

Example: “His skin was the same medium brown as her own and that of her people, but his hair was thick and coarse and pulled into the rough locks that looked like braids but weren’t, like the people to the south whose skin was darker.”

-By Shira Glassman, A Harvest of Ripe Figs, Mangoverse Book 3

What’s particularly great about this description is:

The use of locks or locked hair to make the connection to locs.
Connecting the hairstyle to a certain people. It isn’t just a style anyone can wear, but it has regional roots and is worn by a particular group.
Adding other indications of race such as brown skin, and the nod to him coming from a place where the people have dark skin.

Have someone read it

Have more than one person read your description. It would be great if at least one of those people is Black (and/or familiar with the style). Does the reader know what you’re trying to describe? Are you being concise, or over explaining it to the point of confusion? If your readers can name the style or picture it relatively quickly, then you’ve got a winner.