Physical presence

Once we have gotten over the initial shock, we can look at the physical attributes of the alien in more detail to understand its presence in the scene.

It was a young male, and he was big. He was way bigger than Lucky. He was as big as the biggest man in the crowd. He was muscular, too: a solid wall of muscle, hulking and roaring under the lights, like a nightmare come to life.

Phoenix

Said uses additional expansions here to really drive home the intimidating presence of the alien. The main details could be summarised as the below, but click on the expansions to see how extra flavour is added.

It was a young male, and he was big. He was way bigger than Lucky. He was as big as the biggest man in the crowd. He was muscular, too: a solid wall of muscle, hulking and roaring under the lights, like a nightmare come to life.

Phoenix

The author repeats key words for emphasis:

He was big. Bigger than Lucky. As big as the biggest man in the crowd.
He was muscular. A solid wall of muscle.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to experiment with this type of repetition. The number one priority is expanding on each of the attributes you’ve chosen.

Let’s see how the aliens take up space, if you’ll excuse the pun, in our examples.

It seemed to have no bones, something Biff had never seen in a creature that large. And large it was; it would have easily filled the cafeteria he worked at, and then some. It also had at least twenty eyes over what he guessed was its head: twisting and turning, angrily locating each of the soldiers surrounding it, like some demonic, mutant octopus.

It resembled a giant black crab. Huge, taller than a house, so tall Vijay could have driven a bombtruck between its legs and parked in the shadow of its body. But it was also fast. Four spiny black legs scuttling fast across the sand, and two barbed pincers stabbing the air in front like a harvester of death.

As each human broke away from the machine, Jola counted four of them. Even individually, they were twice her size. They wore the black skins and breathing devices she learned about in training, too: obviously designed for them to invade our world, despite not belonging here, like spoilt children wanting what they couldn’t have.

Write your own variation here, describing your alien's physical attributes.

Science fantasy worldbuilding in Phoenix 4: Close encounters