How detailed are your character descriptions?

Appearance is not very important to me in descriptions. I may include details like height, weight, hair and eye colour, and other such rudimentary things, but beyond that there is little use for such descriptions in my writing. I define characters by their actions, beliefs, and thoughts, not by their looks - so I let their words and deeds speak for themselves. In some cases wherein it becomes more critical to know what a person looks like (usually so s/he may be recognised later by another member of the cast) I will include more details on appearance, but this is generally the only case when this would happen.

 

Description is an author's best tool. True, I don't list their obvious descriptions such as clothes after their introduction, but it is important to list changes if it would be important. I like to get art done of my characters to give the reader a clear picture of what they are reading. My character, Tatsu (middle), with a Charmeleon would be easy for the reader to picture in their mind. It's also important to detail emotions and feelings too.

 

Personally I try to describe as little as I can aesthetic wise. When you really get down to it, it usually doesn't matter if your character "has dark brown eyes and pale skin and white hair and is wearing jeans and a T-shirt," it matters if your character has an actual personality.

And besides, letting people imagine is fun. If a detail is important for some reason, I like working it into conversations or having a new character notice, just so I don't do something clunky like "she looked around, her bright yellow eyes glinting" or whatever. Conversation is a powerful tool in writing.

Overall, I think character description has a good place in roleplays where you might need to know physical aspects of another person's character, but in a story, its best to leave simple things to the imagination instead of boring your reader with an appearance checklist.

 

Actually, I think I need to say one more bit on the matter, as far as descriptions go. It's not quite the same subject but I feel it bears mentioning.

While I mentioned before that I don't elaborate very much on the physical details of a character, I will try to eloquently describe a certain scenery or atmosphere for the reader. Sunsets are probably the easiest to be fanciful with, but they are hardly the only example of such. I like painting a verbal backdrop of a location, if I feel it will suit the mood of a story - however, as before, I will only go into detail if I view it to be important or meaningful to the reader experience.

But for me, when comparing locations with characters and whether or not I should describe them, my ratio between locations and characters is somewhat high.