: How much character description is considered necessary in a "plot driven" story?" Some stories begin with a rather full description of say, the main character. Here is a clip from Hello Dolly

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Reading is an imaginative act on behalf of the reader which means two things:

You need to give a reader all the information necessary to imagine whatever it is you want them to imagine.
Readers will imagine whatever they want and you can only control them so much.

Typically in more old fashioned writing you will see huge amounts of description telling us what the character looks like and what their background is. But readers form an impression of a character immediately from the rest of the story you've told and from inferences they will make. So modern stories are more likely to leave it up to the reader.

If I introduce Tom as a 41-year-old plumber and the story is set in small town Ohio then I've already given you enough information. He's white, probably working class, and is balding and unfashionable. You only need to guide us around the things we'll presume from basic information.

His mannerisms, his actions, his environment, and how others respond to him can tell us enough to fill in the rest. What's more important than how much information you give is how evocative the information is and the voice and style you use to tell it to us.

Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian begins with:

"See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt."

In terms of physical description not much more is given than that opening line but it tells us so much about this character already. We can also see from the style of writing that this is a stark and brooding tale and we'll read the character in that light.

There aren't any rules about how much information you need to give and just as the rest of a story shapes the character, so too does description of a character shape the story.

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Your readers will substitute either themselves or a standard archetype for the hero unless you tell them otherwise. They only will need to know enough to know why the hero is doing the things he/she does, why he/she is upset or angry at the actions of the antagonist or why the hero doesn't just take the obvious route to the story solution. Even then you only need to give that information if it isn't obvious. You don't need backstory to explain why someone would want to survive an earthquake.

It's rare that the colour of their hair will be an important factor in these things, but race, weight, upbringing, demeanour, hairstyle can all affect plot. If you tell the readers the heroine looks an absolute mess you give them a shortcut to understanding that perhaps self-esteem is an issue, and that disguising herself as a contestant in a beauty pageant isn't going to be an easy choice of terrorist thwarting tactic.

You can get similar shortcuts from how they order a coffee, or their choice of car. Read some thrillers to see how authors can sketch out their hero in a short paragraph, or even a single sentence: what he's doing, what he's wearing, the time of day, and how he addresses people getting in his way.

Give the readers only what they need, and give it to them when they least expect it will be relevant to plot points later. Because the reader won't know at that point that it's plot, you need to keep it brief and punchy.

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