: Re: Is a lack of character descriptions a problem? I have written a novel in which none of the characters are ever described. It started out by accident (3 chapters in when I realized). Question:

@Kevin153

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As someone with a personal history of skimping on the descriptions I can tell you this will definitely turn some readers off. As with everything, you can't and shouldn't cater to everyone, but you SHOULD be aware of the costs of the choices you are making. Some readers are strongly visual people and want to have a clear picture of the characters and settings. As with any sensory details in writing, the less you include, the more your words will float in a disembodied void.

This is actually a case where taking the advice of other writers may be a potentially misleading. Writers have overactive imaginations, we're perfectly happy generating our own rich fabric of details, given minimal clues to work with. But not every reader is like that.

The big turning point for me on descriptions was learning that they don't have to be clunky, dry catalogs of details that interrupt the narrative. You can make them poetic, or active, or subjective, or biased, or emotional, and they can still pack a visual punch. "Her hair was a desert tumbleweed." "His face was ghostlike in its paleness." "Her skin was as rich and as musical as the black keys on a piano." "You'd never mistake him for a child, despite his shortness of height."

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