Your Characters

Think about any novel that has ever been written. For any novel to succeed, it must have characters, a main conflict, a climax, and a resolution—the usual elements found in any novel. Frodo Baggins, a hobbit from the Shire, must throw the ring into the volcano and destroy it so that the Dark Lord Sauron does not use it to conquer Middle-earth. (There’s more to it than that, but that’s not the point here.)

But the people who read The Lord of the Rings trilogy likely did not immediately envision Elijah Wood when reading about Frodo. The same goes with the Harry Potter series, the Hunger Game trilogy, and even the Twilight saga. The authors never wrote that their characters were spitting images of famous actors and actresses. Instead, they described their characters, noting their skin tone, mentioning the color of their hair, and pointing out the color of their eyes.

When an author vaguely describes a character, they are engaging their audience and making them use their imaginations. When the people of the Capitol are described in The Hunger Games, one reader may think that they are dressed as ridiculously as models on the runway at a fashion show while another reader may interpret them to be dressed like celebrities at an awards show.

Another way that an author engages their audience’s imaginations is when describing a landscape. Sure, authors write that there are “rolling hills” and “trickling streams,” but what about the leaves on the tress? Or the trees themselves? Are they deciduous or evergreens? Are they fruit trees? Are there any animals nearby? Maybe a lizard sunning itself on a rock by that trickling stream?

So much of the story is left open and undescribed that the reader is often forced to use their imagination when reading. Whether the author intentionally left scenes undescribed is up for debate. But when an author is writing, there has to be a certain level of consciousness about describing a character or place or action. That level of consciousness often includes spatial understanding. Authors could fill up a whole page describing a character’s eyes but why would they? What impact does it have on the story? Maybe if another character is admiring and falling in love with the aforementioned character and is fixating on their eyes, then the whole page of description is totally understandable. But more often than not, characters are too busy trying to resolve the main conflict to spend an unhealthy amount of time staring into another character’s eyes. And writing a book is hard enough without having to write about five hundred words about a character’s eyes unless it’s going to impact a character or the story as a whole.

So usually, leaving a scene only partially described saves time for the author, keeps the plot going, and leaves the reader engaged in the story as they dream up what type of trees are in the forest, what sort of animals hide in the underbrush, and how quickly the sunning lizard flees when the protagonist comes too close to it.