How Description Can Build Characterization

Description can bring a scene, place, or character to life, but too much or too little can break the fictive dream for readers.

A reader will do 90% of the work creating a mental image of a character, their setting and the fictional world, but if the writer is too sparing with description the reader can’t fill in the gaps. If the story is bogged down with unnecessary description, readers begin to skim (the fictive dream is broken) or they’ll just quit.

Description is one of the aspects of fi...