1. Keep physical description minimal.
A character's physical description—unless markedly different than the norm—does relatively little to draw the reader in. The character's actions, or details such as his occupations and interests, are much more useful. The readers will furnish a perfectly good description on their own if you simply let them know that the Uncle Charley of your story is a butterfly collector, or the elderly toll-gate keeper on the Suwannee River. Doing so will accomplish more than 10 pages of describing hair and eye color, height, weight and all of that kind of mundane detail.
My own writing contains very little description of any of my characters—it's virtually nonexistent—yet for years I've asked readers if they can describe a character I pick at random from my stories, and invariably they come up with a detailed description, no matter which character I choose. When I tell them I haven't ever described the character mentioned, they're surprised, and some swear that I did, even going so far as to drag out the story and skim for where I've included the description. They never find it.
The point is, physical descriptions of characters are overrated and the poorest way to give the reader a mental picture of your character. Physical description is valuable only if it actually means something in the story: For instance, a character with a pronounced limp—a limp that is crucial to his person—runs the Boston Marathon and wins.
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