"Avoid Description"

This is the conclusion of my ideas about the advice on writing in an article in the NYT.

     Two of Elmore Leonard's bits of writing advice in the aforementioned article concern description. One is: "Avoid detailed descriptions of characters." I am terrible with description and am often told by others that I need to add more to my stories. The reason I don't is that in reality, I don't notice physical details very much (possibly unusual for a writer), and I don't like to read them.
     At the beginning of Mr. Leonard's NYT article, there's a quote from John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday", in which a character states, "I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks."
     That is exactly how I feel. In fact, I can't be told what characters look like. Whatever the author's description is, my mind creates its own picture of characters. If a person is described as "small and fair", my brain may conjure a picture of a tall brunette. This often leads to confusion when the book refers to the character's blond hair and I think, "Who? What? She has dark hair", because that is the image in my mind when I picture that character.
      I understand that most people are probably not like me and prefer to have characters described. But I also think that readers are a pretty imaginative group and if no details are offered, they can and will very easily fill in an image for themselves. Sometimes certain traits are pertinent to the character  and must be noted. If they are scarred or freakishly tall or alarmingly thin, such things can be relative to the plot.
     The second bit of Leonard's advice is, "Don't go into great detail describing places and things." Everything I've said and think about physical character description applies to this as well. If it's important to the story I'm writing, I will say where the stairs or the door are in a room, but not mention the color of the carpet or the art work displayed unless the choice of decor adds a certain dimension to the character.
      Like all writing advice and instruction, these things fall under what I said in my post, "Conflicting Writing Advice". As a writer, what works for others may or may not work for you. Try new things often and discover new insights.

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