Comment on Mistress of the Gray Waste by artastrophe

Do you mean [general] all author descriptions or ones primarily done in fanfiction? I think a lot of young writer's use the roleplay method for description and, yes, that is not the right way to do it. It's verbose and frankly a massive block of text that draws the reader out of the story. I think most professional writers do it well enough. Everyone writes differently, addresses these things differently, and it works in various styles. Finding new ways to say things is a way to avoid unneccessary repetition that can clutter sentences and also bring readers out of the story.

But I will have to disagree with you on the "if you care what they look like, here's a picture" mentality of addressing the problem. It's a writer's job to paint pictures with their words. If one can't find the words to describe something, they shouldn't just fill in that gap with another medium, but rather search and practice until they can use their words. Telling stories is done in many mediums. It's the writers job to do it with words and the artist's to do it with a brush or a pen.

I do think its important to have character descriptions (unless the characters are supposed to be generic representations of the common man, therefore any face could be put to them) because they are a part of the story. It's as important to know what the characters look like as it is to know what the landscape looks like, or if its going to rain, or how the battle played through. If we wrote without those details, we'd have characters moving through a bland world with no environment or action. It would be boring. The level of character detail is up to the writer. Maybe you want to say she has long hair, rather than long, blond hair... Or dark eyes rather than black or brown. But giving even just snippets of details help your characters come to life. When humans experience things, they do it visually, so a writer must help the reader experience everything visually by using their words. If that makes sense.

Sorry to just jump into the conversation. I understand the frustrations and, on some days, would probably join you in the ranting (I swear to Tunare, if Terry Goodkind called Richard "rare" one more f*%&#$@ time, I'd strangle him). I just thought there is another side to it and wanted to say what I felt.