Sure enough, I’ve given friends my stories to read and they’ll swear afterward that I described so and so because they “saw him so clearly.” I point out that I didn’t describe so and so at all–they fleshed him out themselves.

I described a sheriff in one story only as being “an honest man who expected to die in his own bed.” Several readers were sure I’d given long detailed descriptions of him, but that’s all I said about him. Still, to them he was vivid–but only because they filled in the rest.

I’m sure the actions my characters took told much more, but I’m in the ‘less is more’ camp. Readers, I think, prefer to create their own ideas about what characters look like and what they wear.

The biggest thing we authors must do is continuously create obstacles for those characters to overcome. Give them problems, big ones, and just torture them all you can. They love it.