Descriptions I Do Not Care For

This is another of my pet peeves. It’s not quite bad enough to make me poke my eyes out, but it is pretty darn close. I have never liked books in which every character—every single character, no matter how minor—is described in terms of their height and weight, in addition to hair and eye color and, of course, every article of clothing there are wearing. And the descriptions always look something like this:

Roxanne was 5′4″ 120lbs, long and blond with blue eyes…

Ignore the fact that the description doesn’t really make sense. (Would you really describe a five-foot-four-inch woman as “long”? I didn’t think so.) Do we really need to know exactly how tall she is and how much she weighs? It seems to me that “average,” “tall and skinny,” and “short and fat” are perfectly good descriptions. Of course, if the character is exceptionally tall or short or is a boxer or a member of a basketball team, giving an exact height and weight may be in order. Even giving a very exact description of an average character is fine if there is some reason for it, but when every character is described this way, my eyes start to glaze over. Seriously, I think these kinds of descriptions only make the reader work harder to form a picture of every single character. I can easily picture a woman who is of average height and a little overweight, but 5′5″ 145lbs—I have to think about that.

And don’t get me started on the clothes. If you could see me here in my sweats, t-shirt, and torn flannel shirt, you would understand that I’m not so much into fashion. It’s just hard for me to care about the little details of what every character is wearing all the time—again, unless there is some reason we need to know exactly how the character is dressed (as in the description of myself in the previous sentence).

I could go on and on, but I won’t. This has been a somewhat subdued rant from an editor who is 5′6″ 125lbs, short brown with brown eyes, badly dressed.