When I reflect upon my favorite characters of literature, the things that stand out are those few sentences which create "close up" shots. As a photographer, I like to have a veritable photo album of a character in my mind's eye... it can be flipped through in order to study them in more depth. As I'm reading, when he or she behaves in a certain way {and hopefully I'm provided with a "close up" of a particular aspect of their facial expression, gesture, breath, etc.}, I then take that snap-shot and place it in my photo album for later ponderings.
In writing, I find there is definitely a fine line between description to enhance the "fleshing out" of a character and when said description slows down the flow of the plot. Even my favorite writers seem to struggle with this at times, in my opinion. So I guess I'm in good company when I say this is one of the most difficult parts of writing for me. I do love the challenge of fleshing out a character, though, and, in both reading and writing, find the perfect detail of jacket or brow to be utterly scrumptious.
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