I have read stories that have started off rather badly in my opinion with an extended physical description of the main character. In some cases, every new character is introduced with an extended physical description. Of course, these descriptions include a distinguishing trait, because somewhere someone said that would make the character more believable

I have found quite the opposite to be true, where the distinguishing trait more often results in a crazy character circus of individuals with strange mannerisms, deranged senses of fashion, and obscure disabilities and ailments. They unintentionally become self-conscious caricatures of a character description that don’t contribute to the story or even the character. These quirks have the same effect as wearing a loud tie—memorable but not palatable.

As a result of reading Art of Fiction and getting Omensetter’s Luck as a gift, I became a bit of a William Gass fan. I haven’t ready everything by William Gass, but I did read "The Tunnel" even if it did take me two years. What I have read, I have thoroughly enjoyed. The Pederson Kid is one of my favorite stories.

Somewhere I read an allusion to a William Gass essay that influenced my own approach to characterization. I developed a minimalist approach where controlling exactly what the reader sees is less important than tone and what the reader should feel about a character at different points in the story.

You can try to describe a character (or scenery) in as much excruciating detail that you wish, but such descriptions will never be long or comprehensive enough to ensure that every reader is envisioning the same character. If they were, the story would come to a grinding halt that few stories can pull off and that many readers would not tolerate.

What Gass says, according to the reference I read, is a writer needn’t flesh out every detail about a character. For example mention that he character wears glasses, and the reader will flesh out the rest.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to track down the allusion to Gass or the essay itself. I have reread some of the material I have on hand, Art of Fiction and a Gass essay, the Concept of Character in Fiction from the book of essays, Essentials of the Theory of Fiction, but no luck. Perhaps, I read it in Fiction and Figures of Life. It is quite maddening that I can’t recall, especially since it has had such an impact on my view of characterization.