Most readers, believe it or not, disregard any and all physical discription at a glance and give your characters a physical appearance of their own choosing. Unless your characters' physical characteristic is important (He has a metal claw for a hand) and even then, unless it serves the plot (he uses the claw to open a can of soup later on) it should not be mentioned unless absolutely necessary.

And NEVER EVER pause a moment of intense action, like the striking of two swords, to give up the make and models of the swords, let alone how muscular, tall, toned, the wielder is. Something like that really boarders on the comical, which was probably not your intention.

A paragraph went by, and I still don't know why these two people are fighting. I don't know ANYTHING about them, other than fleeting, aesthetic details. Character creation doesn't depend on physical appearances. Never mistake giving someone a unique name or eye color is in any way, shape or form character creation.

Edit: I would also like to know who is telling this story. It sounds like third person omni, but with phrases like "to be exact," I may be wrong.

Also, make sure you understand the proper use of commas.

I agree with swimming bird about appearance. I have yet to read a book where I wasn't surprised by an artists portrayal of a character. Just remember while writing, as someone once said (don't remember who), "We dont see things as they are, we see things as we are". Create the story, tell us, and we will see the character you have created. Dont tell us what they look like, show us.

P.S. - Appearance is like everthing else in a character. Would you say (unless narrative), "Carl quickened his pace down the hallway. He was shy, quirky, and very intelligent. He has a 143 IQ to be exact." I feel like you should end that fragment with "anyways".

Love the idea though. If the description of both the men and swords are important, as I imagine they are, try working parts into the action. By story, I'm assuming you mean short story. If thats true, then you will most likely need to get this information in, without speaking only of man and sword.

I'd enjoy helping on the rest, send it to me if you want a full edit.

Your last thought - integrating the description with the action - is probably better depending on the POV.

What you first posted is what is "lovingly" called an "info dump." While the information is important you are telling us this is not the most compelling way to do it and just deadly in the first 13. In the Earthsea trilogy, the reader didn't learn that Ged, the MC and POV, was dark skinned until well through the first book. It was done for a reason as Earthsea was the first fantasy series with a non-caucasian MC. By the time the readers found out he looked different than they expected, they were so invested in him and what happened that they kept reading anyway.

You also have to keep POV in mind.

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He has long, wavy, jet black hair, that touches his shoulders, drawing a person immediately to his piercing green eyes.

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Who is telling me this? I suspect that Rantier sn't drawn into his piercing green eyes. If a smitten girl is watching him fight, she's going to concentrate on the rippling muscles and sheen of sweat that coated the said muscles (at least I would ).

You can "show" the effect his eyes had on people by having the POV drawn in. As an example, Lucian caught her gaze. Sarena's jaw dropped open as she forgot what she'd been saying. He had the most remarkable green eyes. She'd seen emeralds but the facets of his eyes outshown even the best of the gems she'd seen. He turned away to talk to her father. It was only then she realized that her sister, Mary, had hit her on the arm trying to get her to focus on which dress Mary should wear to the ball.

Anyway - just a thought.

If you hold back the character description and tell me why two best friends are fighting, I might be drawn in. But right now I have two men/boys fighting with nearly identical dragon swords (one is white while the other is black). The boys too are opposites - light hair v. dark. Okay, this has been done before, why should I keep reading?

Some nits -

The present tense bothered me but that might have more to do with the laundry list of character traits than the writing.

The swords were "clashing together as if one" not the thick muggy air. Also, the image ("clashing as if one") didn't work for me. If they were one how could they clash together? You've told us the air is muggy so "thick" is IMHO unnecessary.

It's a common trait of the novice writer (and women are particularly bad about this, I've noticed) to try too hard to convey a detailed physical description of the characters. Does black wavy hair matter in the story? Do green eyes matter to the plot? An example would be a red-haired character trying to hide in a crowd of mostly ... for the sake of the example... Asians, who are typically dark brown or black-headed. A red-haired character would stand out like a sore thumb in this scene, and at that point a physical characteristic MATTERS to the plot. Does the character have green eyes, but all the other characters have blue eyes, and they are suspicious of the green eyes because it is a trait of an ancient family line that indicates latent psychic powers? Then it MATTERS to the plot.

If the ONLY reason you are spelling out hair color, body size, eye color is because that is the image in YOUR mind, then it's not necessary. You might choose to include some of the description, but keep in mind it's just fluff at that point. Treat it casually, as the fluff it is. Don't force the readers to see through YOUR mind's eye. Maybe my idea of what a hero looks like is a black man with dreadlocks. Does it harm anything to let me visualize this character by filtering it through my own concept of "heroic"?

Orson Scott Card commented about his book "Saints" that not once in the entire story did he describe the main character's physical appearance. In fact, it annoyed him a great deal that the publisher put the picture of a woman on the front of the book and readers assumed that was a physical rendition of the character. He made this choice on purpose, and of ALL of the characters he's written, it was the one that the readers have told him they identified with the most. Why? Because there were no constraints on the reader's imagination or their ability to step into the character in their mind and completely personalize it. And the reason for that was he didn't try to make the character blonde, red-headed, brunette, fat, skinny, short, or tall. He left it open ended so the reader could: <insert your self-image here>.

The point I'm making is don't try to control the visual images in the reader's mind too tightly. Give them some space to "customize" the visuals. Then, the details you give them that DO matter to the plot will stand out and the reader will take note of them.

[This message has been edited by Elan (edited July 28, 2006).]

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I would love to give feedback on some of your stories but I don't think I am that great at giving good feedback

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If your friends said that after the first few paragraphs the story picked up, you might want to delete the first few paragraphs and start the story a bit later.