You may notice something missing when you read my stories: an abundance of physical descriptions. I rarely tell you what my characters fully look like. I don't paint detailed portraits of the settings. And that's not an accident. It's a choice—one made very deliberately.
Occasionally, you'll find hints. A texture. A color. A fleeting impression of movement or space. And sometimes, I'll tell you about the eyes.
Because to me, eyes are different.
Eyes are not just features—they are windows. They hold everything a soul cannot say aloud. That small flash of anger. That unspoken grief. That steady, grounding love. If I tell you a character's eye color, it's because it matters. It's because it speaks, even when the mouth cannot.
Other details only emerge when the character, whose view we live inside, is drawn to them. The way a trembling hand brushes over silk. The rough edge of a weathered door beneath restless fingers. In those moments, the world sharpens. But only when emotion demands it.
I don't withhold physical details because they're unimportant—I withhold them because they can become distractions. I don't want you standing outside my characters, observing them like paintings in a gallery. I want you inside them. I want you to feel the sting of their regrets, the heat of their hopes, the quiet ache of their loneliness. When you aren't busy building an image in your mind, you can fall headfirst into what truly matters—the story's emotional heart.
The fewer anchors you're given, the deeper you can sink into the current. You stop picturing the room and start hearing the silence pressing against your chest. You stop picturing the character and start feeling the weight of the choices they make.
This is what matters to me. Not how they look, but how they live inside you once the story is done.
Not every face needs to be finished. Some of the truest faces are the ones written in feeling, not in flesh.
Always,
Áille