Since it’s November, and therefore NaNoWriMo, I wanted to give you a few “Writers, don’t do this” tips from my own experience.

Number 1: The Laurell K. Hamilton Tip

You need to know everything about your characters, but your reader doesn’t. Hamilton clearly loves all of her characters (even the evil ones), and she shows it by describing them in vivid detail in every book — often using the same descriptive words from book to book, and even within the same book. It can get a little tiresome, especially when you have as many characters as Hamilton does in her books.

You don’t have to describe every character’s every attribute, and you certainly don’t have to do it as exposition. You can still have a lot of characters if you need to, but the trick is to only give details if they’re going to matter. Otherwise, I mean, why bother differentiating them in the first place? Also, think about how the POV character would look at other people — what is seen first, what is noticed, etc. But the last thing you need to do is spend a paragraph or two describing every character that enters the book at that specific point. It kills your pacing.