I'm just curious about everyone's approach to this issue. I didn't even know it was an issue until someone brought it up to me, so I thought I would bring it up. When it was brought to my attention, I suddenly started noticing how different authors either had a focus on description or a focus on action. (By the way, I only put "Action" first in the Subject Title because of alphabetical order).
Question number one: Do you tend to write more action or more description into your stories?
In other words, do you spend more words telling how something or someone looks (even if it is how they look while they do something), or do you tend to use more words to tell what is going on in your story? Personally, I tend to use action more. I love describing action packed scenes like a ride down a raging river filled with piranhas, and how the guy (who cares what he looks like) screams as he rips one of the little fish off of his arm; he has to keep rowing through the pain and bleeding just to get his wife and infant child to safety, and all he has to do is paddle around the next bend but his paddle breaks on a rock while, at the same time, throws him into the water where the fish are leaping all over him, biting at his flesh, so the wife has to beat them all off with a sick while she holds her screaming child in the other arm...whoa...that got way out of hand, not to mention it was violent. Sometimes I scare myself.... Anyway, I have a hard time describing someone's face or even their bodily features and even landscapes come as a bit of a challenge for me.
So then comes question number two: Do you think that your emphasis on either area is a problem?
For me, it is a bit of a problem, and I have to constantly keep in mind that my audience will not have the same mental images in their heads for a given character or scene. They aren't going to automatically assume that a character has dark skin or that the trees are in bloom unless I tell them, unless I describe it to them.
(!)Bonus Questions(!): What do you take to be the perfect balance of action and description?
(Or): What authors have you read which either strike a perfect balance between these two topics, or they do just one of them (action or description) really well?
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