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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35256
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/35256
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### I would do the room first.

This is a matter of your style. I personally write with very spare descriptions of what people LOOK like, and focus almost entirely on what they feel (or how my POV character reacts to them). I ONLY describe features that will have an impact at some point on the story. As the narrator I would never tell a reader "Julie is beautiful," if that is the case then her beauty will have some impact on other characters. One of THEM might mention to her she is beautiful, one of her friends might be jealous of it, but as the narrator I won't just say so.

In order to describe a room, my POV character must be seeing it. As Mark says (+1) the room is character; rooms serve particular purposes, be they a bar, a store, a bedroom, a bathroom, a hotel or surgery. The warden's office in a prison. The people in it are there for a reason; the character arrives in it for a reason. This tells us something about the character and the occupants.

Your setting can be used as a kind of foreshadowing, it can reflect what is **about** to happen, or make what is about to happen more likely or less likely (for contrast). To be over the top, it is unlikely to meet your true love over a dead body in the morgue (although that works in many criminal detective stories). Less likely in a raucous drunken bar, more likely in a relatively quiet and safe place where several conversations (or long conversations) can be had, like a workplace, or randomly seated beside each other on a 12 hour flight.

Julia Roberts (as a famous actress) meets Hugh Grant (as a commoner) in the little English bookstore he owns, with no other patrons there. (Edit: I should have detailed why this is a great setting for this love story: Their roles as customer & clerk give them reason to interact; and we learn later her main thing is finding a life outside the spotlight, a quiet bookstore is a great metaphor this.)

As a rule of thumb (and this is my style, you can choose differently) use your setting to "fit" the story you will tell there, and only describe your characters to the extent needed to justify what they will be doing in the story, and if possible drip even that out somewhat slowly. First impressions of a person are brief prominent characteristics; I do not get into details.

Remember that whatever you say about a **person** is something you are asking the reader to **memorize,** and if at all possible it is better to not "tell" them a characteristic but to "show" them the characteristic by using it or it having an effect on action or on somebody else. (If it doesn't, it probably is not really necessary.) The caveat to this is avoiding a 'deus ex machina', i.e. you can't finally mention your character is seven feet tall halfway through the story and that is why he can do X. Certainly an unusual feature like that must be noticed or mentioned by some other character pretty early in the book. But whether a guy is six feet or five-ten or six-one is unlikely to play any role in the plot or reactions of others.

Original score: 5