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Whether to describe personality of a character or let the readers deduce it based on the actions

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I am facing this situation where description of the personality of a character is quite important. Is it good to describe the personality traits or shall I let the readers deduce it based on the action. Is this description worth, compared to the amount of content it would take?

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This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/10751. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Well, if you don't have time or space in your story to show some aspect of a character's personality, why bother with it? Does it matter if your character refuses to shop at Walmart because of their abusive business practices if the story is about how he hates strawberries?

If the characteristic is that important to the story, then yes, you need to spend the time and content showing us.

The other problem is that you may run into what's called an "informed characteristic," which is when the writer tells us that the character is X (for example, brave and daring), and the other characters treat him like he's brave and daring, but we only see the character being nervous and risk-averse.

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