ysical prowess is not a visually definite quality.
Powerful men are not always even large men. Action is greatly useful to
reveal the soul, but not very useful to reveal appearance.

However, between narrative and strict descriptive writing a borderland
exists. A person may be described as having a sneaking look. That is
strict description. But the writer also may relate how the person slunk
down an alley to avoid meeting someone he dared not face. The
descriptive value of the word "slunk" as to the person will be as great
as the narrative value of the word to the event. It is merely the matter
of vivid and effective narration approached from a new angle. Narration
consists in stating what happened to certain persons and what they did,
and a descriptive quality, both as to the persons and the events, should
permeate it. Visualization of the story in imagination will show the
way.

If action is the least effective way to hint of the characters'
appearance, it is by far the most effective way to display their
natures. The whole purpose of the story of character is to display the
fact and demonstrate the consequences of the possession of certain
traits by a group of persons or even by one person. And in any real
story, that is, in any fiction built about a plot, the traits of a
character and the events will be mutually influential. Either the
characters will be devised to develop the events, or the events will be
devised to develop the characters. The moral quality of an act is a sure
index to the moral quality of the person who commits it. A story must
reveal character simply because it consists of a series of events
involving and produced by men and women. The writer's endeavor is not
merely to narrate the events for their own sake, but also to realize
just what sort of people must inevitably have acted so under the given
conditions, and to employ his subsidiary means of characterization so as
to bring out no trait unnecessary to the events.

There is one exception to the rule that the writer should endeavor to
bring out only the traits of character strictly material to the events.
Of course, the primary necessity in fiction writing is to develop the
whole story naturally. But a story is for its readers. To give some
stories full effect upon a reader it is necessary to invest one or more
of the characters with a trait or traits not strictly necessary to the
development of the story. Usually the aim will be to awaken th