This slightly deviates from the topic, but wouldn't it be really interesting to see if an entire story could be formed with only character interactions and descriptions? Think of the movie Silence of the Lambs, where almost all of the character development occurs during Hannibal Lector's discussions with Clarice.

Then to philosophize, could you say that all humans are developed through their interactions with other people?

 

Like, you know, a play?

 

A book that has no description has no visuals. A play has costumes and people interacting on stage; unless you're blind yourself, you will see who those people are and make judgments and assumptions based on those physical characteristics. You will also know when someone speaks and not another. You will also understand qualities of pitch and emotion in voice through a play - this usually must be done with description in a book.

If you choose to write a story without ever describing your characters, they are ghosts, basically. Your story is less grounded in reality because you never know what anybody is wearing, what bodily features they possess, or if they're really even human. Granted, this could all be fine, but it's not if in your story you ever want bodies to interact and touch. How am I supposed to understand that Elizabeth is removing her hat if I never knew she was wearing one in the first place? If my mind never came up with her wearing a hat when she was introduced into the story, it's jarring to suddenly accept ten pages down the line she was wearing a hat -- and now that the hat has been removed, what significance does it bear? It now calls into question Elizabeth's foundation as a character - what is she, what am I supposed to assume about her? It's also complicates writing, as you have to use repetition or abstract qualities to address characters ("Elizabeth takes off her hat" vs "The redhead takes off her hat"), instead of their physical characteristics.

A character's introductory description (and the refreshing reminders of it through the ocassional reinforcing lines of description, like "The redhead takes off her hat") is essential to establishing a character. We as authors may decide to contrast what a character really is with what they appear to be, but the removal of description entirely is not something I'd advise. It can work in a poem, because poems are often much more abstract, but in a story? Stories are supposed to be more grounded. I've tried writing more abstract stories, but it's rather hard to get readership about a story where the actual story is not grounded in some reality they can relate to. Poems can be more about emotions and meanings and imagery than actual events, so it's fine if they lack certain concreteness -- and a play or a movie is concrete, because you can see it with your own eyes in reality. A book has to first convince you what it is telling is real.

A written story without description often reads like a chat message log. It's not usually very gripping. It can also get very confusing if you don't constantly put tag lines and such, not knowing who said what, or how it was said, and in what candor, et cetera.

 

Well said. Very well said.

 

Of course, some essays are written sort of what you describe - where characters are more or less vehicles for thought.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/70/70-h/70-h.htm (What is Man?)

But even here, Young Man and Old Man as means of address give us some idea of who these characters are, physically.