The hero's piercing blue eyes narrowed as he...

I want to talk about the idea of writing exposition into action, and why I think it's generally a Bad Idea. First, you'll want to know what I mean, so here's an example:

I narrowed my brown eyes and saw Aeneas almost at once. He was sitting comfortably on the ground in his plain and worn soldier's clothes that were pulled tight over his well-muscled body, laughing at something one of the other men, also dressed in worn military garb, had said. One of the women handed him some flatbread piled with greens. He pushed back a lock of the long hair touched with gray that told me he was in his forties, took the food from the woman's matronly hands and smiled as he ate it. Beside him sat a boy, filling his teenaged mouth full of food. The boy watched Aeneas with his clear blue eyes in such a way that I could tell they were father and son. This must be Ascanius, I thought.

With him was a pretty boy his age. "Our meal is fit only for rabbits," this boy said, adjusting the red cap which sat askew over his thick black hair. The woman who had served the meal sat his cap straight with her strong, rough hands.

Ascanius adjusted his own worn tunic, shook his head covered in golden curls and said, "Well, it's not at every meal that you get to eat the table too."

Aeneas looked at him with clear blue eyes and sat motionless for a minute. Then he stood to his full height of six feet and spoke in a clear and solemn voice.

"That is the omen," he said. They all looked up at his handsome face.

That's just...bad. It's not as bad as I tried to make it, either, but I hope you know what I mean. We've all, I'm sure, read stories where the author is using constructions of the pattern:

[Character] does some action while [physical attribute].

Whole paragraphs, entire pages of this stuff until the author has exhausted all his description of the character while exhausting the reader as well:

"I'm not innocent," she said with a ruby-red pout, flipping her long beautiful blonde locks away from her face while batting the thick lashes over her sea green eyes.

This does not work. It's awkward, for one thing, and it's confusing to read if kept up for more than, say, a single sentence in a row. Heck, even a single sentence is too much.

I know we're all told that we shouldn't dump our exposition on our readers in solid blocks. We're all told that it's boring and it takes away from the action, so we try to mix our exposition into the action and feed our readers character descriptions while our characters are doing things. I believe this is a mistake; it is very bad advice and promotes bad writing. Mixing description into action like this weakens the passages. The action doesn't move, and the descriptions get lost. The reader takes little, if anything, away from passages like this.

There is nothing wrong--and quite a bit right--with taking a moment of the reader's time to describe your characters, if you want to describe them. The reader won't mind as long as you put the description in the right place (before or after the action, but not during it). The same goes with places and things. Separate the descriptions from the action. See how your favorite authors do it and try modeling your work on theirs to get a feel for how it's done.

Here, by the way, is the actual passage (from Ursula K. LeGuin's Lavinia) that I murdered above. Note how she takes the time to set the stage and give us the characters before she has them act:

I saw my husband almost at once. He stood out among them, not by any ornament of richness of clothing--they were all dressed like soldiers on the march who'd been on duty a long time and crammed into ships on the sea as well, all plain and worn and dirty--he simply stood out, the way the morning star stands out from other stars. He was a man in his forties, with a strong face. He was sitting comfortably on the ground and laughing at something one of the other men said. They were having a picnic there on the grass. Almost all of them were men. They had brought flatbread up from the ship, which were run up stern-first along the beach. They had gathered a great basket of wild greens to pile up on the rounds of flatbread, having no meat or cheese, evidently, as well as no plates or tables. The few women among them were none of them young; one matron, smiling, presented Aeneas with a round of bread heaped with greens, which he rolled up and bit into with gusto. Close to him sat a boy of fifteen or so, who looked enough like him, and looked up to him in such a way, that I was sure it was his son Ascanius. With him were a very pretty boy of his age and a beautiful youth a few years older, wearing a bent-forward red cloth cap. The woman who had served the meal sat down beside him and set his cap straight with an unmistakably maternal fussiness, adoring him.

Red Cap said something about the meal being fit for rabbits not men, and young Ascanius said, "Well, it's not at every meal that you get to eat the table too."

At that Aeneas looked at him as if startled. After gazing motionless for a minute he stood up. They all looked at him.

"That is the omen," he said, his voice ringing clear and solemn.

~SGFB