Details

As I was reading today, I realized something.  The best way to describe a situation is by careful insertion of details.  Rather than having long winding paragraphs and sentences of description which become boring to read and will leave your reader yawning, insert tiny details here and there that let your readers use their imaginations but at the same time give them a good sense of where your character is and what he is doing.  Of course, sometimes you must have a longer-than-preferred description but cutting it up into shorter sentences makes it easier for a reader to digest.  For example, compare the following excerpts from J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and Rick Riordan's The Lightening Thief.

The Hobbit page 10.
The mother of our particular hobbit - what is a hobbit?  I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us.  They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves.  Hobbits have no beards.  There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off.  They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leather soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it).  Now you know enough to go with.

The Lightening Thief pages 32 and 33.
My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room.  Her eyes sparkle and change colors in the light.  Her smile is as warm as a quilt.  She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old.  When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad.  I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe.

What did you think?  Which did you enjoy reading more and which held your interest longer?  Don't mistake me, I love Tolkien's work as much as Riordan's but one is certainly easier to read. 
Another excerpt I found interesting was from S. J. Kincaid's Insignia.  Check it out:
Insignia page 395.
"When the time comes to send out the virus, I want you to think this: 'tiny spicy Vikram'."
Vik's smile dropped away.  Despite the seriousness of his situation, Tom started laughing.
"Wait, no," Vik said.  "I don't like this phrase."
"Don't think it too early," she [Wyatt] warned Tom.
"Vikram is not tiny," Vik declared belatedly.  "I'm taller than both of you."

Now, I did cut some of the dialogue out because it was unnecessary but here's my point.  For 394 pages we didn't know that Vik was taller than Wyatt and Tom.  We didn't really know anything about Vik's height.  Instead of Kincaid bombarding our eyes with paragraph-long descriptions, she waited and slid in details like that.  That is what makes a story feel more realistic.  In real life, we don't have winding details, we have little tidbits inserted into our senses.  Doing this in your story will make it more believable and help your readers relate more to the characters.  Practice this in a story you are currently writing or go back and find one you wrote a while back and look for instances where you did or didn't use this technique.
May your pens stay sharp!
*Evyn