Where did they come from? Why are they there? What do they want? What will they do? How will they do it? and so on.
Readers do not usually “picture” a character when they are reading; they don’t imagine all the visual details of the person. They get a vaguer, more general “feel” for what the character looks like. Even when the character has an important physical attribute like being very tall, or very blond, or wearing round spectacles, the reader often won’t imagine the character like that. This is because the character’s personality is much more important to the reader. The way the reader pictures the character arises more from the reader’s memory than from the description given by the author. As the reader gets a feel for the personality of the character, they will start to picture him physically resembling a person or people that they know with a similar personality.
instead of: John was tall and thin and wore his tee tucked tightly into his pants. He was always fastidiously neat. try something like: John’s tight blue tee was stretched down his long, lean torso, and tucked fastidiously into his freshly pressed pants, whose knife-edge creases sharpened his long, thin legs down to his sensible Oxfords A good trick is to avoid “was” or “is”, for clothing to avoid “wear” and “wore”, for eating to avoid “Eat” or “Ate”, etc.
instead of: John was the anxious sort; he was always worried about trivial things. " try something like: John stood on tiptoes, just back from the curb, trying to hail a cab with one hand and keep his umbrella over him with the other, all the time watching for the next car that might pass to close and splash dirt over his clean Chinos.
