Most stories I read are driven primarily by dialogue -- but that's probably the case for most modern works. My memories are colored by school-assigned literature that's seemingly dominated by pages upon pages of description.
For fanfiction though, most writers have settled on a dialogue-heavy formula. I consider it a byproduct of the more popular forms of media: TV, movies, etc. We grew up watching this stuff, so it only makes sense that we borrow from it when we imagine our own stories. This has led many fanfic authors to write something akin to scripts rather than novels. Remove all the keyframe action and all you have is talk. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We all watch TV, so it's a familiar format for us. The problem is that it doesn't take advantage of the writing medium.
Which brings us to the topic of "describing things." I used to view the task of describing things as a necessary but boring exercise. We can't have our characters running around naked in vast realms of emptiness. We need to set up the scene, the setting, and the mood through description.
How do we do this? Everything is fair game. We can go into detail about a character's appearance, how the place looks, what they're feeling, etc.. All of that adds value to the narrative, similar to costume or set design in a movie. It gives the reader a specific atmosphere.
People have their own methods of describing stuff. Some go into painstaking technical detail by giving the reader a laundry list of physical properties. Others may go for a more hands-off approach by presenting blank slates for which we can fill in the details ourselves. Between the two, I'm a fan of the latter approach.
I don't describe things as if the reader has never seen it before. I operate under the assumption that the reader knows full well about the object I'm describing. My goal is to reach into the reader's memory and use their imagination to fill in the blanks. Instead of describing a Lamborghini Diablo in all of its glory, I'd probably just describe it as a "fast car." I don't even know what a Diablo looks like, but everybody has a conception of a "fast car." In their mind, it can either be a Lamborghini or an Aston Martin -- it doesn't really matter.
Obviously, "fast car" is too vague to be useful, and I'm not going to write down the technical specs of a Lamborghini, so how do I go about describing this car? I do it with "feeling." For me, it's not about rendering objects as explicitly as possible. I try to capture its "essence," so instead of just saying "fast car," I say,
It was a speed demon. Underneath the hood was a beast capable of propelling the vehicle upwards to 200 miles per hour. It was a noisy ride, but there was no need for music or radio. What sound could be more beautiful than the roar of a top class engine? The car could cut through the wind like a knife. It was an elegant fusion of monster and machine.
As you can see, I say nothing about how the car actually looks. I don't mention its color, what kind of wheels it has, or specifics about the interior, but in your mind, you have a pretty clear picture of what kind of car it is. I don't know about you, but my imagination is constantly filling in the details by itself. I don't force the reader to imagine something, I just give the reader something to imagine. There's a difference.
I apply this principle to everything: people, places, and objects. It gives everything more personality. I don't do it all the time since there are things that must be described technically, but its all about varying your technique. This isn't a carte blanche to suddenly start throwing out ambiguities though. Specificity will always be your best friend. All it takes is one adjective to turn a vague noun into a better one.
My journalism professor once said that she loved adjectives, and that we should load up our writing with as many of them as possible. At the time, it sounded like overkill, but in moderation, she's absolutely right. Here are some examples:
Instead of crossing paths with a man, you can say, crossing paths with an inattentive man.
Instead of saying, he saw something out of the corner of his eye, say he saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye.
The possibilities are endless really. One additional adjective can make a plain sentence into something exciting. The more adjectives you pepper into your narrative, the more vibrant it becomes. Just don't go overboard with it.
