The wrong kind of details: the components of wonder (aka lmp's rant)

[The Silver-shod Muse]

I usually just give the body shape, the hair colour, sometimes the colour of skin and eyes, and let the reader imagine the rest... I'm usually bored to death by lenghtly descriptions of the beauty of some princess or other...

As you said Niphredil, I think the best policy here is to describe beauty as Tolkien did. He was a master at that sort of thing. Instead of putting his readers through a gauntlet of descriptions over every inch of Luthien's glorious body, he just gives some general description (i.e. gray eyes) and lets the reader envision his/her own kind of beauty as personified by Luthien.

lmp, in my Flaubert post in FWW I included one of Flaubert's quotes concerning the use of detail, and a very good one it is, too. Again I say, READ FLAUBERT for a fascinating study on how to gracefully handle detail and character perspectives.