Writing Prompt: Characters in Detail

One of the trickiest aspects of writing is creating believable characters.  Some authors immediately layer on the details about a character--their jawline, their nose, their eyebrows, and the details of their dress.  Others provide mere suggestions of what a character looks like and allow the details of their character and background to trickle out throughout the story.

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade

It can be a delicate balancing act between an information dump of character detail and a story so sparse that the reader has to fill in the details from their own imagination.  One of the most amazing things about language and storytelling is that both approaches can work just fine.

For today's writing prompt, 

write two short passages describing one character.  

In one passage, layer on lots of description and in the other tease out aspects of the character through dialogue and very sparse description.  See which one you like best.