How much description is enough?
How much is too much?
Do you give a rats patootie that she has sparking blue eyes or he’s tall and dark and handsome and that it’s a hot summer night?
What I’m getting at is the description question. How much is too much…or too little and how often do you want to hear about it?
I don’t want to beat the reader over the head with description but at the same time I do what them to remember they are in Savannah and not NYC.
I love GWTW. I know it takes pages and pages to talk about Tara and what Scarlett wore and what everyone wore etc. But when I read that book I was in the South. When the Yankees were coming I really felt like the Yankees were coming and I hated those Yankees and…wait…I live in Cincinnati and I am a Yankee! But when I read that book I was a Southern belle going through some really bad times…except then Rhett shows up.
As much description as there is in GWTW it works. But that was then and we’re writing books for now. I don’t know how much patience a reader has these days for reading so much description like that.
So my question to you is… How much do you want to know about the hero’s looks? The heroine? And the setting?
Or are you more interested in the plot and fast dialogue and if the author tells me one more time that it’s a dark and stormy night I’m throwing this book across the room.
I’ll mail off Hot and Irresistible notepads and pen etc to anyone who emails me at DiannCastell@hotmail.com
Thanks for chatting.
Hugs, Dianne
DianneCastell.com
I have never read QWTW, nor do I really have an urge too, but I think the level of description that you’re talking about, would get on my nerves. I can’t think of any books that I’ve read where I thought that, but I imagine there might have been one or two. . . perhaps I’m as guilty with a short attention span as I complain about humanity in general today, but I think we just need enough to know what’s going on, enough not said to imagine it for ourselves. If it’s going into a few pages, then to me it seems like something is might wrong or something. LOL
But this also goes with history and research for historicals too. We’re reading a novel, with romance in it. Yep, we want to know what the scene looks like, and we need to know certain facts about the surrounding, both physical and customs, but in the end, it’s not a history book.
Don’t think that was too much description, hopefully!
Lois
Hi, Lois. Times have changed and so have books. I have a short attention span too and if a book moves too slow I start flipping pages…even during sex scenes if it’s same old thing over and over.
I just saw The Proposal and it was set in Alaska and that was great but it could have been any small town.
I think description should come in when it’s necessary to the story and the plot. If the hero has a scar that could play an important part of the story so deserves mentioning. If not, why mention it at all.
I do like knowing how the hero and heroine look and what they’re wearing, but I can understand that these descriptions can get tedious. I don’t have to always know what the characters are wearing unless they’re at a ball or party.
Oh, yes, if the guy’s in a tux I wanna see.
And if he’s in jeans I want to know that too.
I read with GWTW and I really loved the detail and description in that book. I can remember the feeling of actually being there and seeing what they were seeing.
I like to have some of those details and I do want to know what the hero and herione look like. So yep, give me those details.
Hi, Lori.
I know when I read GWTW I felt like I really understood the civil war a lot better. So much different than just studying about it in books.
It made it real and from the other side.
Though why Scarlett ever picked Ashley over Rhett for all those years is a real mystery.
Hi Dianne~
I have to totally agree…what was Scarlett thinking? Rhett was obviously the choice she should have made.
And it took her only a bazillion pages of the book to figure it out.:-)