Dee Savoy

Today one reader who is also a writer complimented me on not doing the whole “sexual chocolate thing” in my books. My response was, “Huh?” I’m getting to be an old broad who needs to have everything spelled out to her. What she meant was that I don’t spend a lot of time mentioning over and over again what my characters look like.

Conversely, on a message board where some other readers were discussing a different book, they were disappointed that I hadn’t described my hero enough.

Oy!

This is what we writers refer to as readers giving us conflicting advice. It’s true that I may have given less attention to my hero’s description in one book than another, but truthfully, I don’t tend to repeat what folks look like often in my books. Mostly this is because I find it annoying when I’m reading. If you’ve told me once, I’ve got it–or I make my own.

But description, or over-description is a pet peeve of mine. I absolutely detest it when an author dumps a plethora of description on me. For example, a character walks into a restaurant. Before I even know what’s going on, I know what color the drapes are, the time on the clock, the entire ancestry of the character that’s sitting at the table and the fact that there’s a fly in some other customer’s soup.

For me, this is author intrusion. I’d much rather hear only those details relevant to the viewpoint character as they become important. And some details will never be important. Please leave some things to my imagination. It’s overactive and needs use.

Not being one to propose change without offering solutions, here are my tips on how to use details to best advantage.

1. Get into your character’s head. What would he/she notice about the setting? Those are the important details. Leave everything else out.

2. Filter that detail in slowly. You don’t have to say everything up front. You can give your character’s general impression of a place first, then fill in more details as your character would notice them. For example, they might notice the carpet as they walked across it or the sound of cicadas in the trees at a quiet moment.

3. Find the important detail. All details are not created equally. The reader may never need to know that your character is sitting on a blue chair, but the fact that the fabric is frayed or patched over is more telling. Pick details that speak to character development or story enhancement in some way.

4. Find the difference. At the beginning of my upcoming book, Forbidden Games, my hero thinks of my heroine, thusly:

Andrew Grissom slowly lowered the copy of the Times he’d been reading and turned his head in the direction of the husky female voice. The first thing he noticed were the long, long legs encased in black fish net stockings. Above that, black spandex shorts clung to shapely hips beneath a fitted top that barely contained Zaria Fuentes’ ample cleavage and exposed a good three inches of her midriff. Frizzified jet-black hair floated around her shoulders. Aside from looking sexy as hell, it served the dual purpose of being a hiding place for a mike.
He focused on her face: amber eyes at an exotic tilt underneath winged brows, cheekbones for days and a pair of lips that would send Pam Anderson running back for collagen injections, all coated in more make-up than she usually wore in a week.

Got a picture in your mind of what Zaria looks like? This description appears on page one. I never mention her features again, at least not to my recollection. I mention her hairstyle a couple of times, because it means something when she changes it, or what she wears, but only when it is significant for some reason.

And if you’re thinking I just violated my own rule about dumping information, think again. The Zaria here is so different from the way the hero is used to seeing her, plus he’s half in love with her already, he would notice everything in one big gulp.

5. Don’t sweat it. Find a level of descriptiveness that suits you and your writing. Some folks are naturally minimalists and that’s fine. Others can’t seem to write without long, flowing descriptive passages. That’s fine, too. I hope you don’t mind if I skim.