Understanding Your Readers

I'm a little late posting today because I've been doing some catch-up reading. The Passive Guy posted excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article that triggered an insight:

Perhaps, for many readers, it does not make much difference whether a story is told in print on a page or images on a screen. The narrative itself is what matters. In fact, the Great American Read list confirms that there is a great hunger in our culture for grand, mythic narratives. The adoration of the Harry Potter books, like the nearly scriptural status of the Star Wars movies, involves more than just fandom. These are comprehensive universes, complete with their own laws and histories, heroes and villains, morals and meanings. They serve the purpose that was once served by epic poems like “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey,” or even by biblical stories: They dramatize the spiritual truths and longings that shape our world.

People will argue and wail and gnash their teeth (as some the comments on TPV show) of the main points of the article. But it was the highlighted one that made me understand why the Justice universe resonates with readers. Why more people comment on it. Why people want more stories.

All my other series are firmly rooted in contemporary society. The Justice universe takes our world as it was in the 6th century B.C.E. and twists it through an unimaginable conflict to become a nearly unrecognizable. But I try to make it firmly rooted in the (to me) natural progression of politics, economics, and technology if certain major factors are skewed a different way or if they never happened.

I'm not trying to compare my stories to Homer, J.R.R. Tolkien, or even George R.R. Martin. But I think readers do want a fictional world that's a little bigger in scope to escape to with all the craziness in the real world these days.

And there's not a damn thing wrong with that. I know I need a little quiet in another time and another place. I've been reading quite a bit of Gail Carriger and Jonathan Moeller the last couple of months. But now I know what some of my readers want and more importantly why they want it.

Description - Love It Or Hate It?

Description.

Some people love long passages talking about landscape and foods and battles. This is the stuff many epic fantasies are made of. Westeros and The Shire are as much characters in their respective books as Jon Snow and Frodo.

On the other hand, thrillers go for the short minimalist approach. If I asked a fan for a description of Jack Reacher, any specifics, other than height, they would give me would come directly from their imaginations. Why? Because the only thing Lee Child says about Jack's physical attributes is that he's unusually tall.

Which is better?

Neither. Both. It totally depends on the purpose of your description. Are you conveying information? Mood? Setting? As a writer, you need to ask yourself, "What is the purpose of this description?"

What brought up this subject?

Alter Ego released her latest book last week. A reader sent her a note the day after the release, saying she loved it. That it made her feel as if she were in the heroine's shoes.

I realized something that had been bugging me for over a year.

The biggest gripe one of Alter Ego's editors had was that there was so little description of the heroine. She thought there should be more details of the heroine's physical appearance. Not just height, hair color and body shape, but those of her snatch and breasts as well. I resisted, though at the time I couldn't say why.

I mean, I had no problem with physical descriptions of secondary characters, and my written picture of the hero could have been used for a police artist's sketch.

But the reader helped me answer the description question. I put so little detail in these types of books because I know, deep down in my heart, that most women reading romance and erotica want to BE the heroine. By only giving a rough idea of the heroine, they could imagine themselves in her shoes, especially since I write these stories either in deep third person or first person POV. And I haven't written one from the hero's POV. (Yet.)

So how do you use description in your stories?