How much realism do you need?
So I’m just musing, and I wonder — just how many women are out there with huge, DD chests? Or men with 12″ long cocks as thick as a soda can?
Perhaps I’m looking for a bit too much realism, but I find that descriptions like this make a story unintentionally humorous as opposed to arousing or exciting. I read a description of a petite woman with a chest larger than Dolly Parton’s and all I can think is: “Wow, her back must hurt a lot.” Or a guy is ridiculously endowed and I think: “Ouch.”
I admit that in my writing, I shy away from such descriptions in general. Sometimes I feel I’m lucky to specify hair and eye color. I don’t know why, but I have a hard time describing physical features and so I’ve decided to leave it up to the reader. I don’t mind if other writers given more detailed descriptions; it’s nice to have a good visual, after all. It’s just not something I’m good at, so I try to find ways around it.
But women with chests in the DDs or bigger? Men who must need extra large undies to contain themselves? And let’s not even get into the women who want to do nothing but give their men blow jobs and have the end result for lunch. (There doesn’t seem to be a male equivalent of that.)
So I guess I’m wondering how much realisim people like in their erotica/porn. I find it much easier to get involved — and turned on — if the characters are believably built, and (as I read in one story) a GGG chest just isn’t believable. Nor is a foot-long dick, as I’ve read in various places that well, most of it just won’t fit, no matter how acrobatic you are. I’m all for suspension of disbelief, but somehow I find it easier to believe in flying carpets than beach-ball breasts.
I agree, Eve. I like a lot of realism in the stories I read. I hate it when stories contain character cliches like the ever-present “beautiful blonde with the big tits” or “the pale redhead with the emerald eyes” or “the dark and handsome bad boy with the six-pack abs and the huge cock.” Characters like this bore me completely. I like reading about average-looking people who have one great quality be it their eyes, their smile, their ass, whatever. It helps me to relate to the people I’m reading about. All I really want is for a writer to tell me what colour hair their main characters have and maybe their eye colour and I’m happy.
A lot of the authors RP has published do this.
I’m usually sparse on the physical character description as well. A a reader, I often find myself ignoring the descriptions of characters in books or stories and building an independent mental picture of them in my head instead. Unless there’s something specifically needed by the story in a characters physique, I really want to let the reader build the story characters themselves.
M, that’s the understatement of the year!
You refer to your characters as “the young woman” or “the man.” Yeah, I’d say that’s pretty sparse.
But many of Monocle’s females are either blindfolded or in a dark room, which would in fact make description difficult.
Personally, I either want almost no physical descriptions, so I can put myself in the place of the MC, or I’d like VERY realistic descriptions which include people’s physical flaws.
I once wrote a story about an attraction for a very ordinary middle-aged man, paunch and all. Personally, I thought it was one of the sexiest stories I’d ever written.
I like the idea of including “flaws” very much. I find that I sometimes only include odd details (a mole, a piece of jewelry, etc) and leave the rest to the reader.
What was the name of that story?
I think I like some guide on the description, but I like to finish it off myself. Oh — and I’d like a moratorium on 6’6″ guys pairing with 5’0″ women. Someone could get hurt.
“Changeling”? If so, RG, yes, it was one of the sexiest stories you’ve ever written. Definitely. Most, really, very definitely.
I couldn’t agree more. And I will go further: why do we need descriptions that include height, weight, measurements, dress size, shoe size and the like, unless, for some ungodly reason, these measurements might be cogent. I believe that stories of this sort, by and large, should be about real people, people we can identify with easily. As the correspondent above mentioned: put yourself in the character’s place.