Generous to a fault…
Writing|The topic of the week is probably something to which I should have just said ‘no comment’. My fellow authors do tend to drag the devilment out of me. It’s to do with size and aching jaws etc. It did make me think, though, and in all honesty I have to say I do see their point. To start with there are too many books with the guy standing at 6′ 5″ tall. I mean, really, how many guys are seriously that tall? If I make a guy tall, unless there’s a particular plot reason that you want to make him exceptionally large (and I do have one in mind that will require this) then even if I make my guy tall, 6′ 2″ is a more reasonable height. But where are the stories with a smaller man gets laid? Where are the tall woman dates short guy stories, or tall man/short man, tall woman/short woman? Do they exist? I’ve not seen one. Personally, I’m getting the itch to write one. In fact in Snow Angel, I deliberately wrote them with a difference in height and yet the shorter man was no less endowed.
Which brings me back to the topic in question. Unfortunately, height isn’t the only measurement that often gets exaggerated in romances. Talking about it made me realise that I don’t specify inches. It’s the same as any description in writing. The amateur writer will nearly always write that the man or woman was this height, with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes, with a small nose, and a mole at the side of… Well, you get the idea. Description should be part of the narrative. It should blend in, not stand out like a portrait, and it shouldn’t be wrinkle-specific. In other words, you don’t need to describe each individual feature of a person to build up an overall picture. In fact, no matter how you describe someone, they will look slightly different to each reader because our own personal likes and dislikes filter into the reading. Some readers do like to see actual illustrations of how you envisioned the characters, some don’t. You can’t please everyone, but when writing an account it should never jump out of the rest of the action. The reader shouldn’t truly be aware that you’ve described the character. One person’s ‘handsome’ is another person’s ‘ugly’. I believe in leaving something to the imagination and that includes the length and girth of certain bodily… um… assets.
If you want to make a point that a bloke is well-endowed (as I did in Snow Angel) then fine, just say so. You don’t need to get out a vernier (measuring device — sorry it’s being married to someone who has one and no, we’ve never used that to measure… hmmm…. sorry went off on a tangent there). Again, large and small are down to personal preference, and what looks large to one person won’t to another. It may well frighten them. Worse case scenario, you’ll have your reader rolling around on the floor laughing at oversized body parts. If you’re determined to write a story crazy enough to handle outsized dimensions then please, resort to science fiction or fantasy. If you’re going to stretch the imagination or other things to the point of making your audience’s eyes water then it’s best to at least make it plausible or take it out of this world.
