That's a great feeling, Gud. I bet you're writing now, huh?

Yay, Sox! All kinds of good feedback ~ma.

I certainly am!

I came across this reading, well listening, to a book about a woman finding a man attractive.

"Even while walking he looked like he was dancing."

Maybe it's just me, but I can't come up with a mental image of this actually working short of the man listening to a MP3 player while walking and dance-walking along which is totally not what the author is going for.

Just for fun, what kind of descriptions totally throw off your mental image while reading?

I can't think of any right now, Gud, but I'm distracted.

Hey, Scrappy! Scott Caan was just on Ellen, and he was talking about having his plays published. Where do you get plays published? I realized I know absolutely nothing about it.

Oops. Didn't need to say it twice.

I can't say off the top of my head a description that has thrown me off, although it has happened. The one thing that does come to mind is when the author uses the exact same description repeatedly. Ok author, you have described his long narrow nose 15 times already, I got it. Next time you see him in silhouette how about you describe the chin, or better yet do we need to describe the same face 113 times in one novel? Yes, I remember, the eyes are green. Yep, you mentioned a few dozen times the height. Might just be me, but it annoys me because instead of thinking about the character or situation now I am thinking about how it is written. I certainly enjoy pausing from time to time and thinking about how nicely some passage was written, but mostly I just want to be drawn into the story. Repeated descriptions or phrases pull me out of the story.

I thought of one, Gud -- when men are described as giggling. I know some men do giggle, but something about reading the word "giggle" makes me think of a little kid, or possibly a real psycho, like a mad villain type.

One of the things that gets me is when a POV character goes on and on about their own physical characteristics. Like, "I swept my strawberry-blonde shoulder-length hair out of the way of my collar, and batted my blue eyes at the doorman as he let me out. My breasts pressed against the tight material of my low-cut top."

A: Most people do not spend a lot of time thinking about their own physical characteristics that way. Usually it's more like, "Man, I have to get my color fixed and it's too short-notice to get to the salon this weekend, maybe I can get a good box of blonde at Walgreens on the way home?"

B: My example above included one of the things that really throw me out of a story, which is when a man is writing from a woman's pov but uses a male gaze for it. Most women (not all) don't spend much time thinking about their breasts, and (outside of a sexual encounter) generally aren't aware of them doing anything, unless there's a problem, like your bra is too tight or you're bouncing too much or the material of your shirt is thinner than you thought...

It's a question of what is an appropriate perspective for the narrative voice. I mean, okay, if the character in that first quote were someone in disguise, or working a scam that needed her physical characteristics to be pointed out, fine. But just stuck in there as a way to describe her, it's both awkward and uncomfortable.

Repeating the same point over and over is one of the things that annoys me about Laurell K Hamilton. The Nikes and their particular color of swoop, or the brand of Anita's holster. Gah.

It's a question of what is an appropriate perspective for the narrative voice.

That's a textbook rookie mistake. Editors should know to stamp that out, including protagonists who look in the mirror in the first scene so they can describe what they look like.

I think authors think readers want to know what a character looks like, but not so much, really. What you want is the reader to *feel* your character, be in her head. And yeah, what you said about no one walking around thinking about her sparkling blue eyes and the way her boobs feel in her bra.