Ah, if we're talking about breaking the rule of Chekhov's Gun and including information that doesn't play any role in the story (whether it's character appearance or anything else), then that drives me up the wall as a reader. I keep waiting for the moment when the shoe will drop and the writer will reveal why it's so important that the hero has blond hair. Then his lover says, "Your hair is gorgeous," and I'm like, "What? That's it? I sat through an entire paragraph on the hero's gold locks, just so that his lover could compliment him on it? I want it to be revealed that the blond man committed the murder!"
Okay, maybe I'm not a very good romance reader. :) But I have encountered this problem of extraneous character description mainly in love stories, and I can only conclude that the average romance reader is a very visual creature who wants the textual equivalent of screen caps.
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Date: 2019-Apr-04, Thursday 09:31 pm (UTC)Ah, if we're talking about breaking the rule of Chekhov's Gun and including information that doesn't play any role in the story (whether it's character appearance or anything else), then that drives me up the wall as a reader. I keep waiting for the moment when the shoe will drop and the writer will reveal why it's so important that the hero has blond hair. Then his lover says, "Your hair is gorgeous," and I'm like, "What? That's it? I sat through an entire paragraph on the hero's gold locks, just so that his lover could compliment him on it? I want it to be revealed that the blond man committed the murder!"
Okay, maybe I'm not a very good romance reader. :) But I have encountered this problem of extraneous character description mainly in love stories, and I can only conclude that the average romance reader is a very visual creature who wants the textual equivalent of screen caps.