I don’t do detail

I was advised recently that I needed to do more world building; that I needed to let myself go, let the words flow and build pictures; all those sensory things that I’m told will draw the reader into the story.

It’s not the first time I’ve been told this. The wonderful Melissa James reviewed some of my work a while back and said the same thing.

So I am about to start revising my latest work and add some detail.

Trouble is, when it comes to detail, I always err of the side of not too much; mostly because I personally don’t read the detail in books. Whenever a paragraph starts with: ‘The house was...’, The landscape seemed...’, His hair was...’, I skip it. My interest is in the character; what they do next, what they feel, why they feel it. Where they are when they’re feeling it hardly matters to me.

So this is my dilemma. I don’t like the detail, so I don’t want to inflict it on my readers.

Does anyone else struggle with this? Or maybe you love the detail. Do tell. And any hints on where I can read more about this.