Is It Ever OK to Zonk Your Reader?

Finished editing through chapter 19 last night, and I am eagerly awaiting the last five chapters from my editor. I hope that the parts I left unedited survive the second round. As I explained, I didn’t change everything suggested, but that’s not the problem, as Ti made it clear her edits were optional suggestions. It’s when I get to the senior editing stage is when the real test of staying power is going to happen.

I don’t write in an unusually unorthodox way or anything like that, but some parts might be open to critique. And if the senior people opt for it to be changed, then I suppose I’ll have to do it. That is if I want THE VASE published and I do.

Mostly I’m thinking about the very first paragraph. I make it known right away that the weather is unusually hot, and I use a few different ways to convey that. Now I’ve said before you don’t what to zonk the reader over the head with a description, but Ti noted right off that I used perhaps too many references to the overwhelming heat.

But right now I want it that way. I want the reader to be zonked over the head with that heat, just as the characters in the story are zonked over their heads with the heat, and I think it works.

So as the author, I would like it to stay. But if I had a large following like, say, Nathan Bransford, (over 5,000, wow) I might even go ahead and post that first paragraph and have a vote on whether to keep it or change it. I might do it anyway.