Writing Erotic Dialogue

 Thomas Roche  6 Responses »
Jun 102010
 
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Ah, yes, dialogue: People talking at each other, right? Or are they, instead, talking to the reader, alternately revealing the plot in carefully-titrated installments, or providing “drama” as they “interact” and “character development” as they “reveal their foibles”?

Dialogue: it’s made out of wood, and you carve it with a chainsaw, right?

I’ve always despised writing dialogue. As one of my favorite essays on writing dialogue points out, it’s is one of the hardest things for beginning writers to get the hang of — but even seasoned writers rarely write good dialogue.

In any kind of fiction, conversations are often forced and unrealistic at best, laughably ridiculous at worst. Voracious fiction readers often barely even notice it, because they get used to it, which is probably why the biggest fiction readers, when they turn to writing, often write the very worst dialogue. They write it like they’ve read it, and it sounds awkward — because dialogue in most fiction sounds awkward.

This syndrome perpetuates for a good procedural reason in addition to just plain habit: In plot-driven fiction, dialogue’s purpose is not to portray how people really talk, but to move the plot forward and establish character. It is a very rare writer who can have her or his characters do those two things and also sound realistic. It’s a rare writer, actually, who can have characters do that and not sound just plain weird.

When we start talking about erotica, it gets weirder still. How does one portray people talking dirty without sounding dumb? When most people think about talking dirty, they imagine dialogue like “Give me your long hot cock!” or “You want it? Yeah? You want it? Yeah? You want it?” that seem to be copped from porn movies.

Evangelists for “talking dirty in bed” often encourage practitioners to do exactly that sort of thing, if that’s what’s hot for them. And that’s awesome if you’re trying to turn on yourself and your partner, verbally. Much of the instruction around learning to talk dirty in bed has to do with losing your inhibitions. Say “give me your long hot cock” if that’s what works for you, and/or your partner.

To be an effective dirty-talker in your private life, on some level you need to not be afraid to sound ridiculous.

But if you’re a writer, it’s your job not to sound ridiculous. Characters in your erotic novel or story shouldn’t spew porn-movie clichés in dialogue any more than they should order a pizza with “extra sausage” without any way to pay for it.

Writing teachers and in how-to articles often suggest that a writer should learn to write convincing dialogue by listening to how people talk. Which is a great piece of advice, but to learn how people talk dirty, do you have to be a big fuckin’ slut?

That certainly helps. If you’ve had sex with a lot of people, you might have a better sense of how people act in bed (or the back seat, or the restroom of a 747 on the polar route to Helsinki, or bent over the railing at a football game), which includes how they talk. That may also be true if you’re a sex worker of any flavor, or if you’ve done any other kind of professional communication about sex that puts you in contact with people and their foibles. If you’re the sort of person who can go to public sex parties or BDSM events, and you’re in the sort of locale that has them, you can certainly learn a lot about how people interact sexually by attending such a thing.

But it’s not necessary to be a big-city perv in order to write erotica (as I hope you already know), and you don’t have to fuck people to know how they talk about sex.

The truth is, finding out how people talk about sex isn’t all that difficult. You simply ask them. If you’re not comfortable talking to your friends about sex, you’re going to have a harder time writing about it.

On the other hand, if you’ve really decided that people in your social circle aren’t up for talking about it, then you can also turn to online communities — because while the language people use when posting or chatting about sex certainly isn’t the same as they’d use in person, verbally, it’s a hell of a lot closer to what they’d say in bed than the dialogue in most erotic fiction. Or, for that matter, in the quotes in “nonfiction” articles you’ll read in Cosmopolitan, all of which I’m convinced are made up by the authors, or at least heavily paraphrased.

Another way to spice up your erotic dialogue is to read quality nonfiction about sex. For instance, one of the very best books you can read for learning how women talk about sex is Nancy Friday’s groundbreaking My Secret Garden, a series of interviews with women about their sexual fantasies. Its companion, Men In Love features Friday interviewing men. The books are very out of date nowadays — but they’re still among the best, freshest documents out there for exploring how people talk and feel about sex. Even though the interviews aren’t in the form of dialogue, these books are a great place to start.

Keep in mind that dialogue should, ideally, move the plot forward and reveal character while sounding fresh. If it sounds realistic, more’s the better — and fresh often equals realistic. But it’s better to write unrealistic dialogue that’s a joy to read than to write dialogue that’s realistic, but doesn’t work in story terms, whether your characters are in the bedroom, boardroom, hotel room or on a surfboard.

Last but far from least, work on your dialogue outside the bedroom as well as inside the bedroom, with all the tools that you can find. Read plays and screenplays, which often have more finely-honed dialogue sensibilities than fiction. Listen to people talk on the street, in cafes, in classrooms, wherever.

Unless you’re writing pure-sex vignettes, then as an erotic writer you’ve got to engage readers the same way any other commercial writer does; you’ve got to keep them reading long enough to get your peeps to bed. You can write the hottest pillow-talk in the world, but if you’re lost your reader before the protagonists even make it back to her place, then your heroine’s cries of “Extra sausage? But I ordered anchovies!” will go unappreciated.

And did I mention listen? Too many of us sit around in conversation waiting to talk. As a writer, you get to express yourself on the page. So, if you don’t already, start to listen, not just to what people are saying, but how they are saying it. Getting a real knack for dialogue in general will mean that when it comes time for you to undress your characters, they’ll be as fully-formed as you can make them — or, at least, as they need to be for the story.

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 Posted by thomasroche at 12:10 pm  Tagged with: , ,

“WHAT CAN I DO TO IMPROVE MY SALES?”

 Write Sex  1 Response »
Jun 042010
 
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“WHAT CAN I DO TO IMPROVE MY SALES?”

It’s an email I receive often from new ebook authors: “What can I do to improve my book’s sales?”

I, as a publisher, do what I can. We try to give books covers we have reason to think will help them sell. And sometimes titles we think have a similar quality. We also send out copies for review to various book review sites on the web. We take “cover ads” and banner ads and bookmark ads on many of those same sites. And we get writers the occasional blog or chatroom tour. Other than that, and the occasional promotional activity, there isn’t much more publisher’s can do.

The truth is that for the past several decades research reported in Publisher’s Weekly and other journals has consistently shown that a publisher’s promotional efforts and advertising don’t sell books, ebooks or print. Advertisements in the New York Times Review of Books, People, or wherever, don’t play any significant role in influencing someone’s decision about whether or not to buy a particular book.

So why do the big publishers spend so much money on full-page ads in various publications? According to the late Richard F. X. O’Connor, former marketing director for Doubleday’s book publishing division and for Walden books, the more successful progenitor of today’s Border’s chain, the big publishers take out big splashy ads to make their top-selling writers feel important and to show everyone that the publisher is successful enough to afford such ads.

So what does sell books? And here we are talking about all kinds of books, ebooks, paperbacks, and hard covers, be they mystery, romance, historical novel, presidential biography, self-help, or even erotica. One thing, O’Connor says, sells books and one thing only. Word of mouth!

Yes, word of mouth. Or, to put it another way, reader excitement. Readers are special people. There aren’t a lot of them, and they tend to hang out with each other so they have someone to talk about books with. They even tend to congregate with people who like to read the same type of books they do. Science fiction readers often have friends who also read science fiction. The same can be said for romance readers, who are often heard discussing the newest book by the bestselling romance author of the time.

So when a reader of contemporary fantasy, say, really likes an author or book so much, she or he can barely contain his or her excitement and has to tell someone else about it, so they tell other readers of contemporary fantasy. If those readers like it, they tell other readers of contemporary fantasy, and the word spreads very rapidly by mouth. Hence, word of mouth.

The same thing happens today on the internet, only much faster with Facebook, Twitter, blogs. I call this “word of web.” If someone is wowed by a book or author, they Twitter it, blog it, email it, and maybe Google group it; and if a sufficient number of other people read it and like it, the lucky author’s reputation and sales are on the way up.

So, when it comes to selling books, the object is not so much to merely expose the title or idea of a book to readers, many publisher’s are advertising or promoting many books, and a reader’s disposable income for book purchases is limited. What decides which books they are willing to invest their limited book budget in is an enthusiastic recommendation or mention by another reader of similar ilk. So when it comes to selling books, the focus should be on developing ways to generate reader enthusiasm for an author’s work.

While some readers can work up some enthusiasm for publishers, they never-the-less respond a lot more warmly and enthusiastically to authors than they do to publishing companies. That’s a no brainer.

So, in the internet era, a larger share of the burden of winning readers over falls on the author. Or, to look at it another way, today the internet provides incredibly powerful tools that allow an author anywhere in the world to have an unprecedented influence on the marketing and reader reception of their own books. And, more, via all the social networking tools, the author essentially can have something a lot like the direct, personal interaction of a bookstore signing or reading with readers every day.

When readers get to know an author personally, they are far more likely to buy that author’s work. The internet makes it possible for you to help readers get to know and like you. If they do they will share their positive regard for you with other readers, and you are on your way to becoming known.

If you want to create or build a loyal audience of readers eager to read each story or book that comes out, you must have an exciting site that makes people want to come back. You must use it to promote your books and yourself as a writer. Look up the sites of some successful authors of erotica and see what they are like. Emulate what they do. You can’t go wrong.

Once you have readers coming to your site, you want to communicate with them directly, give them a sense of who you are. This is your chance to establish a bond that will carry over into sales. That’s what blogs are for. In a blog you can share your opinions, likes and dislikes, and just about whatever of what you think of and about as you are willing to share. There are many sites that tell you how to build blog traffic. Look them up and follow their advice.

Twitter is also a powerful aid to selling your book, instantly sharing news about it through widening networks of people. And the use of Facebook or some variant like Myspace is also essential.

It’s no coincidence that the writers I know with the best sites, who work the hardest to make use of all their available internet tools have the best sales over all.

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 Posted by jmstine at 2:18 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Definitive Definitions

 Write Sex  7 Responses »
May 272010
 
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A pal of mine asked an interesting question once: what’s my definition of erotica, or of pornography? Other folks have been asked these questions, of course, and the answers have been as varied as those asked, but even as I zapped off my own response I started to really think about how people define what they write, and more importantly, why.

It’s easy to agree with folks who say there’s a difference between erotica and pornography. One of the most frequent definitions is that erotica is sexually explicit literature that talks about something else aside from sex, while porno is sex, sex and more sex and nothing else. The problem with trying to define erotica is that it’s purely subjective – even using the erotica-is-more-than-just-sex and porn-is-just-sex-analysis. Where’s the line and when do you cross it? One person’s literate erotica is another’s pure filth. Others like to use a proportional scale a certain percent of sex content– bing! – something becomes porn. Once again: Who sets the scale?

What I find interesting isn’t necessarily what the definition between erotica and pornography should be but why there should be one to begin with. Some writers I’ve encountered seem to be looking for a clear-cut definition just so they won’t be grouped together with the likes of Hustler and Spank Me, Daddy. While I agree that there’s a big difference between what’s being published in some of the more interesting anthologies, magazines and Web sites Hustler and Spank Me, Daddy, I also think that a lot of this searching for a definition is more about ego and less about literary analysis. Rather than risk being put on the shelves next to Hustler and Spank Me Daddy, some writers try to draw up lists and rules that naturally favor what they write compared to what other people write: “I write erotica, but that other stuff is just pornography. Therefore what I write is better.”

This thought process has always baffled me. First of all, it’s completely subjective. Who died and made you arbiter of what’s erotica and what’s pornography? It sounds like those drawing the line have something to prove to themselves, or hide from okay to hate pornography because what I write is erotica. More importantly, this little fit of insecurity opens the door for other people to start using your own definitions against you. Even a casual glance at the politics of groups out to ‘save’ us all from the evils of pornography shows that they will use any device, any subjective rule (otherwise known as ‘community standards’), any nasty tactic to arrest, impound, burn, or otherwise erase what they consider to be dirty words. You might consider yourself an erotica writer, and be able to show certain people that you are – or, more importantly, convince yourself that you are – but to someone else you’re nothing but a pornographer, just like the stories and writers from whom you’re trying to distance yourself.

So I don’t I’ll tell you that personally, I use all the terms pretty much interchangeably: Porn, erotica, smut, literotica, and so forth. You name it, I use it. Depends on who’s asking. If I’m writing to an editor or publisher, I use erotica. If I’m talking to another author, I playfully call myself a smut writer. If a Jesus Freak gets me out of bed with a knock on the door, I’m a damned pornographer. In my heart, though, I just call myself a writer because even though I write stories of butt-fucking bikers, lascivious cheerleaders, horny space aliens, and leathermen, I’m more turned on by trying to write an interesting story than what the story may particularly be about. Half the time I’m not even aware that what I’m writing is a sex story because I’m having way too much fun with alliteration, character, description, and plot! The fact that what I’m writing may appear in an anthology or book with erotic in the title has nothing to do with how I approach my writing: a story is a story no matter the amount or manner of the eroticism I may include. A good example of my commitment to writing, pure and simple, is that I use my M. Christian name no matter what I’m working on: science fiction, mystery, literary fiction, non-fiction, or even something with erotic in the title.

If there’s a point to all this, it’s that you’re in charge of your own definitions, but try and pay attention to why you define, or why you feel you should. Erotica, pornography, smut, dirty words – be proud of what you write but never ever forget that genres, labels, brands, and all the rest are meaningless. If you’re a writer, you write. And you get to call the fruits of your labor whatever you want because you created it.

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 Posted by MChristian at 1:08 pm  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Honesty and Adult SEO

 Guest Blog  4 Responses »
May 202010
 
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Although my partner in crime Ralph and I kiss each other’s asses during our conversations or when we actually see one another in person once a year or so, it is only to entertain ourselves an the others around us. In fact for many years I argued with Ralph over certain items when it came to online marketing and adult writing. As we have mentioned a few times, Ralph and I are actually about 15 years in age difference so there are some “new media” items which my partner will never listen to me about, and that’s ok. We agree to disagree and still manage to be honest with each other.

In the past two months I have been receiving phone calls and emails from adult websites who have gotten burned by other adult seo companies. Now I don’t know if the inquiries we are receiving for adult seo are because the adult businesses do not understand the time it takes to organically rank for their keywords and had higher and quicker expectations OR if the adult seo provider wasn’t straight up honest with the adult business.

I am finding that many in the adult industry do not want to give away their secrets. I just laugh! Why? Because all the self-proclaimed “secrets” are all over the Web! Yes, you have to find them and do research and/or be involved in Organic SEO for many years BUT if you REALLY want to DIY Adult SEO, there are a few ways to go about it. You can either find an SEO who will consult and teach you how to go about your adult seo campaign or start connecting to seo’s and read their forum and blog postings. Even attending local SEO meet-ups you can learn more about how to begin to organically rank your Website.

Honesty: Is there honesty in Adult SEO?

I know there is competition, LOTS of competition. The adult market is flooded with websites and trying to get a new website ranked can take time for your top targeted keywords. If you are told differently, then you need to rethink the honesty of the person you are speaking to. It is known that Adult SEO takes time hence why there are not many companies who will touch Adult SEO.
Expectations

The expectations of the adult business owner also needs to be in check or reality. There are many sites which have been focusing on their organic ranking from the beginning of their site launch so just think about that competition. Ralph and I have been lucky to rank our own sites fairly quickly but that is also because we set up our sites. When working with a client, many times it could take days if not weeks for their tech department to switch and change items we ask for so that our “magic wand” actually works!

Til next time…

Thank you,
Lisa Weinberger, MAT
PearlyWrites, LLC

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 Posted by Sascha Illyvich at 7:05 am  Tagged with: , , ,

Writing Sex STRUCTURE Part II

 Sascha Illyvich  No Responses »
May 132010
 
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When last we left with my lesson, we talked about sex and scene structure. To review, sex is an ACTION and should be written like an action scene.

Stimulus > Reaction > Perception > Emotion > Response

This is the BEST way to keep your readers from tossing the book across the room. By writing this way we’re creating a mental movie that the reader sees in their head. If you’ll remember, the structure of a scene looks very choppy on the page and we’re left with a lot more white space than what’s typically seen in many novels.

Again, so what? The reader’s eyes do not notice this if you’ve done your job well by crafting deep scenes that take us into the action by using all our senses. Remember, erotica is not just about sex, it’s about involving all of the human being into the act of sex.

That means in our scenes we’ll show feelings, emotions, scents, tastes, sights, touch and more, over and over again until we’ve crafted the scene so well that we literally forget where we (or our hands) are.

What this looks like in action: (Piece from Dark Desires – my Total E-bound Ménage story out sometime this year)

Remember, we’re using the formula above to write the scene:

Romyn’s fingers slid down her arm until his thumb reached the pulse in her wrist. (Romyn’s ACTION)
Alex’s hand somehow found its way onto her stocking clad thigh. (Alex’s Action, also done TO Raven)
She squirmed and pressed her legs together. (Reaction) You could always say no.(Perception)
She scoffed at the idea. Raven never turned down a good fuck, especially if the two men were as powerful and capable as Romyn and Alex. A part of her realized she needed to feed off the lust, let it build inside her and contain it until she could get another fix. If she was truly human, which she was sure she was since only humans worked suck ass jobs and bothered with material things, then she would emulate her favourite demon, the succubus. (Emotion- with description to fill white space AND add to the story. Remember, we’re still in Raven’s POV and her head for a reason)
Alex looked questioningly at her. “Something the matter, Raven?” (Alex’s reaction)
His voice pulled her from her thoughts. She took another sip of her scotch and shook her head. “Nothing I can’t fix.”(Reaction, Perception, action, dialogue)
Yet she sat between these two men like she was the one up on the cross being ogled for sins she had yet to commit.
Romyn’s fingers continued circling her skin in a manner that sent shivers racing through her.
She shot him a glare.
He didn’t move from his pose, leaving his profile to her while that hand worked over her flesh in such a simple gesture that wouldn’t arouse a normal woman.
Raven was far from normal, she remembered.
She was so not normal that she was sitting in a gothic dance club with her boss and his partner, letting them both paw her like a pet.
She had to admit, this wasn’t a bad position. Perhaps she could have some fun at their expense.
Setting her glass down on the table, she took Alex’s hand and slid it higher up her thigh.

In the above example, I purposely extended the excerpt to show that scene is written in entirely Raven’s POV but we’re able to see Romyn and Alex based on their responses to her. Human beings often act before they think, just ask any marital artist. Unless the situation calls for tight thinking, like in a tense negotiation (which we’re not yet writing) then we’re going off our gut.

The tempting thing is to fill that white space so the pages don’t look so blank. If you must fill that white space (and I don’t see why not) then use DESCRIPTION.

Tell us, or take us there. Describe your sex scenes using all the purple prose you can throw in. This is the time for those words. Yeah, some editors don’t like euphemisms. Oh well. The language you use will match your style of writing and the language will flow more clearly.

Again I mention that this technique is not widely used by many of today’s popular writers. That’s fine; they’re more than established in many cases. This isn’t a pass for them, but an explanation. We’re not trying to write like them entirely, but we are trying to make a living from our writing. When readers see our books as enjoyable mental movies that hold depth, they’ll return to buy the next book. And the next one. And the next three after that.

The technique takes time to learn and really narrow down. So in future editions in my column we’ll break down the parts of this formula.

Next week, in our void we’ll have a special guest blogger. Lisa Wienberger, the cute half of Sensual SEO has offered us a guest post on; you guessed it, SEO tactics for writers. Until then, keep it sexy!

Sascha Illyvich

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 Posted by Sascha Illyvich at 7:02 am  Tagged with: , , , , , ,

Bless me Father I must have sinned because my muse has left me. As pence I have brought out the hair shirt and the floggers.

 Oceania  5 Responses »
May 062010
 
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You would think that self-torture and supreme penance would be something out of the dark ages. But I see it all the time, the guilt and suffering, the excuses and condemnation.

Writers do it all the time, they hit this wall where they swear they will never create another piece again. Then as an offering of proof they halfheartedly try or they try with every once of determination to write something worth reading. The results are usually awful.

That usually sets off curses to the heavens, self inflicted tortures and resignation that usually ends with tears for a lost muse.

Poor Muse she is often lost!

I encountered this from a writer I work with. I gave him an assignment and he didn’t make deadline. We pushed it back and again he didn’t have anything to show me. Finally I received a lengthy email on how awful his circumstances were, how he couldn’t find the words, how his muse was gone and how i should give up on him… but if i didn’t give up on him if I truly believed it was just a phase he vowed that he would work harder and produce what was needed. He only ask that I give him time. Time to find his muse.

At first I felt sorry for his circumstances but as each sentence droned on I realized that no matter how much I sympathized he felt sorrier for himself and with this sorrow came great guilt and with this guilt an even greater need to punish himself…. but lastly there was a need for him to feel justified for not writing because he felt this remorse.

It was rather twisted and well, boring.

So I took the bulls by the horn and wrote back.
“I am not your friend. I am your editor and publisher and you were given an assignment. I don’t care if the house burnt down or if your wife ran away with the mail main. I don’t care if you have to work 2 jobs. Do the assignment and keep the sympathy stories for your mother.

Then I told him as I would tell any creative, that the only way to get through a writers block is to WRITE!
You’ve heard the quote attributed to Oliver Stone “Writing = ass in chair”.

It doesn’t matter if it is good or bad or in between, just write.

So put away the hairshirt. You want to beat something up hit the keyboard hard. Create a war scene or a fight between lovers. Take a stake and drive through your boss’ heart.

Then after you get all that self loathing, frustration, envy out on the screen… you’ll find your muse.

Like the little lost sheep she will be waging her tail behind her.

~Oceania

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 Posted by admin at 8:43 pm  Tagged with: , ,

How to Get Kicked In the Balls By Flying Monkeys and Not Fuck Up Your Lipstick

 Thomas Roche  7 Responses »
Apr 292010
 
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Taking criticism is challenging for everybody. In the writing business, it’s a given that you’re going to get some; in the process of learning to write, it’s completely unavoidable. Personally, I was lucky enough to write with such single-minded obsession and singularity of vision for the first part of my life that I got virtually no negative feedback on my writing – adults in my life just sort of stared and said, “Um,” which led me to believe that I was some sort of genius. That kept me writing.

Then I enrolled in creative writing seminars at U.C. Santa Cruz, and somewhere in the mountain lair of mad scientist Dr. Critic, this saturnine villain rubbed his razor-nailed hands together and said, “Exxxxcellent. Finally we can end this meddlesome crusader’s pathetic scribbling once and for all — Release The Flying Monkeys!”

Do you know the Flying Monkeys? Dr. Critic keeps them locked up in his mountain lair behind roll-up doors marked “Danger! Helpful Feedback” and “Constructive Criticism: Stay Back 40 Feet!” These flying monkeys are the Doc’s secret weapon in the quest for world domination; they are gene-spliced in subterranean laboratories out of the pilfered tissue of creative writing professors, Stephen King fans, mutant sociologists and people who think every book should be as good as As I Lay Dying or Atlas Shrugged – or, at least, incessantly compared to them.

Said Flying Monkeys may have had a go at you before, or they might just haunt your nightmares. They carry garden shears and find your main character unsympathetic; they swing baseball bats at your head and think you have too much exposition; they wear steel-toed boots and think your most poetic prose is uninspired; they throw their own excrement in great disgusting globules and consider your use of the present tense to be annoying and pretentious. I could go on; the flying monkeys have a million weapons, always ones you don’t expect. They have a billion pieces of “constructive criticism,” a trillion “suggestions” and a quadrillion “observations.”

If you’ve ever handed over a treasured piece of prose – or, worse yet, one you’re feeling insecure about – to a lover, teacher, friend, class or critique group, you may have gotten the Flying Monkey Treatment. And let me tell you: once those flying monkeys have a go at you, it’s tough to sit up straight for a while – maybe ever.

What they said is not important – or, rather, it’s not what this post as about. Their criticisms might be true; they might be false. No writer is perfect, and let’s face it, your writing might suck. But even if you’re a brilliant writer, the story in question might suck; everybody misses the mark once in a while. Some of us more often than not. It doesn’t mean you’re not good. The flying monkeys could conceivably be telling you something you need to hear.

But the flying monkeys don’t have to sit down and write the next story, and the next one, and the next one. Dr. Critic in his mountain lair with his infernal servants, his I.Q. of 260 and his improbable tinfoil headdress does not have to continue the novel after being told the first three chapters are mediocre at best. Your well-meaning friends and teachers don’t have to sit down in front of a blank screen and think, “What story do I want to tell today,” and come up with one. If you’re someone who writes, who has to write, then you do. And maybe your friends and teachers, if they’re also writers, do that too. But they don’t have to write your story. That’s your job.

And once you’ve been kicked in the balls by flying monkeys, that job can be goddamn hard to do.

How is it done?

Other writers will tell you they know; I will tell you I do not. Other writers, and other writing teachers, may be able to give you the most helpful feedback of all — how to survive “helpful feedback.” I cannot.

Because while I know I should welcome constructive criticism – and in fact, to this day I occasionally claim I welcome constructive criticism, I do not and never did. I just thought I was supposed to.

Unlike Peter Lorre in the Maltese Falcon, I never learned to “take it and like it.” I take it; I don’t like it. I will never like it. But after years of letting the monkeys have a go at me, I learned one thing that, to me, has been helpful, and I hope it can be helpful to you.

Your stories are not perfect. They do not need to be. They may not even be good. Hear me: They do not fucking need to be.

In the best case scenario, the point of constructive criticism is to make your writing better in terms of structure, prose, sensual detail, character development, inventiveness, plot, and all those other things that make good fiction a pleasure to read.

But the point of writing fiction is to write. In my view it is not, I repeat not, to write well.

“Writing well” is an admirable goal, and I strongly support it. But if you dropped dead three seconds after your last keystroke, would you rather have told a tale someone else enjoyed, or enjoyed the telling of it yourself?

Ideally, you don’t have to choose; everyone will love your writing, you included, and you’ll be signing options with Scorsese and jet-skiing in the Bahamas this time next year, or better yet having your self-published chapbook lauded by grad students in 100 years.

But when you sit in front of the blank screen and wonder if what you write will be good enough for the flying monkeys: Remember. You can never write well enough for the flying monkeys. And you don’t have to. Just write well enough to create that ecstatic sense of thunder on the keyboard, the rush of living large that comes from telling a story told with passion, not perfection.

That keyboard thunder, that rage as you tear through a story with bliss and compassion and pathos and energy?

It scares the flying monkeys. It scares them. It makes them cry big monkey tears.

It’s why they hate you in the first place.

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 Posted by thomasroche at 1:08 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

GETTING MORE BUCKS FROM THE BANGS YOU WRITE ABOUT, PART II

 Jean Marie Stine  2 Responses »
Apr 232010
 
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This will be short but hopefully pithy. Here are five more tips.

1) Yet another method of getting more bucks for the bangs you write about is to link some of  your stories together into a series, and to write enough stories in the series to collect as a book.

This is a hallowed practice going back more than one hundred years. Books as diverse as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Cheaper by the Dozen were created just this way.

Terri Pray, who writes for Sizzler Editions, has a knack for writing novelettes about series characters, who are often captured and forced to be sex slaves and are sold and pass from the hands of one master to another — each owner or captor the subject of an individual story in the series –  and then bringing it all together at the end through a developing story arc for a satisfying conclusion complete with her own version of a romantic happy ending bdsm-style.

2) Or to make it easy, you can forgo story arcs and just write otherwise unrelated adventures of a single character like Sherlock Holmes and then collect them into a book. This way you avoid having to hassle out a plot arc or happy ending. You could write a book about a woman named, say, Fay, who has a series of post-college sexual escapades with different men, and the collected stories could be called The Adventures of Fay, or the Exploits of Fay, or Fay Discovers Sex, or whatever. Anyway, I understand it worked out pretty well for the Holmes author.

This way you are at least assured of being paid twice for each story in the series you write.

If the book does well, you may make many times over what you received for writing the original stories.

3) Here’s another tip for squeezing more income from your work: Participate in public readings of erotica. If you live near or in a metroplex there are likely to be events like the SF Bay Area’s Perverts Put Out and Queer Open Mic, where writers of erotica read their work. Often they receive some small remuneration, but even when they don’t they are allowed to sell copies of their work; and if they get a decent discount on their books from the publisher, these writers can make $35-$100 a reading.

To get in on deals like this you will need a) find them and b) network. Also volunteer to read your work free at fund raisers where other authors are doing the same. That way you meet writers and the kind of people who put on events, making it far more likely you will get invited to any paid reading gigs than if you just sit home and wait to be noticed.

Through this kind of local networking, you will be in the best position possible for learning about local workshops, group readings, writer’s conferences, and the like. If you put yourself out a bit and ask, you will eventually get paid, or at least fed, gigs reading, teaching, etc. You may also learn about magazines and anthologies that are looking for erotica.

If you network on the web too, you may learn about opportunities beyond the local for making additional income from your writing. I, for instance, will be participating in an on-line course in writing erotica later this month for which I will receive some small remuneration.

4) If you have any personal area of expertise, you can also profit from creating and teaching your own on-line courses in writing via Google or other sites. One male writer I know teaches courses in writing believable male characters to women authors of romance novels. Using Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter, etc., and emailings to various writer’s groups, you can drum up quite an income once established.

5) Dream up an anthology idea and place it with a publisher. Anthologists traditionally get half the royalties, the other half is split among the authors. Use one of your own older stories in the anthology, and come out even further ahead.  Sascha Illyvich came up with an idea for an anthology of gay male romance stories set against a background of starships and the spacelanes. I accepted the book as soon as he described it. I once spent a week reading through old science fiction magazines and emerged with an anthology titled Future Eves: Classic Science Fiction About Women, By Women. I also put one of my stories in it. It’s a pretty standard practice among anthologists.

If you keep these ideas, and the ones in my previous blog on this subject, you will at least double your earnings from your writing. Work hard at them and you can triple or quadruple it.

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 Posted by jmstine at 12:31 am

Who Are You?

 Write Sex  5 Responses »
Apr 152010
 
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Writers are professional liars: it’s our job is to tell a story so well that the audience believes it’s the truth, at least for the course of the story. The technical term, of course, is suspension of disbelief – the trick of getting the reader to put aside any doubts that what you’re saying isn’t the truth, the whole truth, so help you God.

For erotica writers that means convincing the reader that you really are a high school cheerleader named Tiffany who likes stuffed animals and gang-bangs with the football team … or that you’re a pro tennis player named Andre who has a mean backhand and can suck cock like a professional. A writer’s job is to convince, to put aside doubts … in other words to lie through their fucking teeth.

As any liar worth their salt knows, the trick to telling a good one is to mix just the right amount of truth with the bullshit. You don’t tell your mom who went to the movies rather than church: you say you had a sick friend, that your car broke down or that you had a cold. The same goes for fiction: spinning something that everyone knows is a lie (“the check is in the mail”) is flimsy, but adding the right amount of real life experience makes a story really live. Rather than Tiffany and the football players, how about a young woman who really wants to do a gangbang but doesn’t know how to break it to her boyfriend or girlfriend? We’ve all had the experience of trying to find a way to communicate our sexual fantasies to someone, so that rings true … even though our character is a total fabrication.

The same goes for dialogue, both external and internal. One of the worst cases I’ve seen came from, believe it or not, a mainstream book, where one character actually thought: I am happy with my homosexuality – and the intent was not humor or sarcasm. Orientation, like a lot of things in our lives, is something that’s just there, an integral part of our mental landscape: so integral that we don’t need to express it to ourselves as a thought.

While I do say that writing is lying, I don’t want you to extend that to professional identity. What I mean is that while it’s okay to be someone for a story, that falsehood should end with you who are as a person. Let’s say you’ve written a kick-ass gay men’s smut story – and you’re a woman: don’t send the story with a cover letter saying that you’re name is Stanley and you live in San Francisco with your life partner, Paul.

Get where I’m going? You can say what you want in your fiction, but when you cross that line to try and lie to the editor or publisher you’re not telling a story, you’re being deceptive. Now there’s no rule about using all kinds of different pseudonyms (I have three myself) but I’m also clear about who I am, and what I am, to an editor or publisher. There’s no reason to announce everything about yourself in a cover letter, but there’s a big difference between not saying something and trying to trick an editor.

There’s recently been a minor spate of this happening: men and women trying to be something they are not, for whatever reasons. Like I said, fiction is one thing, but anything beyond fiction is … well, weird at least, stupid at worst. The fact is we all talk to one another, us writers and editors, and eventually the truth will come out. It might not be a criminal offense, but I don’t mind being tricked by a story – but never in the real world of business dealings.

In short, it’s much better to be open and honest in a professional capacity, and leave the sex and lies for your stories where they belong.

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 Posted by MChristian at 10:59 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,

The End Is Only The Beginning

 Dr. Nicole Peeler  4 Responses »
Apr 082010
 
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Hello everyone! I’m afraid that this is going to be my last post here at WriteSex. I warned Sascha that my life is crazy and that my participation was going to be short and bittersweet, and I’m afraid that my time here is at an end. That said, I’m glad I could help WriteSex find its feet, and I’m sure everyone will continue doing a great job with the site.

And don’t fret, I still have to blog at my own site, http://nicolepeeler.com, and I do tend to talk about sex a lot, over there. Probably too much. Luckily my mother can’t remember the name of my URL (it’s only the name SHE GAVE ME, after all), so she and my dad (who may have used a computer once, back when they had entirely black and green screens) are oblivious to the filth I churn out on a daily basis.

For my post today, I’m dipping into my own archives from my Emporium, where I discuss an issue close to my heart. Do I have a great big preternatural daddy complex?

Who’s Your Daddy?

Quite a few of the (awesome!) issues many of you raised in the comments to my post on the League of Reluctant Adults about sex in UF were about age. Which, in turn, made me think about about something that has always bothered me about many UF and paranormal romance love-matches. I know there are untold numbers of exceptions, but one common scenario is that in which the male love-interest is like a bazillion-and-five-years older than his female protagonist. That said, I am well aware that I quite obviously LOVE this setup. Not only is it the scenario at the heart of many of my favorite UF and PR novels, but I’ve DONE IT MYSELF. So I’m pointing the finger squarely at my own chest, here, people. Even so, I’m still bothered by it and it makes me wonder . . .

Do I have a great big supernatural daddy complex?

The irony is  that in real life I am single, very independent, rather commitment-phobic, and had I testes they would be made of a suitably tough and hard-wearing metal, albeit painted something shiny and bedazzled with rhinestones. In other words, I’m no wallflower, I’m ambitious, I’m successful in my own terms, and, if I’m honest, I’m a bit of a bitch.

So what the hell is up with my adoration of the alpha-male stud-muffin love interest, and with the obviously widespread  generic obsession, in general? As an academic who deals with issues of gender and power, my cultural studies whiskers’ twitch at the idea of an entire subset of literature in which women are literally hundreds of years younger than their lovers. Especially when it’s aimed, as in the case of paranormal romance, at a specifically female audience. This age gap between lovers raises my  Foucauldian  eyebrows, not least because of the inherent discrepancies that trickle down into other aspects of these relationships. For example, the sage and long-lived male tends to be outrageously wealthy. His great age make him vastly experienced, especially sexually, compared to his relatively inexperienced lover. He is often a cynical, world-weary soul pitted against the childishly optimistic and sparkling spirit of a fresh-faced young woman.

I can see a lot of reasons for the popularity of this trope, not all of which are nefarious. I’m also well aware that, especially in the case of paranormal romance, these are supposed to be just fantasies. And yet, as Freud established years ago, it is often through examining our fantasies that we discover the keys to our greatest strengths, most startling desires, and deepest insecurities. Unfortunately for our psyches, and luckily for both psychoanalysis and cultural studies, these three things are almost inevitably squeezed together into a big ball of hot mess.

So what are the “problematic themes” that I would latch onto and turn into a paper for a cultural studies conference? Well, first of all, the preternatural sugar daddy taps into well established gender binaries. The female is tagged alongside instinct, purity, inexperience, vulnerability, youth, etc., while the male is shelved alongside reason, sexual experience, wisdom, cynicism, age, and the like.

So this age discrepancy utilizes recognizable gender dichotomies.  But, again, it’s just make-believe! Right?  As such, this big age gap handily lends itself to instant sexual-fantasy fodder. These guys, after all, have been around the block so many times they’ve left grooves. They leave their lovers gasping for air, not gasping, “Why in the name of all that is holy did you think THAT would be a good idea?” Experience is, quite frankly, sexy. I think it should be sexy for women, too, and I’m not as big a fan of the sub-sub-subset of the sub-genre that has super-experienced, millennia-old men and virginal women. I’m not going to dismiss such a book, and there are quite a few writers I enjoy who often have virginal heroines, but I feel this scenario does pander to cultural stereotypes that insist sexually experienced women (read: tramps) are not worthy of their own story while sexually experienced men are ranked as dream lovers. But what really bothers me about these scenarios is what it assumes about “good” lovemaking.  Don’t get me wrong, one of my own characters is this exact kind of take-charge, has-all-the-moves, supe. But the thinker in me recognizes that part of growing up in regards to sex and one’s own sexuality, especially for women, is learning to voice one’s desires. It’s true that most women probably don’t fantasize about sex scenes in which they’re saying, “Um, actually, can you maybe do this, instead,” or, “try that!” or, gods forbid, “Ouch!” And yet, these are the very conversations that both men and women must have when they take a new lover. Granted, you may want to use phrasings slightly more erotically charged than, “ouch!”, but the point is that communication is vital in the sack. We should pray our lovers, be they male or female, understand this and reciprocate. After all, not a one of us comes with an instruction manual, although we should. Our bodies are almost as fiddly as Dysons but, unlike Dysons, we’re all different models. And yet these alpha male characters pounce on their women, make sweet love to them, and all you ever hear are moans.  Occasionally we get a “harder,” or, “more,” but the instructions never get much more explicit than that.  Because they don’t need to be! These guys are masters of the hootchie-cootchie, and it is the role of their female opposite to lie back and enjoy it. Despite the fact that women have fought for centuries to have a role in their own pleasure; to have a voice in the bedroom as well as the boardroom; and, finally, to give pleasure–without being labelled as wanton–as much as they receive pleasure.

So this is where I throw off my third-wave feminist cap and don my masculinity-studies cap.  All of the men I’ve talked to regarding this subject have said the same thing: the idea of a woman who doesn’t communicate her desires during sex is terrifying.  There are so many possibilities, so many opposing pleasures, what is he supposed to do with a woman who doesn’t articulate what she wants? All of my male friends express relief about women who bring their vocal chords to the bedroom, not to mention the fact they find it dead sexy.  All of which leads me to wonder if, in creating these smooth-move lovers with their lolling heroines, I’m not only resurrecting decades-dead female stereotypes but also thrusting the responsibility for sexual pleasure back onto the only recently-unshackled shoulders of men. Which suggests to me that such old-fashioned female stereotypes are actually very much alive and kicking. And that men are still challenged by unrealistic expectations placed upon them by a society that devalues women’s sexuality even as it overvalues men’s. A point underscored by the number of spam emails I get offering to enhance the size and the performance capabilities of my (nonexistent) penis.

In other words, as a feminist, a woman, and an academic, I’m uncomfortable with the gendered scenarios that I apparently find titillating as a reader and that I, myself, indulge in and recycle as a writer. My affection for this disturbing trope implies an ambiguity about contemporary gender roles, and, although I’m horrified to admit it, about my own expectations as a woman, not to mention as a reader, writer, and critic.  I don’t know what this ambiguity means, or what I’m supposed to do about it. Besides write blog posts and maybe do an academic paper on gender roles in UF (hello, tenure!).

So what do you think?  Is my having a bunch of much older dudes hanging out with fresh young chicks a great big supernatural daddy complex? Is it innocuous? Is it really just a fantasy? But what does such a fantasy say, to you? Do I need therapy?

Don’t answer that last one. Thanks! That’s all she wrote, on here. But she’ll keep ‘em coming at nicolepeeler.com. Including that euphemism post! As soon as I get this grading done… ;-)

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 Posted by nicolepeeler at 10:04 am  Tagged with: , , ,
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