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In regards to the last of erotica’s sins, a well-known publisher of sexually explicit materials put it elegantly and succinctly: “Just don’t fuck anyone to death.” As with the rest of the potentially problematic themes I’ve discussed here, the bottom line is context and execution: you can almost anything if you do it well—and if not well, then don’t bother doing it at all.

Violence can be a very seductive element to add to any genre, let alone erotica, mainly because it’s just about everywhere around us. Face it, we live in a severely screwed up culture: cut someone’s head off and you get an R rating, but give someone head and it’s an X. It’s kind of natural that many people want to use some degree of violence in their erotica, more than likely because they’ve seen more people killed than loved on-screen. But violence, especially over-the-top kind of stuff (i.e. run of the mill for Hollywood), usually doesn’t fly in erotic writing. Part of that is because erotica editors and publishers know that even putting a little violence in an erotic story or anthology concept can open them up to criticism from all kinds of camps: the left, the right, and even folks who’d normally be fence-sitters—and give a distributor a reason not to carry the book.
One of the biggest risks that can happen with including violence in an erotic story is when the violence affects the sex. That sounds weird; especially since I’ve often said that including other factors are essential to a well-written erotic story. The problem is that when violence enters a story and has a direct impact on the sex acts or sexuality of the character, or characters, the story can easily come off as either manipulative or pro-violence. Balancing the repercussions of a violent act on a character is tricky, especially as the primary focus of the story. However, when violence is not central to the sexuality of the characters but can affect them in other ways it becomes less easy to finger point—such as in noir, horror, etc—where the violence is background, mood, plot, or similar without a direct and obvious impact on how the character views sex. That’s not to say it isn’t something to shoot for, but it remains one of the harder tricks to pull off.

Then there’s the issue of severity and gratuitousness. As in depicting the actual sex in sex writing, a little goes a long way: relishing in every little detail of any act can easily push sex, violence, or anything else into the realm of comedy, or at least bad taste. A story that reads like nothing but an excuse to wallow in blood—or other body fluids—can many times be a big turn-off to an editor or publisher. In other words, you don’t want to beat a reader senseless.

But the biggest problem with violence is when it has a direct sexual contact. In other words, rape. Personally, this is a big button-pusher, mainly because I’ve only read one or two stories that handled it … I can’t really say well because there’s nothing good about that reprehensible act, but there have been a few stories I’ve read that treat it with respect, depth, and complexity. The keyword in that is few: for every well-executed story dealing with sexual assault there are dozens and dozens that make me furious, at the very least. I still remember the pro-rape story I had the misfortune to read several years ago. To this day, I keep it in the back of my mind as an example of how awful a story can be.

Sometimes violence can slip into a story as a component of S/M play. You know: a person assaulted by a masked intruder who is really (ta-da!) the person’s partner indulging in a bit of harsh role-play. Aside from being old hat and thoroughly predicable, stories like this can also fall into the “all pain is good pain for a masochist” cliché, unless, as with all things, it’s handled with care and/or flair.

Summing up, there is nothing you cannot write about: even this erotic “sin” or the others I’ve mentioned. However, some subjects are simply problematic in regards to sales potential: themes and activities that are loaded with emotional booby traps have to be carefully handled if the story is going to be seen as anything other than a provocative device. The affective use of these subjects has always been dependant on the writer’s ability to treat them with respect. If you have any doubts about what that might be, just imagine being on the receiving end: extrapolate your feelings as if one of your own personal traumas or sexual issues was used as a cheap story device or plot point in a story. Empathy is always a very important facility for a writer to develop—especially when dealing with sensitive or provocative issues.

In short, if you don’t like being beaten up, then don’t do it to someone else, or if you do, then try and understand how much it hurts and why. Taking a few body blows for your characters might make you a bit black and blue emotionally, but the added dimension and sensitivity it gives can change an erotic sin, something normally just exploitive, to … well, if not a virtue, then at least a story with a respectful sinner as its author.

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One of the things I’m hearing from authors is the waiting time between submission and the actual time for publication.  E-pubs are taking far longer than they used to and some authors, especially the newer ones or the ones with more of a following are having a hard time dealing with it.  Even in erotica, release dates can be up to six months long, as can acceptances of stories submitted.

The reason?  Let’s look at some numbers.

For a company like Sizzler Editions with 200+ authors, let’s assume 30% of those authors are regulars who contribute frequently, sub to us on a regular basis of once every few months.  Each book goes through the same process by a SMALL editing/approval team, starting with the initial submissions editor and finally leading up to the publisher for final approval.  Based on that figure, that’s 60 authors who write regularly, submitting stories ranging from 30k to 100k.  If I as an editor of the Intoxication line have a portion of those stories sent to me, say half, that’s roughly 30 stories over the course of a few months.  Not a large number BUT, editors aren’t just editors, they’re people.  They have to evaluate the stories, see if they can be worked with and molded, then forward the stories up the chain o command.  This can take a few minutes, a few hours or a day or more depending on backlog.

The editing itself on ONE book may range from simple mistakes to the  more complex.  I as an editor don’t edit for plot, unless the plot is majorly screwy and it’s going to prevent a good review.  At another publisher I write for, they have three editors, a line editor, a copy editor and a final line editor to catch as many mistakes as possible.  Right now, I do all that for my Sizzler Authors.

Imagine now piling up several books on one editor and then the continuous flow of creativity writers have, combined with the rest of the process.

Book gets edited, then there are the final edits and last minute changes/fixes, then there’s cover art design, formatting and finally turning the MS in to the publisher.

Even the larger e-publishers are still small in manpower, and at the end of the (usually long) work day, there is still much to do.  As e-publishing has grown, so have the demands on the people at the companies to churn out quality fiction.  Erotica is no different.

That by the way ignores the emails to authors, emails to publishers and oh yeah, did I mention I’m a writer first?

The BEST way to capture an editor’s attention in erotica is simply to write a damn good, clean, tight story.  The more stories that come across my desk requiring less work make it easier for all of us to do our job and release quality e-books to the voracious reading public.  Study the guidelines by each publisher and make sure you understand the sorts of stories they’re looking for before submitting.  If you don’t understand something, feel free to email us.  Yeah, it slows things down but we’d rather deal with an issue up front than have to slow down everything in the middle of the cycle.

Sizzler Intoxication Guidelines can be found here

In the end, we’ll both be happy, albeit the patience game sucks.  As relations develop with your editor, things can be moved around depending on a number of factors such as sales, enthusiasm for marketing the book, and of course, time spent editing.

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I’m wearing my editor hat for this post.

When an author starts to acquire publishing credits, the first thing an agent, new editor or someone with power will do is look for the author’s press kit.  We need to know what you’ve done, how you’ve done it and what that’s done for your career.  It m ay seem a little old fashioned, but the importance of an author press kit cannot be emphasized enough.

Let’s break down the press kit.

For any author, the following documents should be present:

  • 1Page – the one page that you hand out at conventions and send to organizations you approach for teaching/speaking engagements
  • Backlist – Your complete, up to date back list of publishing credits, books released
  • A professional photo – No stupid shit poses please. You’re putting your best face forward
  • Covers of last three releases
  • 3rd person author bio

That’s it!  It should also be zipped in .zip or .rar format and easily found on your website.

Yes, social media and web 2.0 make it easier for any editor to google you and find your results but you’re not doing this for me, the editor.  Not entirely.  You’re doing this because even as a smut writer, you’re still a professional.  You’re still looking at this from a career standpoint and coming off as someone who takes their career seriously will differentiate you from the others in your field who don’t do these simple things.

The 1 Page and back list come in handy often when you’re doing promotions by the way.  The back list comes in handy when your readers ask what else you’ve done or where you’ve been published and.  Giving you a quick reference makes it easier to make a quick sale when you can pull up a file, copy and paste a link or send in an email.

The author bio is obvious, a short, 100 word or less bio of who you are that includes recent publishing credits and facts about you.  Mine is up at Sascha’s Secrets.

The 1Page is a document that shows overall accomplishments in your career.  WriteSEX contributor M. Christian and I use a dual column layout that details basics such as the facts.  I’m an author of X amount of stories (btw 39 for me!) and beneath it, editing credits, WriteSEX credits, teaching gigs, what I can do for you and finally, some reader accolades.

What if you’re lacking in credits? Look, really look, at your career and what you’ve done.  Have you freelance edited for someone else?  That counts.  Do you have anything in your author platform you can utilize? Put that down.

The Press Kit is the one staple that helps you more than you think.

Oceania will hopefully return soon to WriteSEX but in the meantime, we have exciting changes coming up on the blog. 

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Recently, a woman whose erotic stories have been widely anthologized wrote to say her day job was killing her, she needed to quit and write books for a living, and could I tell her what sold best these days? With a few changes, the following what I replied:

Could there be a worse time to need to write for money? I might have advised (nonerotic)  scifi/fantasy or Harlequin a few years ago; they are the easiest sales to make to the big publishers and get nice advances, but the big publishers are all scrambling to catch up. Writing eBooks, certainly can earn some you money, but like all other publishing, the big sales are in categories, that’s because readers have their favorite categories and buy literally 90% of their books in that category or categories.

That said, grinding out category fiction can kill you.

And with any kind of books, it takes so long for royalties to mount up, because of systemic reporting problems. For example, we are too small to pay advances, and most distributors report sales to us at 30 days after the end of a month to 60 days to 120 days after. When we issue the Jan sales report in Feb, what it reflects, is not sales made in Jan, but sales we received reports of in Jan – which would be Nov., October, and even Sept sales. So when we pay royalties at the end of a quarter, they basically consist of 1/4 sales from the actual quarter, and 3/4 sales from the previous quarter.

Biggest sellers overall among ebooks: romance, erotica, success/self-help of all kinds.

Bestselling romance categories: erotic romance. Bestselling erotica categories: bondage and erotic romance. Bestselling subcategories: heterosexual erotic romance; male dom, female sub bondage from romance to pretty hard.

Then, to be one of the top sellers, it takes writing a lot of books and a very active and attractive website and/or blog with free stories, story samples, etc. (meaning contests, blog tours, and lots of other stuff). A good way to get an audience to your site/blog is post stories or hot scenes complete in themselves on Literotica.com, the free erotica website.

Our bestselling author, who writes strong bondage but often with romance, has written around 25 books over the last eight or so years, and currently earns about $28,000 through us. He works very hard to promote his books on the web.

Beyond this, everything is up in the air in publishing, sales and advances right now, with publishers in NY in a panic trying to figure out what the shape of publishing will be and what to sell. And a sinking economy. Of course, sex does sell, so there’s that.

Those are the basics, there are too many nuances to put in writing.

All the above notwithstanding, I always personally advise writers to write what they love.

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By Sascha Illyvich

Since I started covering plot basics, I have noticed a trend in authors. The fact that so many authors have no idea how or where their stories are going is bad because it slows down the writing process. Romance novels, whether erotic or not, have the same basic formula.

Revisited:
Hero meets Heroine
They end up in bed.
Conflict separates them
Conflict is conquered due to necessary character growth
HEA or HFN.

In that plot structure, we have to get across all of those elements just to write a story. Assuming we’re writing novel length stories (60,000 words and up) not only do we have to incorporate those elements into the story but writers must figure out what that conflict is, how it affects characters and how the story will progress. How do we achieve this?

We break our story into four acts. Three if we’re being lazy or don’t need to throw in action. This applies to movies, plays, screenplays, every form of entertainment.

Simplified, the typical Four Act Outline is as such:

Act One: Inciting Incident – What is the eternal incident that brings the characters together?
Act Two: Crisis/Ordeal – This is where we begin to throw internal issues of the characters into things.
Act Three: Confrontation – Our characters confront the issue and deal with it. If it’s an action story, a villain and H/H all share the same issue only the villain either dies a megalomaniac or fails to learn the lesson after it’s too late.

Look familiar? It should. This is ESSENTIAL to any story of ANY genre. What makes this work is the fact that it takes the reader on an emotional ride that should go through a variety of feelings so that we bond with the characters. We identify with them. Think back on the last book you read that you really enjoyed. Why did you like it?

Ultimately it’s because you probably identified with the characters and their struggle. In romance, erotic or not, the struggle is to escape loneliness and find that one person who will complete you. So our conflict and issues should revolve around why the H/H cannot be together despite all odds, until they figure out the need for growth. This happens at the end of Act Two and leads us into the Third Act with new behavior patterns.

In my next post we’ll cover how to extend the Acts and what should theoretically go next as well as how and where to write sex into our stories.

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