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When I need to write erotica, it’s usually because I have promised someone a story or book. I often draw a blank, and have to “jump start” myself with a concept, theme, or image. Therefore, I do a lot of thinking about how strong stories start.

When I say strong stories, I don’t mean stories you will think are strong — you, the reader. I mean stories I will think are strong — I, the writer.  I need to generate a narrative critical mass to keep myself going through the first few thousand words of story — and by then, I’ll know one way or another if there’s a coherent narrative there, or something dull enough that I’ll abandon it.

I have literally dozens — possibly hundreds — of uncompleted novels on my hard drive; some of them are 200 words long. I’ve probably begun thousands, if not tens of thousands, of stories I’ve never finished. I’ve had lots of experience in what works for me, and what doesn’t. The problem is, what works is different every time, so I constantly have to fine-tune the process.

There’s nothing “wrong” with starting a story and not finishing it. But it becomes increasingly dangerous when you depend on writing to generate your income. False starts — on everything from short stories to novels to scenes-in-novels to conversations within scenes to individual character descriptions  — are built into the writing process. But they don’t just spend time; they spend ideas. If I blow an opener and waste a story idea, that idea might feel depleted when I go back to them. Since I write for a living, every false start is a potential financial liability.

So when it comes to writing erotica specifically, these are the kinds of “jumps” that I often find can work for me in opening a story that I’ll want to continue.

What Works?

The first thing that almost always works for me is a visual description of a woman taking action in a non-sexual context that’s eroticized. Generally, this means she’s arriving somewhere. I usually frame this within the context of her clothing. I do this because I’m clearly Ed Wood reincarnated, and women’s clothes obsess me. In all seriousness, I do this because clothing provides clues as to what is about to happen, and describing a woman’s clothes could obsess me from now until doomsday.

The sluttier she is dressed, the better. If someone nudged her into dressing that way, better still, because then I’ve got a guaranteed conflict to begin with. Boyfriend talked her into it by promising you something dirty? W00t. Desperately need $200 and agreed to be a lingerie model at the car show on the very last day before she enters the convent? Ba-da-bing.

This all assumes, of course, that the female in question actually wanted to dress that way to begin with, but someone kind of eased her into it with the promise of some reward. This is not some cryptic anti-feminist message, though it certainly may have its problematic aspects. It’s the way my brain generates drama. I’m not saying it’s good drama…but it is drama. Basically.

On the other hand, If she just dressed that way because, you know, she’s “adventurous,” that’s fine too. The point, for me, is in describing the drape of her skirt, and exactly how precariously short it is, and how little room there is between that phenomenally short black skirt and the top of her black patent leather go-go boots, because clearly, I missed my calling and should have been a creepy clerk at Hot Topic.

The second thing that usually works for me is a description of someone’s facial expression. This starter very often does not stay at the beginning of the story, because I often find that there are stronger ways to start stories, from a reader perspective. But from a writer perspective, describing facial expressions is very hard for me — and I find that I like it. It allows me to describe something expressive, without having to commit to a specific set of interactions.

Describing facial expressions out of context creates many questions. Every character has expressions that are peculiar to them; as a writer, by picking a “way” someone looks, and then describing it, I create a static physical image that I don’t know the context of. Then I have to invent that context, and voila! I’m off and running. This often works.

Sometimes posture is integrated into the description; someone may be leaning forward and frowning, or leaning back and smiling, or turning his head and looking enigmatic, or pouting and brushing her hair. But the face is where it happens for me, in the theater of my mind — especially the eyes.

What Doesn’t?

There are two things, on the other hand, almost never work for me when starting a story. There are probably far more, but these are the two I’ve really noticed.

Unfortunately, I’ve found these things out by doing them over and over again. I often do them anyway, because apparently they’re central to the way my mind works. Half the time when I abandon a start after half a page, I discover I reflexively started it with one of the two things that doesn’t work.

The first thing that usually  doesn’t work for me is a line of dialogue. For some reason, dialogue is excruciating to me. I hate it. I don’t like reading it, generally, and I really hate writing it. I think my dialogue sucks. I don’t particularly like talking to people in the real world, so why would I want my characters to talk to each other? Unfortunately, dialogue is an absolute deal-breaker in fiction. You’ve got to have it, or your story just won’t proceed.

Because it’s a method of jumping into a scene, I often fall prey to the temptation to start a scene with a line of dialogue. It’s almost always a disaster. If you’ve read an erotic story by me that starts this way, chances are that I added the dialogue later — or cut out an opening paragraph. Either that, or you’ve hacked my hard drive and you’re reading my unfinished crap.

The second thing that almost never works is a summary of events. That might get me further than a line of dialogue, but it usually won’t get me very far. “The night they first had sex was totally awesome” doesn’t ask any questions for me as a writer.

When I put stuff like that down on the page, I find myself shrugging. “So? Why say any more? You already said it.” Even if that summary is only backstory (“Though they started out with a strong mutual attraction, they had been having mediocre sex at best since he moved in to her place”), it lays out too many of the answers to questions I haven’t even asked yet. It’s not that it doesn’t give my mind room to work; it doesn’t make my mind work just to complete a scene that’s already in front of me.

That’s why I gravitate toward the concrete descriptions of physical realities that have social cues underlying them (clothes, expressions, posture).

Don’t think for a second I’m telling you that if you avoid these types of openers you will write more effective fiction. I think all these things work great as openers for stories. I’ll even go back and add either summaries or dialogue at the start of a story, once it’s written. I think both can be strong ways to start stories.

But in terms of getting the draft down on the (virtual) page, those kinds of openings don’t work for me as a writer — and the more I stick to the things that open my brain up to finishing a picture that’s already there, the more I let my subconscious do my work for me.

So…feel free to leave your views in the comments. What works for you, as a writer, to begin stories that you’ll want to keep going?Do you find yourself opening stories, predictably or reliably, with a certain kind of description, scene or interaction? And if so, how reliably does it work? Are there things that don’t work?

Share your ideas as you wish, and maybe we can each pick up some new ones.

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With NaNoWriMo coming up, it’s worth addressing the central conceit of the NaNoWriMo concept, which is — if you’ll allow me to take a few liberties that may piss off the punters — that you should just write, no matter what, without pausing — and without an outline. That’s the way to get a novel out of you.

I agree and I don’t. Personally, I like novels that write themselves. But not every novel wants to write itself.

Outlines are a critical part of the novel-writing process for most successful novelists. Their importance simply cannot be overstated. Writers who pump out book after book of quality prose about spunky ballerinas finding romance and homicide detectives hunting serial killers and winemakers solving crimes about cheese — those people almost all write with outlines, and tight ones, too. If it’s your first novel or your hundredth, you should do whatever works for you, but personally I wouldn’t trade the crazed madness of writing a novel without an outline for all the tea in Buckingham Palace.

That’s when the novel seems to write itself. It’s awesome. Writing a novel without an outline is the bomb.

Writers are very much split on whether doing so is a good idea or the most dangerous kind of antisocial lunacy. I tend to fall into the latter camp; writing a novel without an outline is definitely antisocial lunacy and should be avoided if you value your sanity, your interpersonal relationships, your job, the tendons of your forearms — and, most of all, your time.

But you’re not me, and therefore there are no significant consequences to my advocating that you do stupid shit.

Writing a novel without an outline is unquestionably dangerous — you could end up with a mess. The truth is, you’ll probably end up with a mess. If you make a habit of this, you may end up like me — the proud possessor of a hard drive packed with few dozen 20,000-word innovatively-cross-genre turds that steam so bad sometimes you gotta open the windows. But the experience of writing a big narrative with total abandon is something that I simply can’t give up. The problem is, that kind of muse doesn’t necessary come when you call her. She’s much like a cat in that regard. Nine times out of ten she knows you’re looking, and you can bite her.

What outlines can do for a novelist is force you to break your narrative into manageable chunks. When I write novels (or feature-length screenplays) to a tight outline, I lose the experience of sitting there tear-assing through six scenes in a sitting with no idea what’s coming next, which is a hell of a feeling. But like I said. I get that feeling a lot, then realize I have no idea what’s coming next. For this reason, I have many, many more half-novels than novels. Most novelists do.

But I also have many more outlines than novels. Hell, I have more outlines than first chapters! It’s easier for me to write an outline than it is to write a first chapter, and you know who enjoys reading them? Uh…no one. Not even me.

The point is, you can tear through an outline and think you have the framework for a novel. But from a reader perspective, there is no framework for a novel. The framework is the novel.

There’s no one answer as to whether you should outline, except to say that if it works for you, everyone else’s opinion is irrelevant. But it’s worth mentioning that most of the really accomplished genre novelists I know — I mean the kind of people who put out a book a year or more, and have been doing it repeatedly for a while — outline like fiends. Their outlines or “treatments” are incredibly detailed. Why, just this past week, science fiction legend Norman Spinrad, by way of crowdsourcing his novel queries, freely published a 113-page treatment of his next novel. James Ellroy of LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia fame writes novel outlines hundreds of pages long, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro once told me she outlines novels so thoroughly that she never has to rewrite (and, in my experience, her novels read tight).

If you’ve never written a novel, there’s a chance when it comes, it’ll just happen. You won’t need an outline because the thing will be winking at you from your computer screen, and you will have just typed END. Sure, everyone you know may think you’ve vanished off the face of the earth, and there may be an eviction notice on the door, and you may be about to get your power shut off because you haven’t paid the bill in twelve weeks. You may need a payment plan with the power company, but you still won’t need an outline. If this is how it goes down, mazel tov.

This sort of first-novel experience occurred with me on two separate occasions. That’s right; I received the lightning strike of having not one but two first novels just kind of explode out of me, in different decades, because they were in thoroughly unrelated genres. It’s an awesome feeling, a little bit like being high. High on life! High on life and six shots of bourbon. And the cocaine exports of Peru and Colombia put together. And these funny pink pills some weird guy in an overcoat sold you for $3 and a bus transfer over on 16th and Mission…

If that sounds like fun, great. If that sounds sustainable over the course of a professional career, you’re either more näive than I am, or you have way bigger brass ones.

If you’ve never written a novel and you’re trying to, or if you’ve written lots of them and you’re trying to write the next one, it won’t do you any good to bellyache about the novel that won’t write itself.

Sometimes you gotta make them write themselves. And then? An outline can be your best friend.

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Plot Broken Down Part I

First things first! I’d like to welcome Ralph Greco Jr. and Debbie Riley Magnus to the team. The former I met last year at Cybernet Expo and was impressed with him as he grew into the writer he is now. He’ll be handling some basic Search Engine Optimization for writers while also covering the interview medium. And Deb is my publicist with whose help I’ve created this blog. She’s a marketing genius and an author. She’ll cover marketing for authors. Ralph will fill Dr. Peeler’s slot and Deb’s first post will follow Oceania’s next month.

Last time I had the blog we covered novel writing plot basics and how erotica/romance authors fit sex into their plot. To recap:

In EROTICA sex is the plot. The ONE event (depending on the story length) is that the characters have to end up in bed. This can be conflict driven.

And:

In EROTIC ROMANCE sex FORWARDS the plot.

Having said this, we now need to know how to plot quickly and effectively. The faster we can plot a story that sells, the faster we can write that story with less hassle. Before I continue, I will mention that like my mentor, this is the method that works for ME. You “may” have variations but at the end we’re talking about who gets quality books which readers want to read out faster and how to sell to publishers.

The first question I want to ask you is: When you’re creating your plot, where is your conflict going to happen? Will it be character based as in typical contemporary romances such as those found at eHarlequin. Their BLAZE line (which I am currently targeting) is aimed at relationship conflicts. Sure there’s the outer world to deal with and even in their grittier Nocturne Line where paranormal elements abound, the focus is on the actual character development.

If you’re writing Urban Fantasy, then our focus changes slightly to outside the character conflicts. Look at writers like Jeri Smith-Ready and Yasmine Galenorn, who write series books about worlds, not just characters. There is character development as each story progresses but the focus is on how that development will aid in the war against the BIG BAD ENEMY.

Then we need to ask if we’re blending erotic with any genres. If we are, then we have to account for that in our plot arc and character development arc.

The other elements we must deal with are story length and POV. We’ve covered POV. Who has the most to lose is who should have the POV control. Story length we’ll cover in our next post.

Sascha Illyvich

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