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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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If you’ve done much fiction writing, it’s probably happened to you. You’re cooking along on a story or a novel, describing things as they happen. Then all of a sudden…you hit a brick wall. It’s not that you don’t know where your story goes in story terms — it’s that you don’t know how to describe what needs to happen next. I’m not talking about plot or story structure; I’m talking about scene-building and sensual details.

Let me give you an example. I recently wrote a novel that required me to know what it looked like, felt like and smelled like in about 40 different locations — on boats of one size or another, different areas of different ships, on the high seas off the east coast of South America vs. the west coast of Africa — etc. etc. etc.

The sensual details of a narrator’s experience are, to me, what are both most important and most pleasurable in the process of writing — especially writing long-form fiction like novels.

For me to enjoy writing a scene about being in the hold of a Bengali container ship, I need to have a sense of what it’s like there. My viewpoint character’s very tangible reality needs to become my reality. And yet this asshole insisted on doing crap I’d never done and going places I’d never been.

What a prick!! You believe the brass ones on this joker?

Sure, I can go back and find the memoirs of a Bengali sailor, if they exist; I can find an article about what it’s like to be on a ship; blah blah blah. I can do all of those things — but if I do them in the middle of my writing day, then the fiction doesn’t get written. Especially when I’m on a deadline, I simply can’t do all the research that is suggested by a plot that’s boiling over. That’s a sign that the plot is going swimmingly. Unfortunately, it’s also a huge pain in my ass.

This is one of the things I find most challenging about writing long-form fiction. If I’m doing it right, I run up against stuff I don’t know how to do. Some things are easy. Interpersonal stuff? Easy as pie, Bubba. I’m pretty good at imagining what it would be like for a middle-class, educated goth chick to confront her mother about her upbringing and say “You never loved me!” blah blah blah. I know what a shitty dive bar in Fresno smells like.

But as for what it feels like to jump out of a Coast Guard helicopter into storm waters off Santa Barbara, or crawl through a cave half a mile underground? I haven’t the foggiest.

People who have never written ten words of fiction, people who are seasoned fiction-writing professionals, and everyone in between, will tell you that the way to deal with this problem is to “Make it up.” That seems as obvious to them as they feel it should to me. Makes sense, right?

But “make it up,” to a fiction writer, has infinite permutations to it. The entire job description consists of “make it up,” so telling me to “make it up” is like telling a surgeon to “operate.” If you feel qualified to tell me that I should “make it up,” then you write the New York Times best-seller. Go ahead…I’m waiting.

“Make it up” is the hardest thing in the world for me when i don’t have a natural reference point for an experience. For me, with my style of composition, one detail depends on the detail before it. What kind of entrance a Bengali container ship has from the main deck to the deck below determines what it feels like to be there, to go through the entrance, to find a bunch of zombies puking green muck on you and howling, “Brains!!”

It’s awfully hard to keep a narrative flow going when you have big fat chunks of nothing in your writing. The details are not just critical in creating a finished piece of prose. To me, they’re critical in writing the next sentence. In order to get a flow going, I need to know not just whether my narrator’s boots make a clunking sound on the deck of the container ship, but what kind of clunking sound they make. I have to practically be able to hear it, and to smell the wind off the ocean as well as the dead bodies floating in the bay.

Thankfully, I’ve never smelled a San Francisco Bay choked with dead bodies — and I sure as hell hope I never do. There’s a lot of imagining and some not-imagining (aka, “research”) in figuring out just what it would smell like. If I haven’t done that before I sit down to write, I run into the potential problem of not knowing what to put down on the (virtual) page.

Of course, you can always write the “bare bones” of the action and leave the details to future rewrites, right? Easy! Easy as pie!

Yeah, I tried that.

The result? Sparkling prose. Stirring literature. Pathos! Excitement! Drama! Question marks! Stuff in brackets!

I’d end up typing whole paragraphs that looked something like this:

We ran across the ??steel?? deck and found the ??hatch?? and took the ??spiral stairs?? to ??Deck 4??, where we knew we’d find a ??med kit?? we could scavenge for ??thiopentone?? [They find zombies hiding somewhere in the nooks and crannies of whatever a bengali container ship has on its second deck [[how are decks designated on container ships again?]]]. Then the engines began to ??throb??…

Isn’t that thrilling and exciting prose? Personally, I’m on the edge of my seat. When can I expect my Pulitzer again? Actually, I think I’d prefer to win the Nebula first — then the Pulitzer. Can you just send it to my agent’s office? Thanks.

Sure, that’s not what the publisher or the reader is going to see, but that’s hardly the point. The point is, it’s no goddamn fun to write.

Maybe you’ve encountered this problem in your own writing. It could be virtually any situation; it’s the thing that brings your narrative to a grinding halt, because you’re not sure how to describe what happens next.

The only way to get through it is to get through it. The best technique I found is to make everything up — to the point of making up more details than are necessary. I superimpose other experiences that I have had — or feel like I might have had — on top of the ones I haven’t.

For me, the thing that works better rather than writing paragraphs packed with placeholders and question  marks is writing fiction packed with sensual details that are complete and utter bullshit. I know a Bengali container ship doesn’t smell like the cargo hold of a C-5, but I’ve been in the cargo hold of a C-5 and I’ve never been in a Bengali container ship.

The lesson, for me, is that going back and taking out inaccurate details is a hell of a lot easier than adding ones in over question marks and crap in brackets.

For me, whether in fiction, fantasy or reality, the sensual facts of an experience are the things I retain — sights, smells, sounds, tastes, feelings.

Yes, I do — in most cases — want these to be accurate in my final draft.

But when it comes to a first draft, those details don’t need to be accurate. They just need to be compelling.

The conclusion? “Use question marks, brackets and placeholders at your peril.” Here endeth the lesson.

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In this post, I’m going to address in my own special way one of the recurring problems of a writer’s life. Many of us find that while we’re in a writing phase, we can’t seem to read. It’s not just about time, it’s about attention.

For what it’s worth, I’m going to argue that you gotta. Ignore me at your peril, but then, listen to me at your peril. Do what works for you, because when it comes right down to it, I don’t know shit.

All I’m trying to do is remind you — or maybe remind myself — why you sat down in that stupid chair to begin with. We all began writing because at some point writing something down seemed like a better idea than doing the dishes or emptying the litter box. Locked up in the problems of fiction, it’s way too easy to forget why it ever did.

Anyway, here’s the story:

Recently, while lost in a finger-gallop reverie in the virtual pages of my newest tender romance between a half-clothed young socialite and the crew of the HMS Bon Vivant, I realized something strange and wonderful.

All my recent first-drafts evince a familiar narrative rhythm — one I was completely unaware of during the writing of a considerable number of words.

The novels open with a conversation or interpersonal conflict that leads to an action sequence for which there’s clearly backstory that the reader doesn’t know, so that the resounding “WTF?” in the reader’s mind both intrigues them and troubles them.

The novel then proceeds to a chapter of backstory from the perspective of a single character, which tells you part of why the action sequence in Chapter 1 matters and what in the hell the characters were talking about.

Following that, there’s another conversation and another action sequence that both illuminates the events of Chapter 1, but you still don’t quite know WTF is going on.

You as the reader are more illuminated after the subsequent round of backstory, again from another character’s perspective — often a different character than the first backstory.

So on and so on — through about six or eight chapters, until roughly the midpoint of the book. After that, the narrative proceeds more or less unchecked as a series of conversations and actions sequences, to an ending that’s either a suckerpunch or a bitch-slap, depending.

Let me say here that structuring novels has always bothered me. I don’t do it naturally, which is why I’ve been more successful writing short stories. But as I wrote this round of longer works — about five of them since June — it all came to me as easily as a Cleveland drama teacher who’s mistaken me for Robert Mitchum. And for a time, I didn’t have the faintest idea why it was suddenly so natural.

Then I picked up a Jim Thompson novel, my tenth in a few months, and I realized I was aping  Thompson’s formulaic structure.

James Meyers Thompson, 1906-1977,  in case you don’t know your tough-guy literature, was one of the codifiers of redneck noir, and more importantly of the overall hard-boiled esthetic in the postwar crime thriller — and here I’m talking really hard-boiled, not the saxophone-drenched diaries of some trenchcoat-wearing wisecracker who handwashes his delicates and jots his crime scene notes in a cute little spiral notebook with unicorn appliqués and a glue-glitter “Detective Jake Fist’s Notebook” on the cover, and dots the I’s in “high-velocity impact splatter” with little pink hearts.

Jim Thompson, much like Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich, raised misanthropy in the thriller to a high art — but, most importantly, Thompson was a consummate plotter. His books pound the pavement (or West Texas alkali dust) so tight and fast Raymond Chandler curls up in his grave and weeps, “Uncle.”

Many of Thompson’s short, to-the-point suckerpunch thrillers follow exactly the structure I mention above — some don’t, sure, but the commercial crime novels he sat down and cranked out while slamming down liquor in the ’50s and ’60s all follow a similar pattern. Thompson sure as hell didn’t invent it — really, the structure’s pretty standard. But you tend not to see it quite as evidently nowadays in category crime fiction, which today is thoroughly dominated by 400-page P.I. books and lawyers from Sausalito. With the stripped-down, 60,000-word structure in 12 or 15 or 20 chapters, it’s easier to see the moving parts.

And as far as I’m concerned, the structure works.

I don’t mean it works from a writer’s perspective — who gives a shit about writers? I mean it works for the reader. Remember them? That is to say, it works for me — I love reading it. Add to that predictable an enveloping sense of atmosphere, vivid characters, wonderful narrative language and an ear for dialect, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit as long as no one tries to talk to me while I’m reading.

With Thompson, specifically, he can stuff my peepers with an endless parade of corrupt Texas oilmen, L.A. grifters, slowly-coming-unhinged small-town sheriffs and St. Louis bellboys plotting the perfect murder of a corrupt politician’s cocaine-addled wife; I’ll always be convinced I’m reading a new book, even though I’m actually reading the same damn book over and over again.

That’s probably why I read about ten of Thompson’s novels in couple months — immediately before I started writing in exactly that structure, without even really meaning to do it.

Having found the style fantastically satisfying as a reader, I started pumping it out as a writer despite the fact that at the moment I’m not writing anything even remotely resembling crime novels. The supremely satisfying framework imprinted itself so thoroughly on me that I utilized it without even knowing it — after years of not quite “getting” novel structure.

What’s the point? You are what you eat. You have to read to write. If you are writing novels, you need to read novels; if you are writing short stories, you need to read short stories; if you are writing deconstructive poetry in Georgian — well, you get the point. And you need to read a lot of it, because the structural conventions of the genre you work in need to seem so completely natural to you that you can not only make it your own but make it your own without even knowing you’re doing it.

For years I have been telling people they need to write to write — and there ain’t a damn thing wrong with that assertion, either. But you also have to know what a work of art feels like to be able to do it with a depth of instinct that allows you to make it your own.

I should say that I’ve been somewhat inaccurate for the sake of clarity above; you actually don’t need to read obsessively in the genre or genre you’re writing in. You need to read in the genre(s) you’re most influenced by. In the same way that I”m influenced by Jim Thompson in writing erotica (an improbable marriage if ever there was one), you might be influenced by Robert A. Heinlein in writing gay werewolf romances.

Mazel Tov! The more unlikely your influences, the more likely you can bring a new voice to a given genre, to which — assuming you learn to do it well, or well enough — your readers will say “Thank you, Ma’am and/or Sir, may I have another?”

Now, please don’t take that as an engraved invitation from me (like you need one?) to write “A multigenerational epic fantasy inspired by The Daily Show.” Wacky ideas are one thing. But as a cynical son of a bitch who has heard — seriously — just about every undercooked idea possible come out of writers’ mouths, nothing’s more tedious than writers who intentionally look for improbable concepts in order to impress you with how “original” they are (Hot Tub Time Machine, anyone?), I’m telling you to keep your self-satisfied precocious inventiveness down to a dull roar and leave the truly contrived mash-ups to people with absolutely bloody well nothing of their own to say. The point is not to blow people’s minds with your half-assed ideas, but to blow their minds with the vividness, genuineness and personal flavor of your writing.

You want to give readers That Barton Fink Feeling, for the simple reason that if you don’t, no one else can. How do you do that? You give them what you love — what you really love, not just what you pat yourself on the back for having come up with a sentence-long summary for.

What I’m trying to get at here is that a writer must find what books he or she enjoys reading — or, preferably, LOVES reading with a passion that makes her or him sacrifice sleep and risk life and limb to squeeze in a few extra pages while walking down the street.

I discovered that in spades this year. I spent a decade or more of being sort of lukewarm on all the fiction I read. Therefore, I didn’t read nearly as much of it as I should have. Then I started reading fiction aggressively, and I realized that the experience of reading a book that blows you away is what all this ludicrous self-torture is about.

You do have to write to write — that fact is as unassailable as the meaning of the word is being, well, “is.”

But you are what you eat — so go read something that reminds you why you ever sat your ass down in that stupid chair to begin with.

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Last time I had the blog, we talked about eroticizing setting with description. Now we’re going to focus on what readers look for in any form of erotic novel: Character. I’ve learned everything there was to know about character from my mentor, Morgan Hawke. Remember when we’re talking character here, we’re talking solely about what sells, not necessarily what works for your niche readers. That is for you to figure out. For this blog, we’re going to share what works to create those characters that arouse not only our hearts and minds, but our genitalia.

The first thing we obviously tackle for character is description. What do we envision when we start putting pen to paper? What if that vision is hard to come across in our minds? The easiest way to create characters is to steal someone else’s! Use what’s popular in movies and TV. While that seems like cheating (it is) we still have to figure out a few key things.

1. Are we creating PLOT driven stories
2. Are we creating CHARACTER driven stories

Let’s focus on Character for obvious reasons. When I suggested modeling your character after Movie/TV characters, I did this on purpose. For example, with Hugh Jackman in mind, we now have what he looks like and even some background. Does his character fit our story? He probably does, a little.

But the characters must go through trials and tribulations in order to grow and reach that desired ending.

To add erotic elements to the character, we need a mate for them. In all fiction we’re talking about creating tension between the two characters. This is done through their actions. If you’re out on a date, what actions do you use to attract the attention of someone who has caught your eye? What does that tension feel like?

When we put those feelings and actions down on paper, we’re using them in action tags to describe them to come across as we intend for them to.

In this scene from “Whiskey Spread” we have Morganna, an older woman is attracted to one of her long time customers.

She stepped back into the bar area but took a quick step back out of sight. Nicholas was sitting at a seat by the window and there was a brunette with him.
Her heart sank.
Her reaction to seeing him with some other woman.

The brunette leaned forward on her elbows, waving her hand through the thick cloud of smoke coming from Nicholas’s cigar.
His hair hung down the length of his back and caught the light off the fixture above so that reflected a deep blue so dark it looked black. His charcoal gray shirt fit snuggly over broad shoulders and was tucked into navy colored slacks. Her describing him.
Morganna licked her lips, felt her nerves ready in anticipation of goddess only knew what. Morganna’s response, a typical action that might elicit an erotic response as the reader has been SHOWN something.

Then she took a glance at the brunette sitting across from him nursing a…cola?
Was she his girlfriend?
Sizing her up, Morganna stepped out from behind the spot she was in.

Lastly, we’re left with what Morganna’s intended action is.

The highlighted parts are up to us to throw in. This gives us not only a better scene, but deeper characterization without having to spell everything out. Morganna’s actions of licking her lips, something many men find arousing. Following it up with an appropriate action drives the story. What will Morganna do? Will she let her body control her lust? Or will her lust control her body?

There is an order of actions things occur in also but we’ll cover that in another article. Until then, enjoy WriteSEX and stay tuned for the lovely and talented Dr. Nicole Peeler

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