Ok, boys, think I'll do a post like a serious writer and not as a smut-writing strumpet. A post like the ones you find on literary blogs.
You already know I won't make it, and all this will collapse in innuendo and double-entendre, but let me try, ok?
You already know I won't make it, and all this will collapse in innuendo and double-entendre, but let me try, ok?
In the comments to the launch post for "The Hit List", Eugene said
It needs some editing, and a sex-scene (or is it not erotica?)
About the editing I can only say I am sorry, the file will be updated.
But this thing about the sex-scene has been bugging me for hours, now.
Because... because no, damn!
OK, OK, we need to decide what counts as a sex-scene and what does not.
Considering the story in question, and Eugene's comment, I take it to mean a scene of physical lovemaking.
Which is more or less what I mean when I think "sex-scene".
Intercourse?
Bits of me inside bits of you or viceversa?
Cheerful exchange of bodily fluids?
That's a sex-scene for me.
Anything else can be as sexually charged as you please, but it's not a sex-scene.
It can be a scene of seduction, of courtship, of general tickling.
It can be fetish-pushing.
Two persons sitting on opposite seats in a train compartment talking.
It is not a physical sex-scene, but believe me, it can be hot and exciting as hell in the hands of the right writer.
And I do not know if I am that good a writer. As I said, I write smut.
There is normally a lot of sweaty, graphical, physical sex in my stories.
Fuck it, let's say it like it is: I normally write porn, that is a very different sort of thing from erotica.
Fuck it, let's say it like it is: I normally write porn, that is a very different sort of thing from erotica.
But the idea of exciting my readers without showing anything...
Oh, I'd love to be that good.
It would be what I call "classy", and I am not a classy writer, even if I'd love to be.
Which of course means now I will have to try.
It will be long and hard (oho! here comes the strumpet again!!), but right now I know I need to try.
Hmm... I take it your goal for Hit List was to actually tease. Well, you've done a pretty good job at that, I believe. I would appreciate the teasing to be a bit longer and more descriptive though. So as to make the taste of corruption more rich.
ReplyDeleteIf I understand correctly, you think it a pinnacle of erotic writing when you don't actually write anything explicit and still leave your readers are hot and bothered, and you're striving to reach that level. Personally I don't think that has as much to do with writing skills as you believe. There's also you readers to consider - because it's them who read and get hot and bothered. I highly doubt that your target audience is sheltered young girls who think you can get pregnant with a kiss. Yet it's that kind of audience that can get hot and bothered when you simply describe two people kissing. Your audience is a bit more jaded, so naturally you need to delve deeper into the whole topic of "birds and bees" to get them to imagine things they don't usually imagine.
I've rewritten this post three times and still don't think I was as clear as I could be. Well, I guess I can only hope it's not as confusing as it sounds to me when I read it.
It is clear enough :)
DeleteAnd I see your point.
I don't plan to stop writing explicit, rough-and-tumble stuff.
Far from it, it's too much fun!
But I'd like to explore other areas of erotica, in which the situation itself is erotically charged.
I am not writing for naive Catholic school girls... OK, if they'd like to read me and loosen up a bit why not...
Let's put it this way: what I am trying to do (or I will try to do sooner or later) is not to take the sex away, but to inject it in situations that are not normally considered "sexual", making the whole a lot hotter than the classic shagging scene on page fifteen.
And maybe what I wrote so far it's confused, too :P
So, sexually charging a non-sexual scene then? I think that happens when the writer focuses on the minute details of what is going on in the scene. So, for example, you want to sexually charge a scene where a female is smoking. You can express that through phrases like "she took out a cigarette out of the packet using the tips of her long fingernails and put it to her full lips". In this phrase the reader's attention gets focused on the sensuality of what is going on. Compare this with "she took out the cigarette out of the packet and put it to her lips". What used to sound sexually alluring now sounds matter-of-factly. I think that's what you're looking for - the qualifying adjectives and phrases that concentrate the reader's attention on the sensuality of the character's behavior and the character herself. Of course you're already doing it, but I think it isn't a conscious action on your part.
DeleteOh, it is, at least up to a point, a conscious action... it's part of the craft.
DeleteIt does have to come naturally, but it's part of what I want to put on the page.