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Writing Sex Scenes – Erotica / Romance / Urban Fiction

Were all adults here. That said this post is not for children. I’m an adult and if you’re under age I would suggest you stop reading.

There, now that the children have left the room let’s get into it.

3532693670_romancenovel_xlargeFirst, I have to say I’m not as anti-romance as you’d think. I actually enjoy romance….to an extent. I’m just not the exclusive romance type. You know, the books with the man on the front sporting a six-pack, low cut jeans that makes it obvious he’s not wearing underwear, a cow-boy hat and “come and get it” eyes. That’s just not  sexy to me; perhaps because I don’t really see it as being manly enough. I mean sure, I see your oiled down abs but I’m just not impressed. I’m more interested in Romance that incorporates more into the story; romantic adventure or urban fiction if you will where the story is not exclusively about Mary Jane and the six-pack, which brings me back to my purpose of this post: Sex Scenes: Romance, Erotica, and Urban Fiction.

Dear Indie Erotica, Romance, Urban Fiction Writers,

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Don’t overdo the sex. Just because you can mention every body part known to man doesn’t mean that you should. Even when it comes to love scenes, readers should feel sexy, aroused even, but not grossed out. Some books I can’t even get through because there’s no emotion behind the action. The character keeps it real and all but that’s not, in my opinion, enough to be enticing. There are some authors who can paint their sex scenes very well and for that I must say that my opinions are from a readers perspective since I don’t actually write erotica. That said, I am not placing judgment, I’m just saying that if your going to write about couples making love put some tact to it. You can mention body parts without being outright vulgar. Now days I just feel like I’m watching a really bad porno movie. Thing is, you can be nasty if you want (were all adults here) but there’s even a way to do that. The idea is to draw us in. Make us feel like we’re in the moment. Make it just as sensual and as intimate as you would if you were actually having sex. Tracy Brown actually writes very good Urban Fiction novels with some steamy scenes. She’s not an Indie Author but she’s a good example of how it should be done. Her books also have other themes incorporated so that its not straight sex (that gets boring after-while, there must be an actual story line people). White Lines for instance is a book about a woman and drug addiction and is a pretty good read. I have a few of her books in fact.

Now, about stories surrounding abuse…

Stories about physical abuse are going to be difficult despite how you look at it. There is no way to write physical abuse stories that are reflective of the truth and make people any less uncomfortable. I still believe, however, that there should be some skill involved. When people are physically abused its not just physical its emotional. This should be incorporated in. As you walk us through the incident, there must be a simultaneous emotional / mental explosion along with what’s happening physically. There is a way to show me the physical and the emotional pain experienced by the character without bluntly stating that he forced his you know what into her you know where. This shows me a glimpse of the abuse and shocks me, but it would be better if the feeling was shown instead of told. The classic: “show me, don’t tell me”:

“He tore down her innocence as if breaking glass, and replaced her inner walls with the maturity of his manhood. She was no longer a child, oblivious to the desire that felt like saliva between her legs. Just like that youth had escaped her. Had taken advantage of her perfection and replaced it with the wisdom to know why mama’s voice moaned in the nighttime. What she would give to go back and listen to mama hum the words to songs only grown-ups knew. Instead, she became a prisoner to the freedom of understanding as it dripped from between her legs. “

I’m not that kind of writer so what you’ve read probably sucked but the point is that books that include sex period requires some kind of skill. Erotica and Urban Fiction are not genres that give us the right to just blurt stuff out. It’s like I tell my husband all the time when it comes to comedy: “A whole bunch of curse words and vulgar language does not necessarily make it funny”. Too often comedians feel like they have to use such language just to make people laugh and it causes them not to be funny at all in my opinion. You don’t have to be nasty to be funny. The same thing applies to writing, it can be real and genuine without overdoing the sex scenes.

Writing 101: Assignment #2 – Write a List –Things I Learned

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1. I’ve learned that music is better than medicine, and that the sound of laughter is better than music.

2. I’ve learned to be humble in confidence, but courageous in character.

3. I’ve learned that to love and to be loved is the true measure of success.

4. I’ve learned that goals must be directly related to purpose.

5. I’ve learned that childhood is precious; things actually don’t get better after 21.

cropped-seal_v2-036. I’ve learned to respect elderly women as mothers, men as fathers.

7. I’ve learned that to fall and to overcome is better than to not have known struggle at all.

8. I’ve learned to appreciate the small things first, the insignificant, the lowly, and the taken for granted.

9. I’ve learned that with great authority comes greater responsibility.

10. I’ve learned that everyone has something to teach me.

#8: Respect Award

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Thank you Lisa for paying it forward, as you always do, by nominating me for my 8th Blog Award, The Respect Award. I am truly honored about this award in particular because it’s something I strive to extend everywhere I go. I do not hesitate to give and it sometimes perplexes people but it is real. I’ll give you the shirt off my back if need be because that’s just the kind of person I am and its not fabricated. I strive to keep it real at all times and to give the same kindness and the same peace to everyone around me while at the same time remaining firm. I am kind but I am not naïve , thus discipline and firmness is just as critical to me as being a peacemaker only because these are the qualities of a good leader. In short, I appreciate you appreciating me and I hope that I can continue to display the same kindness to all of my bloggers in general; those who follow this blog today and on into the future.

Here’s a little history on The Respect Award:

The Respect Award was created by Robert Goldstein, who says:

Clarion Alley 2012
Clarion Alley 2012

“The “Respect” Award is my personal award for fellow bloggers who consistently reach out to other bloggers, offer support, are kind, struggle to understand differences in people, and who treat themselves and other people with kindness and respect. You don’t have to do anything for this award. You can choose to copy the Award Picture and give the award to the people who have earned your respect or you can do nothing. This is my way of saying thank you. You have earned my respect.”

Writing 101 – Assignment #1: Why I Write

I bleed words for a living. How did this come to be? At what point did I decide that I would write? That I would be a writer. Since I have always loved to write, it is challenging to pinpoint the exact moment I felt compelled to confide in words as a source of strength. My life has not been perfect in childhood, and having attended eight different schools before High School, I developed a love for reading. Ah, there it is. I write because I love to read. There are deeper reasons why I write but this is the starting place. Reading has always been my foundation. I could not trust in people so I trusted in books. Ironic isn’t it? For authors are people too. Nonetheless, by the age of twelve I developed a love for stories. Understand that my love for stories and my love for reading are two separate occasions. I have always, and still do, love to read. But it is that moment I took notice of how stories were written that I began to love stories. The emotion of the characters, the surrounding landscape, and even the way the words tippy toed across the page fascinated me. I wanted to be part of this process on a level that went deeper than reading. I wanted to become an architect of this kind of skill and just like that I began to write stories of my own.

Today

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Today my love for writing and my purpose for doing so have spun into greater depth as I have experienced many different things, traveled many places, and interacted with many different people as opposed to when I was a girl. I write today not so much to merely entertain, but to do so while also educating. I write to free individuals from the limited ways we tend to think and to feel. I hope to provide a kind of “edu-tainment”, a made-up word meaning to educate through entertainment. Everyone wants to learn but it does not have to be dull. We all wish to enjoy ourselves as we learn and I hope that my books can provide and has provided this kind of nourishment. In short, my reasoning for writing has developed but at its core it has remained the same. I love writing because I love reading and every book I read is inspiration to write.

Before TWD Comes On…

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I just have to say I’m excited to be participating in Blogging U this year. I feel like I’m going back to school LOL. This will give me the chance to produce at least one post a day while sharpening my writing skills simultaneously. I am also looking forward to meeting new bloggers via The Commons.

So here’s how the postings will go: I will be taking the Writing 101 course for the next four weeks. That said, I will produce at least one post a day that will have something to do with our theme for the day in addition to my regular postings throughout the week (so my Writers Quote Wednesdays and other regular posts will still go out). I’m not sure if the prompts go out on weekends but I will continue to have Saturdays off so you can expect no postings on the prompt then. Otherwise, I will continue to annoy* your emails with my many random postings in addition to whatever blogging prompt we are given from Writing 101! OK, that exclamation mark was really unnecessary, I’m not that excited. It’s just that, well, The Walking Dead is about to come on.

*Note: Seriously, I hope I’m not that annoying, but if I am, always remember that you control how many emails, if any, you receive from blogs you follow. Just adjust your settings to where they accompany your toleration levels.

Editing For Emotion

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As I enter another revision stage for Book #3 in The Stella Trilogy, and I prepare for that final edit, I found this article extremely helpful. While we hear a lot about action and keeping the story moving, it is true that you don’t hear much about editing for emotion. I know many people do not click third party links, but I discovered this article written by Laura Drake that hit the nail on the head. To the authors credit, I will only post an excerpt of the article. Please visit Laura’s website for its entirety.

The Most Important Edit No One Talks About By Laura Drake

“Everyone knows about ground level edits – copy/line/stylistic edits that look at sentence structure and grammar – they’re small, but important.

We all know those two edits are critical.

But there’s another edit that is very seldom talked about, that could take your manuscript from good to sold.

I call it the 5,000 foot edit. It’s the edit for EMOTION. I don’t care if you’re writing a romance or a legal or espionage thriller; if you don’t have a solid bedrock of emotion in your book, you’re not going to have readers. It’s what they come for! Think of your favorite author. Why is he your favorite? I’ll bet right up there with plot, is the emotion. If we don’t have emotion, the reader won’t care about your character. And that’s a story-killer.

Have I convinced you? Okay, let’s move on to how to do this thing.

In a book, regardless of genre, the character has to grow, right? So you need to follow the character’s arc, and be sure it happens in a timely, logical fashion. It’s okay if the character grows in fits and starts, or even if they progress, then back up a few steps. As long as their character arc doesn’t look like this:

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A problem I’ve seen (and had) is that the character seems bipolar, going from laughing to angry to loving in three paragraphs. For emotion to be satisfying, it has to be deep. Take those three paragraphs, and dig deeper. It doesn’t mean you have to turn three paragraphs into three pages – sometimes a visceral hit and a one sentence reminder of the emotion will do:

This is from my RITA winner, The Sweet Spot:

The red flowers had some brown edges, and looked a bit bug-eaten. She’d planned to stop at Wal-Mart and pick up a bouquet on the way to the cemetery, but . . . Her stomach settled a bit. “These are Benje’s flowers. He’s not going to care about a few bugs.” She headed for the tool shed, to find her clippers.

I added a sentence of dialog that added emotion – a reminder to the reader of an emotional memory: working in the garden with her child (the child she’s going to visit in the cemetery). See?

No matter what genre you’re writing, not all scenes are action. If they are, you’re going to wear out your reader in no time. It’ll be a fast read, but also, unsatisfying, because in action, you can only show flashes of emotion – like paint splattered on a canvas, rather that brush-stroked on. You need what Dwight Swain, in his book, Techniques of the Selling Writer (a ‘must have’ on your craft shelf, IMHO) calls a ‘sequel scene’.

A quiet scene, where the POV character can reflect on what just happened, and compare the results to his world-view. These are the scenes that move him along his growth arc. You can only do that by getting deep into the emotion – because that character’s flaws in his world-view usually come from damage in his childhood: abuse, neglect, or even over-indulgence (poor little rich kid). And that’s emotional. Be sure you’re plumbing all that good stuff.” – Laura Drake

Finish Reading

Social Media: Balancing Off / Online Book Promo.

Close up of a social media results report with pen and calculator
Close up of a social media results report with pen and calculator

Social Media is a different world from offline. As such, I think interaction on and offline must apply to book promotion and be fitting for each. I’m learning, and trying to better implement, a well-balanced combination of both off and online tools because each is so different, yet similar too. Now the following are just my personal thoughts and opinions and are by no means that of an expert. These thoughts are not supported by any advanced data or statistic aside from my own experience; they are just my thoughts because, well, I was thinking about some stuff.

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Me and Offline supporters from Canada and Philadelphia at The Pearls Before Swine release, The Double Tree Hilton Hotel, Chicago IL 2014

In my opinion, offline offers opportunities not always present online and online offer its benefits as well that are not always present offline. There are things I would do online as to appeal to this community that may not be required offline. Or that may not attract as much attention to offline supporters. For instance, I think offline activities are great to share with your online friends in the form of pictures. It’s always exciting to see photos of book signings, public speaking engagements, and varying social engagements with offline supporters. I think these, pictures, are far more engaging to your online supporters than ads and constant promos concerning updates of what is done offline because it gets boring after a while.

Online communities want to engage online whereas offline communities who are not as into “internet-ting” want to engage offline. Offline supporters and readers want to hear your voice and see your face. They can care less about how many Facebook Likes you have. As such, I believe balance of both on and offline activity is good but that there also need to be a limit to merging the two. Its OK for them to be separate. I believe, for instance, that a social media presence should rightly fit the online community.

social-media-week-impressionsI know this looks good, but Social Media is very deceiving. While numbers such as is in this photo is exciting it can mean absolutely nothing or it can mean everything. You will probably never know for sure. This is where offline activities come into play. Offline book promotion handles much of the foot work. It is the physical act of pushing the book.

Social Media on the other hand, in my opinion, is not necessarily about selling books as much as it is about building; though through building come sales, social media is best utilized to help generate buzz about a book without blatantly asking people to buy it. Its purpose is to serve as a networking platform that helps connect writers to other writers, readers to writers, digital marketers and professional experts, editors, book groups and workshops, reviewers, beta readers, and gives authors room to connect with readers who enjoy the genre in which the writer writes by way of a platform. What I hope to accomplish as an author in general but especially online, is to show my support for the books content itself. I aim to raise awareness concerning the social or political message behind the writing. Why is this topic relevant today? How does it help people to grow? What value does my subject hold and can it start conversations that lead to greater understanding? By striving to answer these questions, it will help garner offline attention and lead to radio interviews and social engagements. In short,  I try to forget for a moment literally selling the book, and to instead focus on why my book is different from the next and thus why it is even worth your time in the first place.

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Social media is about connections and should be used to reach the people you can’t reach offline (because they will become offline supporters). It should be, not merely an advertisement of the book, but a presentation of the books message and an introduction of the author on a personal level. By focusing on the content of the book and getting to know the author, I believe readers become interested in the book itself because of their passion for the topic and their trust of the author. In this way, I think we Indies have the potential to reach lots of readers and to be more productive in our service to the online literary community.