Same old Sex?

Same old, same old...SEX?

----- Original Message -----
...I've reviewed three erotica anthologies in the past few months, published by well-known houses, full of tales by well-known authors... They all used the same sentence structures, the same imagery, the same tone, as a million other stories I'd read before.
--Bored with Erotica

The key phrase here is:

"They all used the same sentence structures, the same imagery, the same tone..."

That is definitely the sign of authors using only Erotic Literature and porn movies for inspiration. That can make for extremely DRY and Repetitive stories because both Erotic Lit and porn movies have the same Tone, use the same types of Characters, and happen in the same Settings.

The cold hard truth is: 

SEX is an extremely simple and repetitive action

and anything repetitive gets Boring.

So, if you wanna jazz up your Sex--

Change:

WHERE sex happens,

WHY sex happens, and

WHO wants to have it.

So, how do you do that? 

The easiest way is by--

Genre REMIX

Add Sex to another Genre at a 50/50 ratio.

50% genre-specific Story and 50% Sex.

• Romantic Erotica: "I love you! Let's f*ck!"
• Glam Erotica: "He was rich, she was famous, they f*cked."
• Mystery Erotica: "Who f*cked them?"
• Crime Erotica: "Oh my god! Someone's been f*cked!"
• Suspense Erotica: "Oh no! I'm going to be f*cked!"
• Humor / Satire Erotica: "You call that f*cking?"
• Sci-Fi Erotica: "They f*cked where no one has f*cked before!"
• Horror Erotica: "Oh my God! It's f*cking me!"
• Fantasy Erotica: "They f*cked and it was Magic!"
• Paranormal Erotica: "What the hell am I f*cking?"
• Fetish Erotica: "Mmmm-mmm f*ck! Mmm-mmmm!" (Ball gag.)
• Literary Erotica: "They came together in a glorious explosion of glittering climax. The roses painted on the battered wallpaper of their silent room watched them in the approaching twilight, a reminder of how fragile pleasure is..."

Another way to do this is through--

Pure REMIX.

1) Change WHERE Sex Happens:

Pick an exotic Location or Time period.

• Deep Space, 
• A Forgotten Temple, 
• An Egyptian Pyramid, 
• The Wild West, 
• The Regency period, 
• The Middle Ages, 
• A Tattoo Parlor... 
• Anyplace that ISN'T a bedroom. 

Don't be afraid to use a favorite movie for visual references, but make damned sure you change all the place names and don't use anything that's easily recognizable -- such as a 'light-saber'.

2) Change WHY Sex Happens:

Love and physical attraction are common reasons for sex, but they're not the only ones. Sex can be used:

• To learn a secret
• To stop a transformation or induce a transformation
• Out of pity or gratitude
• To comfort someone
• To express anger
• As a form of control
• As a form of worship
• In reaction to a life-threatening experience
• To relieve boredom
• To generate physical warmth when cold

In short, sex can happen for pretty much any reason at all. All you need is a half-way decent EXCUSE.



 

1) Change the WHO wants to have Sex:

Pick two favorite characters from two vastly different movies or TV shows and put them in bed together. Just make damned sure you change their names!

Not Original enough for you?

That's fine because the truth is; Nothing is Original.
Everything is a REMIX.

To quote my friend The Gray Mouser:

"Originality is merely the Arte of Concealing Your Sources."

Enjoy!

You Are what you READ

You ARE what you READ.

 by Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy.

Years ago I was talking to a fellow novelist whom I’d just met and I asked him what his Top Five favorite novels were. This is a question I ask writers a lot. I’m always looking for great books, and one place to find them is on the Top Five list of another writer.

He said, “I don’t read fiction.”

This guy’s answer just about knocked me over. I couldn’t believe it. I asked him if he meant he didn’t read much fiction.

No, he didn’t read any. He was a nonfiction kind of a guy.

He wrote fiction, but he didn’t read it.

That was years ago, and I haven’t seen anything from him recently.

To put it bluntly, I don’t see that as a recipe for success. If you’re a novelist, you need to be reading fiction.

There’s a saying that “you are what you read,” and I think this is partially true.

If you read great fiction, you’ll absorb some of it, and you’ll become a better writer. You’ll learn what’s possible to do in writing, and it can’t help but expand you as a writer. But I think it goes beyond that.

I recommend reading widely, even if it isn’t great fiction. Because the fact is that--

--you are MORE than what you read. 

What you read is fuel for your mind—it’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient.

Novelists need to read Fiction.

A lot of fiction. Not just the bestsellers. Obscure stuff. Good fiction. Great fiction. Horrible fiction (not too much of this—if you do manuscript reviews at a writing conference, you’ll see more than you need).

When you read other people’s fiction, you learn things that you couldn’t learn any other way because when it comes to the craft of writing--

--you don’t know what you Don’t Know. 

The only way to Learn

 what you don’t know is by 

Reading other people’s work.

For starters, you should read widely in your category. You need to know the rules of your genre—which ones are ironclad and which ones can be bent, but that’s not enough.

Read widely outside your Genre. 

Read outside your Demographic. 

Read outside your Worldview.

Read Romance fiction. 

Most novels have a romance thread in them, no matter what their category. If you can improve that thread, your story will improve.

Read Suspense fiction. 

Most novels have some element of fear in them. Learn how to do that better and your novel will be better.

Read Fantasy. 

Even if you, personally, would never want to read a vampire or werewolf story, it’s quite possible that one of your characters would. If you understand that character better, then you’ll do a better job writing that character.

Read Mysteries. 

Even if you hate mysteries. Most novels have an element of mystery to them—some secret that needs to be uncovered. If you know how to unwrap that secret, one layer at a time, then your story can only get better.

Read a Spy novel. 

One of your characters is reading a spy novel right now. Do you know what he likes about it?

Read a Historical novel. 

The better you understand history, the better you understand the present.

Read Science Fiction. 

You might learn a bit of science, if it’s a hard science fiction novel. But for sure, you’ll expand your universe a bit. Never hurts.

Read YA fiction. 

It’ll give you insights into your younger characters. It might give you some insights into a few young adults in your life.

Read Women’s fiction. 

If you’re a guy, you’ll understand women better, which is good all by itself. If you’re a guy writing fiction, you’ll understand your readers better, because the odds are that the majority of your readers are women.

Read fiction that features characters with wildly different Beliefs from yours. 

I understand hyper-capitalists better after reading Ayn Rand. I understand Jews better after reading Chaim Potok. I understand Wiccans better after reading S.M. Stirling’s apocalyptic series that begins with Dies the Fire. I understand Muslims better after reading Khaled Hosseini’s book The Kite Runner. I understand fundamentalists better after reading the first book in the Left Behind series.

The better you understand your characters, the better your novel will be.

Read Bad fiction. 

Yes, really. If you find a particularly bad piece of writing, read it all the way to the end. Figure out why it’s so awful. Resolve never to do the things that the author is doing.

I confess that I have a favorite bad novel, written by a high-school kid who graduated a couple of years behind me. This thing is fearsomely, wonderfully, amazingly awful. It’s bad on every possible level.

No, I won’t tell you the title. Find your own dreck. I’m keeping mine a secret.

My family knows which book I’m talking about, and they’ve all read it. We sometimes quote particularly horrible lines at the dinner table.

There are a billion ways to write great fiction, but only about a dozen ways to write truly horrible fiction. 

Good writing starts by learning to avoid that dirty dozen of Desperately Horrible Writing Follies.

If you’ve read some really awful fiction, I guarantee it’ll improve your writing. But there IS such a thing as too much of a bad thing, so stop when you’re had enough. A little goes a long way.

Read a little bad fiction and a ton of good fiction.

Reading Fiction

is the foundation of Writing fiction. 

Make your foundation

broad and strong.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Reprinted with permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "the Snowflake Guy," publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 9,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.