Sex. Writing it has been a tricky affair for me however, in the wip, the second scene is straight in there so to speak. It was such fun to write. I mean serious fun. I love this character who is quite a rotten apple and this scene shows her voracious appetite. I wrote the scene without 'my mother' on my shoulder (Dad, if your reading this break it to her gently). The only concession to editing in the scene was the word I choose to type for part of the male anatomy. I wrote not the one I wanted to, but a more gentle term. I did this in the off chance that dd might started to edit my work as she is prone to do.
However I forgot I substitued the word when I handed the first ten pages to the Dh to read. I normally don't have him read my work but this book is a slightly new direction and I wanted some feedback.
Five minutes later I crept back waiting to be told what a lot of tosh it was but no. He enjoyed it??? He had trouble with the opening which we discussed then he said - you know what's happening and you rushed it. The reader needs more set up. Good comment I thought. I then ventured to ask him about scene two.......was it too much? would it upset a reader? Dh said upset no, but he would change a certain word as it it didn't fit with the character. Couldn't agree more - must remember to change all before I have some else read it.
Still addicted to Black Boxes widget. Give it a try. What are the choices you have made?
14 comments:
Thanks for stopping by my blog and i agree about the black box!
Enjoyed reading your work too and think it is always incredibly brave to hand over work in progress to someone else Hope it continues to flow!
best
Chimera
I agree with chimera- incredibly barve to hand over work in progress...
But being so brave is where the action is, and who in the world would want to read timid writing!
Nice post, Liz.
Oops- incredibly "brave," not incredibly "barve."
Where or where is spellchecker when you need it?
Glad to hear the writing is going well.
I'm loving the black box widget too.
Thanks Chimera.......managed another 1000 words today :-)
Thanks Vwriter.....spellchecker is never where you need it - especially for a dyslexic like me!
Debs it's such fun that I am having to ration myself!
My own folks won't read my work. Too upsetting or something.
My rule of thumb with sex scenes: if the *way* the characters have sex reveals stuff about them (like you showing your 'bad apple's' voracious nature), go graphic as you gotta. If the important thing is merely that the sex happened, by all means fade to the fireplace.
Hi Liz
I tried the Black Boxes Widget for the first time and it led me to you!
It is hard to hand over your work, but after six readers had given me feedback, my novel was definitely the better for it
ah yes- one must be brave to hand off work to their significant others lol!
and I agree...go for the gusto...
Steve, i think it does set her up very well indeed and I should be able to just hint at her antics from her on in - shucks ;-) My mum has read my last two books and loved them which is good I think. Dad reads the blog but not the books :-)
annieye and Orion, I wasn't that brave as it was only ten pages...just to find out if I was totally off on a limb and see how he would react to the change in shift in my writing - mind you he has never read the others so he wouldn't notice!
The Black Box is definitely a long over due portal. Thanks for the stop-by.
Thanks for the visit on Authonomy, Liz! Funny, you'd commented in this post on the topic of writing sex scenes... For the book of mine that you'd commented on (on Authonomy), the print and eBook versions (available on my blog) contain an intro that I think is absent on the Authonomy version. That intro discusses this very topic. The book itself contains three sex scenes written specifically via suggestion only (that is, no explicit language at all). However, the end result was, in my opinion, even better than had I been direct about it.
Having once written very explicit romances, I used to agonize over when to allow my daughters to read them. I finally had to let the oldest one read them far earlier than I'd planned when we discovered her classmates were reading them.
Thanks for comment via the black box. Feel free to make us famous in your writing -- yes the name if Cornish but The Mench is 3rd generation Cdn so I don't suppose there's much connection anymore.
Hey Bill - a pleasure so much so I done it several times :-)
Blowing - each book I have written has required different sex scenes and it all deoends on what I am trying to acheive. In this case the character is not a sympathetic one - so I guess I wanted it to be a bit startling. In the books it was more as Steve says a fade to the fireplace event :-)
c.s. - you make me laugh. My 16 ds1 is desperate for me to write sex (he think it sells), 14 ds2 will be beetroot in colour and i'm not sure how 9 dd will react. I guess once they have the understanding that it is the characters and not you :-) (lucky characters)
Thanks Ilana. Th name had me searching and I had now come across a name for the house that I am happy with but I am still struggling on the family name......
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