From my
writing treatise, Plotting and Planning,
available at http://tinyurl.com/deMelloPlotting
My first writing
treatise, Write This, Not That! is free through 2014:
http://tinyurl.com/qewm3ts
google
Scenes are the building
blocks of your story, for acts are comprised of scenes. They're nothing more
than events, most often interactions between your characters. Scenes should
fulfill at least one or two of the below purposes—best if you can include all
four.
•Advance plot
•Reveal or
develop character
•Complicate or
resolve conflict
•Express
setting, mood, theme
Everything in your manuscript should have a function,
even every comma or em-dash.
How does this
apply to the writing of erotica?
Too often, sex
scenes are shoehorned into a story to increase the word count or the heat
level, while those scenes don't fulfill any other function. To quote from Plotting and Planning again, Everything in a story should contribute to
it, from the biggest monster to the tiniest comma.
If a scene
doesn't contribute to the story, it doesn't belong there. It doesn't matter how
well-written it is. It doesn't matter how hot it is. It doesn't matter how much
you, the author, may love the beautiful prose or the scorching hot, kinky sex.
There's a piece
of writerly advice out there: Kill your
darlings.
No one's quite
sure where this phrase originated, but it's been repeated often, by such
notable authors as William Faulkner and Stephen King.
But it doesn't
matter who originated the phrase--it's great advice. We often fall in love with
our prose and are loath to cut it, especially when we may have slaved over a
particularly well-turned clause or exhaustively researched, say, the eating
habits of the lesser lemur of Madagascar.
But fiction is
no place to be a smarty-pants. Leave that for term papers, book reports and
theses.
In terms of
writing sex scenes, what do we leave in and what to we cut?
We leave in
those scenes that fulfill at least one of the above purposes. Ideally, a
well-written, thoughtfully planned encounter will fulfill more than one
purpose.
Here's a brief
example, from a story I wrote called Gypsy
Witch. The backstory is that the heroine is dating a cop.
Ben
propped himself up on his elbows to better see the naked woman beneath him.
Sheened with sweat, Elena’s lush curves glowed in the reddish half-light of her
bedroom, curtained in exotically patterned swaths of gauze and silk. A curl of
smoke from a lit incense stick scented the air with sandalwood. Otherworldly
New Age music flowed out of a boombox in the corner, irritating the hell out of
him.
Though the paragraph is very sensual,
there’s quite a bit of characterization and even a little conflict—and this is
only the first paragraph of the story. We see that Ben is very
“feet-on-the-ground” while Elena, his lover, is exotic and New-Agey. So
character is described, setting is related and the romantic conflict is shown.
If you like what you
read, find the story here: http://www.ellorascave.com/gypsy-witch.html
As a romance
novelist, I believe firmly that erotic scenes should never be gratuitous. If a
writer keeps the purposes a scene must fulfill in mind while writing, the sex is
never out of place but is a seamless part of a well-written story.
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