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Year: 2018

Going Fangirl On Writers

by | July 28, 2018 | | 2 Comments

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, and her two cats.

Web site: http://elizabethablack.blogspot.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabethablack

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElizabethABlack

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/author/elizabethblack

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/b76GWD

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I just returned from Necon, which is a New England convention for writers held every July in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. It’s mostly for horror but science fiction and fantasy are also covered. The thing I like best about cons like Necon is that they are very informal. You don’t have to wait hours in a queue and pay hundreds of dollars to get a celebrity writer to sign a book or photograph for you. Everyone is on equal footing. It’s like an informal party held at a friend’s house, but with books.

Another convention I had gone to that was in a similar vein was the Stanley Hotel Writers Retreat. That one is also for horror, obviously since it was held in the hotel that inspired Stephen King to write The Shining. It was just as informal and relaxed, but in a spookier and more scenic setting.

This year’s Guest of Honor at Necon was Dana Cameron, who wrote the Emma Fielding mysteries that were made into movies on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries. Her main character is an archeologist. You may have seen these movies and/or read her books. If you haven’t, look her up on Amazon. She wrote Sight Unseen and Past Malice, for starters. I discovered her after my husband and I saw the two movies on Hallmark. I’d never heard of her and bought one of her books. Turns out she lives in Boston, is friendly with New England writers I already know, and has a Facebook page. Of course I friended her. When I met in her person at Necon we chatted quite a bit and she signed the book for me. She’s also agreed to appear on a podcast with Marsha Casper Cook and I. We’re scheduling that for the near future.

Another guest was Charlaine Harris, who wrote the Sookie Stackhouse books the TV series True Blood is based on. I discovered her books after getting hooked on the show. I liked how she took vampires and made them like ordinary people. They pay taxes. They need car repairs. They unclog the sink. Normal stuff. She was unable to appear on the podcast but she signed one of her Sookie Stackhouse books for me. I loved hearing her talk about world building and her characters when she was on a panel.

It’s always fun to meet your favorite writers in person. Talking to them makes them feel more accessible and it takes the “OMG!” feeling away. After, all they are just as human as we are. They shower. Drink whisky. Eat meals. Tend to their kids, spouses, partner, etc. Networking is good and meeting people, especially writers you admire, at a convention is one way to do it.

When I first emailed and talked to Joe R. Lansdale I was over the moon. He’s one of my favorite writers. He wrote the books the Sundance TV series Hap and Leonard was based on. I’ve read most of those books. He also wrote Bubba Hotep and An Incident On And Off A Mountain Road, both of which were either turned into movies or TV episodes. He was both friendly and funny. He appeared on my podcast twice and he was a pleasure to talk to each time. I kept my giggling and hyperventilating in check.

I’m always happy to meet writers I admire, and I’m especially happy to get them on my podcast. I haven’t done a podcast in quite a while and I’m ready to start up again. There are more conventions coming up this summer and fall and I’ll meet even more writers. These conventions feel like happy, informal parties and I welcome them. I tend to see the same people all the time so it’s like a reunion. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Reading as Studying

by | July 27, 2018 | | 1 Comment

by Jean Roberta

Reading other people’s writing is a good way to see how many different ways there are to approach the same subject. And even if you specialize in erotica, reading outside your genre can show you various ways to get readers engaged with your characters, to reveal character and advance a plot through dialogue, to set up suspense (“foreplay”), to use imagery sparingly or generously, to pace the action in a way that feels natural, and to write a convincing climax (!).

I sometimes read in spurts because I’ve been asked to review someone else’s work, or I’ve offered to write a review for a specific publication. Sometimes I need to read several books quickly in order to choose one as a textbook for one of the university English classes I teach. Reading with the intention of writing a review, a summary, or a critique is a good way to remember details I might miss if I were only reading for pleasure.

Here is a list of my recent summer reading: very different books I’ve read recently for different reasons (in alphabetical order of authors’ last names):

The Marrow-Thieves (YA novel set in a post-apocalyptic Canada) by Cherie Dimaline (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2017)

So Lucky (slim book with autobiographical elements about the progress of an incurable disease, Multiple Schlerosis) by Nicola Griffiths (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018)

Does It Show? (quirky novel in a magic-realist style, second in a series about a set of working-class characters in northern England) by Paul Magrs (Massachusetts: Lethe Press, forthcoming in August 2018)

Perennial: A Garden Romance (slim book about second chances in love and flowers that return in spring) by Mary Anne Mohanraj (Lethe Press, forthcoming)

Warlight (historical novel set in WW2) by Michael Ondaatje, revered Canadian writer and academic (Alfred A. Knopf, 2018).

Forget the Sleepless Shores (collection of poetically-written stories, most with supernatural elements) by Sonya Taaffe (Lethe Press, forthcoming).

Read by Strangers (stories in an American realist style) by Philip Dean Walker (Lethe Press, forthcoming).

Even the spate of books by one publisher (Lethe, which originally specialized in LGBTQ speculative fiction) shows a wide range of styles and subject-matter.

As a reader/reviewer, I keep a set of questions in mind as I read:

1. What is the author’s aim, as far as I can figure it out?
2. Does the style seem to suit the subject-matter? (And if the style looks inappropriate, is that a sign of satirical intent?)
3. Do the characters come to life, even in a fantasy plot? (And there is a difference between fantasy elements in a narrative set in a very realistic or even gritty real-world setting, and “High Fantasy,” a story set in the Land of Faery, or Planet X, or some other completely invented realm.)
4. Am I tempted to keep turning the page? Are the mysteries and the tension eventually resolved?

Regarding the recent stack of books, I can honestly say that they all deliver what they promise.

None of these books are sagas of High Fantasy, but the stories with fantasy elements (The Marrow-Thieves, Does It Show? and most of the individual pieces in Forget the Sleepless Shores) seem no more far-fetched or implausible, in their way, than the narratives that reveal the strangeness of reality (So Lucky, Perennial, Warlight, and Read by Strangers).

The following are some of my impressions from my recent spate of reading, all of which can be applied to writing erotic fiction.

The same-sex attraction in several of these narratives (The Marrow-Thieves, So Lucky, Does It Show? several stories in Forget the Sleepless Shores and Read by Strangers) is presented in a plausible, matter-of-fact way that invites readers of all sexual orientations to care about the characters. Luckily, the current literary zeitgeist seems to have moved beyond the “coming-out” story as well as the interracial romance as something shockingly transgressive. In The Marrow-Thieves, each member of a makeshift “family” of survivors has a “coming-to” story about how they survived and found others like themselves, but these stories are not about wrestling with forbidden desires.

Characters who disguise their biological gender appear in Does It Show? and “The Creeping Influences” in Forget the Sleepless Shores. Whether such characters are cross-dressers, transfolk, or women just trying to survive in a men’s world (as in several Shakespeare comedies), they can easily come across as offensive stereotypes in current fiction.

In the human comedy of Does It Show? all the characters crave more glamour, excitement and love than they are likely to find in a small English town in the 1980s, but a supernatural realm is almost tangible beyond the illusions of “reality.” A transwoman in this context doesn’t seem more bizarre than anyone else.

In “The Creeping Influences,” a female character doing a man’s job seems downright mundane compared to the discovery of two well-preserved bodies in an Irish bog, both apparently murdered in different centuries.

Several of the authors of these books are widely known to be lesbians or gay men. In other cases, I simply don’t know anything about the authors’ love-lives. In all cases, though, same-sex attraction is simply presented as a fact. The worm in the apple is not internalized homophobia or the wrath of God, but miscommunication, or persecution in some form. This approach could be applied to more explicitly erotic plots.

Imagery (the description of anything which can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted, touched or felt) is sensual by definition, and therefore erotic. Imagery is the heart and soul of both horror fiction and sex-stories. The two collections of single-author stories (Forget the Sleepless Shores and Read by Strangers) include both spine-tingling creepiness and realistic sex scenes.

Perennial, the one book defined as a “romance,” has no explicit sex, but this could have been added without detracting from the sweetness of a story about two lonely strangers getting to know each other, and supporting each other through hard times.

In Warlight, the eventual revelation of hidden truths on a personal and collective level is both jaw-dropping and characteristic of a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. (The narrator is a fourteen-year-old boy when we first meet him.) There are no explicit sex scenes in the novel, but erotic attraction is shown to be a major motivator of human behaviour which might otherwise be hard to explain.

In short, reading and writing go together like – well, you can think of an appropriately raunchy set of pleasures. It’s probably no coincidence that when I haven’t been reading, I’ve written several stories this summer, and I have plans for several more.

Self-Publishing or a Gangbang of Suggestions

by | July 22, 2018 | | 5 Comments

For those of you who are currently self-publishing or thinking of it, I’d like to offer some suggestions of tools that are available free of charge.

Kindle Create – https://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=16536087011 – Format your latest masterpiece by simply uploading the document file and allowing Kindle Create to do the rest.

Canva Cover Designer – https://www.canva.com/ A free online layout program that can be used for cover design for the graphically challenged.

Book Report – https://www.getbookreport.com/ – Your one-stop source for reporting Amazon sales.

 

Kindle Create

Kindle Create is a new tool that Amazon is rolling out to help with the formatting of your Kindle stories. This targeted tool takes your Word document file and builds a version ready to be uploaded to Amazon Kindle. The program is currently in Beta but relatively complete.

Create searches your doc file and automatically formats the chapter heads and applies styles to your manuscript. A Table of Contents is generated for you, which is one of the most labor-intensive parts of publishing a story IMHO. At this time it doesn’t appear that TOC generation is working but I’m assuming will be available shortly.

You pretty much just import the doc file and Create does the rest. It will find chapter headings and format them appropriately. You get a list of suggested chapter heads and if it’s not a heading, just uncheck the box to remove the heading.

There are a number of styles to select from to vary the look of your finished story and when done, just upload the Create output file to publish it. I’m planning on publishing my latest story, House Party, with Kindle Create so I can see how it goes.

So far there are some loose ends such as how to create a Table of Contents, but the beta version of the program looks promising. It’s nice that you can see what your story will look like on different devices such as a tablet, phone, or Kindle e-reader.

It will do cool stuff, like create drop caps to give your story a more professional look.

 

I’m still debating on whether I will use Kindle Create as it will mean that I will have yet another version of a story to keep track of. You cannot publish the same exact story for Amazon or SmashWords, for example. Embedding a link to SmashWords will get your story instantly rejected by Amazon and vice versa. I’ve created a methodology to package stories for specific publishers that is still a work in progress but an order of magnitude better than when I originally started.

 

Canva Cover Designer

Canva, an online layout designer allows the user to select from a number of templates and then edit the individual elements, such as text and images to your requirements. There are a number of book templates available to start from.

This will help those without a graphics design package or problems using crayons to create a cover. Just find the template, which is laid out in the style that you like. Then replace the original text (words) with your text and the image with your image.

When you are done, simply export the image, and you have a JPG file ready to publish.

Disclaimer: I do not use Canva as my goto layout program is CorelDraw, which I’ve used for years but from my testing, I’d recommend Canva for those who don’t want to lay out the money for other products.

Book Report

BookReport – An add-in for Chrome that summaries your Amazon sales in one easy to read sales report, automatically updated to the latest figures. The basic version is free if your sales are under $1,000 per month.

Book Report shows your sales between dates, such as last 30 days, top earners, and earnings per day.

Book Report will display your sales over time as well as the ranks in the Kindle Store. Your reviews are shown with the number of stars, etc.

You can drill down and examine your sales from a number of perspectives, and the thing I really like about it is how everything is in one tabbed report that is continually updated every time you refresh your browser.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Am Writing – Currently, my story de jour is House Party about surprisingly a house party. House party is an acronym of a swinger’s party with a number of twists and turns from my normal fare. I’m still not sure how it’s going to turn out but will hopefully be HEA in the end!

Thanks for reading and if it’s the 24th, it’s another bit of smut from Larry Archer. Visit me at LarryArcher.blog for more pervy stuff. Sorry, I can’t offer any cooking or house cleaning tips but if it involves abusing yourself, drop me a line: Larry [at] LarryArcher [dot] com.

Raising the Stakes

by | July 21, 2018 | | 2 Comments

Hook your reader. Keep her riveted to your story, so engrossed that she forgets to eat or drink—while tempting her to indulge in other cravings. Leave her feeling totally satisfied, or better yet with a powerful desire to go read something else you’ve written.

This is the dream of every erotic author, indeed every writer whatever the genre. Alas, grabbing and holding the reader’s attention is far from easy, especially in a longer work. What’s the secret to writing this sort of what-happens-next, can’t-put-it-down tale?

Of course, there’s no one foolproof method for keeping readers engaged. Plot, characters and style all contribute. In erotic fiction, there’s also the question of how well the sexual situations and activities match the reader’s personal interests or kinks. One technique that I use, though, is deliberate escalation.

Escalation means holding back at first, starting gradually, then building up the tension (both narrative and sexual) as the book continues. The idea is related to the concept of rising action in the so-called narrative arc. The early part of the story—the exposition—introduces the characters and the conflicts that will drive the plot. Then events occur that make things progressively more difficult, complex or challenging for the protagonists. Effectively written, the rising action portion of the arc will cause readers to becoming emotionally invested in the characters, so that when the climax and resolution occur, the reader experiences a pleasurable catharsis along with them.

Okay, this all sounds convincingly literary, but how does it apply to erotica, which usually offers many climaxes? Most readers who open an erotic book don’t want to wait until the end for satisfaction. You’ve got to create some arousal early in the tale, or they’ll just move on to something more explicit. One of the traditional recommendations for writing erotica suggests you need a sex scene in every chapter. While I don’t believe in slavishly following this sort of rule, it accurately reflects the typical reader’s impatience, especially with a “stroke” story. (Literary erotica can perhaps afford to delay the physical gratification of its characters, but even so, must provide some measure of erotic tension to justify the genre label.)

Hence, stroke fiction often starts out with a “bang”—sex in the very first chapter, maybe even on the first page. This creates potential problems, though. What do you do for an encore? Even the most dedicated consumer of erotica can get bored with a tale that’s just one sex scene after another. Without some sort of rising action, some progressive increase in emotional intensity, it will be difficult to keep the reader hooked.

Most of my erotic novels offer sexual situations within the first chapter. However, I carefully design these initial scenes to be less complete, less intense or less transgressive than scenes I plan for later. For instance, I might begin with the protagonist observing someone else having sex and feeling vicariously aroused. Or I might start with a sexual interaction that’s exciting but does not lead to full-out intercourse. As the book continues, I gradually raise the sexual stakes—adding multiple partners, taboo elements, or scenes that fulfill a character’s more extreme fantasies. I also play with the characters’ emotions. Early in the book, sex is more likely to be casual. Later, it becomes more serious, with more psychological impact on the characters.

For example, my most recent release, More Brides in Vegas, has the following structure of sexual elements in each chapter:

Chapter 1 – Public nudity, fetish clothing and BDSM references, FF cunnilingus
Chapter 2 – Skinny dipping, fingering to orgasm
Chapter 3 – Private penetrative sex between bride and groom
Chapter 4 – Public FF cunnilingus, FF strap-on penetration
Chapter 5 – Best man gets blow job from mother of the groom; public fingering to orgasm
Chapter 6 – Mother of the groom gets it on with brother of the bride
Chapter 7 – Private spanking role play between married couple (Laura and Steve, friends of bride and groom)
Chapter 8 – Public fingering to orgasm, spanking threats
Chapter 9 – Erotic musical chairs
Chapter 10 – Public Dom/sub lesbian penetration of the bride
Chapter 11 – Lesbian orgy
Chapter 12 – Spanking threesome with Laura and Steve plus the brother of the bride
Chapter 13 – Private masturbation, tit-fucking, multiple penetration scene between best man and mother of the groom
Chapter 14 – Voyeurism; Laura has multi-partner DP sex with husband and friends
Chapter 15 – Sex between the bride and the best man
Chapter 16 – Public lesbian BDSM strap-on sex
Chapter 17 – Gang bang where Laura takes on an entire rugby team
Chapter 18 – Female voyeur watching MM anal sex, also watching bride with the voyeur’s husband
Chapter 19 – Four-way partner swapping sex (bride and groom, best man and his wife); DP and lesbian interactions
Chapter 20 – Conclusion – the wedding – public orgasm – references to future adventures.

This book has many characters. The escalation is most pronounced for Laura, who starts out with a not-very-visible orgasm in the swimming pool and ends up taking on the Glasgow Gladiators rugby team. Between these two extremes, she fantasizes with her husband about being spanked and fucked by the bride’s brother, then makes this fantasy a reality, then further explores her inner slut with a few more friends.

Other characters have their own arcs of escalation. In addition to being more extreme or intense, the sex scenes later in the book mean more to the characters than the earlier ones. For instance, the partner swap in Chapter 19 fulfills long-held but never admitted desires for all four participants.

This book definitely falls into the stroke category (as if you couldn’t guess). However, I tend to use the same strategy when I write erotic romance or literary erotica. For instance, my first novel Raw Silk, which is really a romance, begins with a dreamily remembered sexual encounter and ends with a wild sexual contest in which each of Kate’s three lovers tries to convince her to choose him over the other two.

In short, if you’re looking for a technique to keep your readers interested, consider escalation. Don’t pull out all the stops in the beginning. Start slow, build the action, and make every scene more intense than the last.

Your readers will thank you.

Impact causes extinction

by | July 15, 2018 | | 2 Comments

Most folks who study these sorts of things pretty much agree that the dinosaurs went extinct right after a giant meteor impact, but has anyone else noticed how impact has nearly caused the extinction of what was a perfectly serviceable if homely word?

I’m old enough to remember when impact was, for the most part, a noun, and the only things that impacted were asteroids and wisdom teeth.

It hasn’t been so long since I first noticed the word impact used in place of affect. Since I’ve made my living mostly as a newspaper copy editor (now retired, thank God), at the time I thought it was a clever way to hyper-emphasize how something, perhaps a piece of legislation, would affect the average person. In fact, I had always tried to get reporters to liven up their writing and wean them off tired fall-back hyperbolic adjectives such as the overused and usually misused massive. On that score I failed, and it continues to be a sign of lazy writing: massive fire, massive search, massive earthquake. No, kids, none of those things is massive.

Then there was the time I futilely tried to explain to a reporter why a hole could not be massive. But, I digress.

Anyway, impact took hold and spread like the flu until now it is rare to hear anyone use the word affect. Watch any weather broadcast and you’ll be told how a storm will impact your weekend. Segue to the news and you’ll be told how Trump’s trade war will impact the stock market. The word has even spawned impactful. As if we needed a new adjective.

I understand that language must evolve and new words are added every day, but I’ve always been suspicious of words that started out as nouns and somehow morphed into verbs. Don’t get me started on tasking and journaling. It smacks of cutting corners and laziness. I suppose it’s another product of social media communication, where everything is truncated or abbreviated.

Call me an old crab, if you like, but I think it affects communication, and not in a good way.

What’s all this “show, don’t tell” stuff about?

by | July 11, 2018 | | 3 Comments

Ian Smith, ERWA Flasher Gallery Editor

Having a twice-daily commute of around fifty minutes, I’m in the habit of listening to audiobooks. I think I listen to more books than I read.

Given my other options of (a) road noise, (b) talking to myself, (c) overly-enthusiastic breakfast show presenters, or (d) politicians trying not to answer questions, audiobooks are a pleasant default choice.

Assuming the narrator works for me, of course, but that’s a different matter.

I recently listened to Audible’s Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection, very nicely narrated by Stephen Fry, which runs for almost 72 hours. Four novels and five collections of short stories, with personal introductions by Mr Fry, a life-long Holmes enthusiast.

I’d never read any Sherlock Holmes, so I was curious to see what they were like.

All but one were written in the first person from Watson’s point of view, supposedly describing their escapades years after the events, reconstructed from memories, notes and records kept at the time. The other was written in the first person from Holme’s point of view.

Among the things which struck me was the way the stories reflect some of the changes in society over the time-span covered by the books, such as telegrams being replaced by telephones.

But most writers will know what I mean when I say that what struck me very clearly was that these stories can be described as “tell, don’t show”.

The earlier ones in particular seemed to follow this pattern:
1) someone turns up and presents them with a puzzle;
2) Holmes rushes off to solve it, leaving Watson to amuse himself;
3) Holmes returns to Baker Street and explains it all to Watson.

Although this approach results in snappy short stories, I didn’t exactly find them engaging.

Inevitably, there’s no shortage of books written (at least in part) to make money for authors telling other authors how to “show, don’t tell”. Attributed to Chekov, the idea was popularised by Percy Lubbock in his 1921 book The Craft of Fiction, which drew both criticism and praise from established writers.

I think the wikipedia entry for “Show, don’t tell” explains it rather well:
“Show, don’t tell is a technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author’s exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author’s analysis, but instead describes the scene in such a way that the reader can draw his or her own conclusions.”

Of course, Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories around a century ago, when writing styles were rather different. Although it’s a long while since I read HG Wells, I recall War of the Worlds and The Time Machine were rather heavy on the narrative story-telling and light on insights into the characters’ experiences.

I think Emma Darwin, in her thisitchofwriting blog, has captured the idea nicely:

SHOWING is for making the reader FEEL they’re in there: feel as in smell, touch, see, hear, believe the actual experience of the characters. … we persuade the reader to read the story we’re telling AS IF it really happened, even though we all know it didn’t. That means working with the immediate physical and emotional actions and experience of the characters: your rage beating in your ears, the wind whipping your cheeks, a beggar clutching at your coat.

TELLING is for covering the ground, when you need to, as a narrator … It’s supplying information: the storyteller saying “Once upon a time”, or “A volunteer army was gathered together”, … it’s a little more removed from the immediate experience of the moment.

Here’s a single example:

Telling
The parties were dazzling and opulent. They spilled out of the house, into the garden and even the beach.

Showing
In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. … The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive … floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside … the lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher.

Now, which one works better for you as a reader? The factual one, or the more colourful and descriptive one?

No points for guessing which one F Scott Fitzgerald used to describe the parties in The Great Gatsby.

I believe Hemingway was notable for his “show don’t tell” style, but I must admit I’ve not read any of his work. One of my mild rebellious tendencies is to avoid anything people tell me I “must” do.

The style relies on the reader being able to imagine the character’s experience. If the writer can get it right, they don’t need to include all the nitty-gritty details, as the reader will readily fill in the gaps using their own imagination.

I’ve only posted one review on Amazon for a book I didn’t actually finish. It’s also the worst review I’ve posted, and the headline was:
“The title is the best thing about this story. Interesting enough story idea, poorly written.”

No, I won’t share the title here… but feel free to ask privately.

The book is nominally 327 pages, but I only managed two chapters. There was one line of dialogue in those two chapters, short and wooden. The bits I read were all tell and no show. Straight “tell”, with no effort to even describe what the characters were thinking. As far as I could tell, the blurb summarised the entire storyline, so I had a good idea of what I missed out on.

Obviously, we can mix “show and tell” in our writing in a way to help us tell our story. Sometimes an infodump or a section of narrative keeps things ticking along, keeping your reader’s attention until the next scene, incident or event. But you can always use a character to help “show” your fictional world in science fiction, fantasy, or even historical stories, by persuading the reader to see this world through the character’s senses.

In the end, it’s something you can use in your writing as much or as little as you want.

It’s your story, after all.

Even today, this approach has its critics. In 2017, Cecilia Tan argued in Uncanny Magazine that the common writing advice to “show, don’t tell” is both a cliché and an inherently colonialist idea.

Or, if you enjoy an entertaining conspiracy theory, you might like to think about the suggestion that “show, don’t tell” was propaganda funded by the CIA during the Cold War.

Like all these writing rules, “show don’t tell” has its place.

You want to tell your story as well as possible, after all.

Characters: Speech

by | July 6, 2018 | | 4 Comments

by Ashley Lister

Last month I mentioned that characters can be built through four elements: appearance, speech, action and thought. As we looked at appearance last month, I figured this month would be a suitable time to consider speech.

The basic rules to writing speech in fiction can be summed up in one word: clarity. So long as your reader understands what your character is saying, you’re doing it right. And one of the most frustrating ways of messing with clarity comes when readers give their characters regional accents.

The following examples comes from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

‘What are ye for?’ he shouted.  ‘T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld.  Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him.’

‘Is there nobody inside to open the door?’ I hallooed, responsively.

‘There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ’t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.’

‘Why?  Cannot you tell her whom I am, eh, Joseph?’

The first and third line of dialogue belong to the broad Yorkshire character Joseph. Those who are familiar with Wuthering Heights will probably be familiar with the intrusion of Joseph’s dialogue in this otherwise entertaining tale.

Perhaps I’m biased here. I grew up in Yorkshire and Brontë’s representation of Joseph’s accent strikes me as being a long way from what I encountered from friends and family. But, more importantly, I find this to be a distracting piece of text. Instead of concentrating on Joseph’s message, I’m trying to work out how to pronounce ‘T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld.’ This is a novel and I’m supposed to be engaged with the story and the characters. I shouldn’t be trying to work out how to say words.

Elmore Leonard in his 10 Rules of Writing says, “Use regional dialect and patois sparingly” and it’s a rule I would fully support.  Dialogue is intrusive and, regardless of how much fun the author things the reader will have in decoding a phonetic transcript, the truth is most of don’t want that added nuisance.

If it’s important to your character to have some regional flavour in their speech, allow them to use the vocabulary of an area rather than the dialect. For example, in the extract above, Brontë could have written, “The maister’s down in the fold.”  We’ve got that single word ‘maister’ which suggests a Yorkshire accent, but is sufficiently close to ‘master’ so we’re not puzzled by the content.  And we know that Joseph isn’t going to simply utter one word in this dialect and then articulate the remainder of his speech in BBC English. To my mind, this is a more effective way of conveying regional difference without interrupting the reader’s suspension of disbelief and their immersion in the narrative.

This is not to say that no one should ever write characters with a regional accent.  I’ve just come back from a writing conference where a very clever lecturer explained that no writing rule is an absolute and there will always be scope for subverting rules under some circumstances.

I agree with what he said and I believe, if you’re writing a piece and it’s essential that your character says, ‘T’ maister’s down i’ t’ fowld.  Go round by th’ end o’ t’ laith, if ye went to spake to him,’ then you should follow your authorial instinct and produce the story in that distinctive fashion. However, if your beta-readers and your editor say that some parts were a little confusing, or dragged them out of the story, I don’t think it will take long to work out where the problem is.

I’ll talk more about creating characters through speech next month but for now, as always, if you want to share any of your dialogue in the comments box below, I’m always happy to read and respond.

Ash

Maximizing Facebook For Writers

by | June 28, 2018 | | 2 Comments

Elizabeth Black writes in a wide variety of genres including erotica, erotic romance, horror, and dark fiction. She lives on the Massachusetts coast with her husband, son, her two cats, a plethora of birds, a squirrel, and a chipmunk. Visit her web site, her Facebook page, and her Amazon Author Page. Sign up for her newsletter.

Read her short erotic story Babes in Begging For It, published by Cleis Press. You will also find her new novel No Restraint at Amazon. Coming soon: Happily Ever After: A Collection of Erotic Fairy Tales. Enjoy a good, sexy read today.

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Last month, I talked about using Twitter to maximize your author presence. This month, I’m going to talk about using Facebook to do the same. I prefer Facebook to Twitter because it’s more interactive and I don’t have a word limit on what I write. I also am in touch with all my writer, editor, and publisher friends on Facebook.

I have an author page but I don’t use it. Never got much use out of it. I prefer my regular timeline. I spent about a decade building that page so that’s where I hang out. I use my name alone but some authors include the word “author” with their names. Example: Elizabeth Black – Author.

My current profile picture is of one of my book covers. That works well to identify me. You could use a book cover or a recent head shot. I change profile pictures every month or so to keep things lively.

My banner is a photo of some of my book covers plus both of my pen names; Elizabeth Black for erotica and romance and E. A. Black for horror and dark fiction. My banner is eye-catching and it gets my point across that this is my page and here are examples of what I have written.

Like I said about Twitter, don’t make all your Facebook posts about your book. Endless book spam turns people off.  Talk about things that interest you. I talk about my cats, baking, the beach, gardening and much more. I also talk about my progress with my writing. Sometimes I’ll include an excerpt from what I’m working on to pique interest. A healthy mix of fun stuff and book stuff will inspire people to come to your page and talk to you. Ask questions. A few days ago, I posted about cotton candy grapes (yes, they are a thing and they really do taste like cotton candy). I asked if anyone had eaten them and if they liked them. Responses ranged from “Delicious!” to “Eww!” LOL That’s how you get a conversation going.

Update daily or at least frequently. I update several times per day. I also respond to other people’s timeline posts. Some writers talk about politics on their timelines. I don’t. I want my timeline to be neutral ground. In my opinion, it’s risky to talk about politics on your timeline since you may alienate potential readers. Not everyone feels that way. If you want to cull your friends list, go on a religious or political rant. That guarantees you’ll lose a few friends. Sex, on the other hand, is game. Talk about it all you like, especially if you have something very interesting to say.

I’ve found that Facebook groups are by and large a waste of time, especially author groups. They are primarily book spam dumping grounds and no one reads them. You aren’t going to find readers on Facebook groups. If you are able to find groups where there are conversations, jump on them. Granted, they’re probably all writers but you can meet some interesting and valuable people in those groups. Organizations and events may have their own groups. I’m in a few horror groups that are busy. Keep in mind book promo may be prohibited except under specific circumstances. For instance, Wednesday is Pimp Your Book day in one of my horror groups. Writers are to keep their pimping to that particular post.

Facebook has its limits. For instance, the number of people who actually see your posts is quite small but use that to your advantage. It’s possible to meet people in the industry on Facebook and they often have valuable and interesting things to say. Like their posts and comment. Facebook is best when you use it to have conversations whether on your timeline or someone else’s. I’ve met many publishers and editors as well as authors on Facebook. Not agents, though. That’s Twitter.

Above all, enjoy Facebook. Don’t let it be a time suck and don’t let negative posts depress you. Read only what you want to read and engage those people. While Facebook  has its limitations, it can be useful.

Using Cloud Storage for Your Smut

by | June 24, 2018 | | 4 Comments

I encountered a problem with my cloud storage that I’d like to warn you about as it could happen to you. While trying to finish my latest tome, one of my beta readers pointed out an inconsistency in the story. I referenced a scene where one of the guys was previously pegged, yet my “proofer” pointed out that the chapter didn’t exist in the story.

I could have sworn that I wrote that chapter as I knew what happened yet going back through the document, I came up blank. WTF? I said, the scene was completely gone? Luckily, my beta-reader is a lot more organized than I am and was able to pull the chapter out of a previous file that I had sent her.

Thankfully, I was able to reinsert the chapter into the story somewhat like Foxy inserted her strap-on into Greg’s ass. Quick thinking by my beta-reader insured that Greg could be able to take another “insertion” by a tag-team of girls. For the uninitiated, “pegging” is when a man is butt-fucked by a woman with a dildo.

But how did this fulfilling scene get lost? Has my computer suddenly gotten its collective brains screwed out? After all, I was writing this on an iFruit computer.

While writing, I often switch between a laptop and a desktop computer depending on where I’m at. Dragging all of the cables, tower, and monitor into the bathroom was raising suspicions among my coworkers especially with the extension cord into the stall. Plus, the fact I kept dropping the mouse into the toilet didn’t help.

My MacBook Air laptop balances on my knees quite easily and allows me to pound out my smut everywhere I go. But how to easily transfer files between my laptop and desktop required some additional software.

I use DropBox cloud based storage as a storage point between computers. Storing the document in DropBox allows the Internet based software to seamlessly transfer the files back and forth between computers.

DropBox stores a copy of your files in the cloud as well as any computer it’s installed on including PC’s, Mac’s, Android, and I assume iPhone’s. When you edit a file, it’s on your local computer and DropBox uploads any changes to its cloud copy.

Whenever another computer is connected to the Internet, DropBox automatically synchronizes the files to insure that the latest copy is transmitted to all other computers.

The most obvious issue occurs when the same file is opened with two different computers. DropBox doesn’t lock files so the user must insure that there is only one copy of an individual file open at any one time.

In most cases, DropBox will detect this and will store “conflicted” copies of the file. Then you have to open the copies and merge the changes to end up with a single file which contains all of the changed and new data.

Preventing this problem is quickly learned and you always remember to close the file before switching computers.

This typically works seamlessly except when it doesn’t. I’ve come to realize there are a few flies in the ointment. First, make sure that you wait long enough for DropBox to upload the changed files before shutting down the computer. This will ensure that the cloud has the latest version.

If you’re going to be using a laptop and are not sure if WiFi is going to be available, fire up the laptop at home and allow DropBox to sync all the files before walking out the door. This way your laptop contains the latest copies of the files.

What I’ve recently figured out is that DropBox automatically limits the upload speed and generally speaking, this option should be cleared. It can take an inordinate amount of time to upload files and my laptops will often go to sleep before the process is finished, which leaves the state of the changed files in limbo.

By unchecking the upload limit, my WiFi uploads occur almost instantly and insure the cloud has the latest copy. While a little bit of an aggravation, being able to edit your smut on the go allows you to be productive when traveling or killing time at Starbucks.

If you are like me and enjoy working on the go, using a cloud storage such as DropBox makes life a lot easier, especially if you follow the rules.

Grammatical Intuition

by | June 21, 2018 | | 2 Comments

I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a fellow author say, “I’m not good at grammar.” I might even be able to afford a trip to Eroticon next year! Seriously, it seems that many writers find the entire question of conventionally correct grammatical structure intimidating. Some of them simply give up, relying entirely on their editors. Others try to convince themselves grammar doesn’t matter, that a reader who’s thoroughly seduced by their great story (or aroused by the amazing sex) won’t notice the blunders.

Alas, I think this is far less true than these authors would like to believe. Even if a reader doesn’t recognize an error as such, she’s likely to have a vague feeling of discomfort, a sense that “something’s wrong” with the sentence. Worse, a grammatical faux pas may end up confusing the reader, pulling her out of that zone where she’s connected with your characters to wonder exactly what’s going on.

Grammar is not just something dreamed up by high school English teachers to torture their students. English (as well as most other languages) relies on syntactic structure to convey meaning and resolve ambiguities. Consider the following example:

Rick couldn’t believe how good it felt to drive his big rod into the brunette’s pussy. It has been so long since he’d had a woman. Now he had two! The blond bombshell massaged his balls as he fucked her harder and harder.

This is adapted from a book I recently edited. The paragraph pulled me up short. “I thought he was inside the dark haired woman, not the blond,” I thought. “And how could the blond be fondling his balls at the same time that he’s screwing her?”

Of course, re-reading the paragraph made it clear that there was a problem with a pronoun reference. Pronouns should refer to the most recently mentioned noun with matching gender and number. That’s not the case here. The problem could be fixed by swapping the clauses, so the blond gets mentioned after the pronoun instead of before:

Rick couldn’t believe how good it felt to drive his big rod into the brunette’s pussy. It has been so long since he’d had a woman. Now he had two! He fucked her harder and harder, while the blond bombshell massaged his balls.

Another solution would be to replace “her” in the original structure with a noun phrase, e.g. “her girlfriend”. Now “her” does refer to the most recently mentioned noun (the blond bombshell).

The point is that by the time I figured out what the paragraph was trying to say, I’d lost the thread of the scene. The heat had dissipated. This is definitely not what you want if you’re an erotic author!

I’m sure that some of you authors reading this post are rolling your eyes. “Pronoun reference?” you may be thinking. “Matching gender and number?” You’re being assailed by visions of fat, grouchy Miss Mackleswain from tenth grade, the nasty old witch who made you diagram sentences ad nauseum and memorize the names of all the different tenses and constructions. “I couldn’t make sense of it all then, when I was young and smart,” you’re thinking. “I certainly can’t remember all those rules now!”

Relax. Take a deep breath. I have some good news for you.

Grammar is not about rules. It’s about relationships.

If you’re an editor or a pedant (and I’m something of both), it’s nice to be able to apply the correct term to a particular construction. However, that’s not necessary in order to write grammatical prose. You can produce beautiful, perfectly grammatical sentences, one that would make even Miss Mackleswain weep with delight, without having any idea of the so-called rules governing the structure.

In fact, so-called grammatical rules are nothing but abstractions developed after the fact to try and make sense of the way language is actually used. That’s one reason why there are so many exceptions! Grammarians and high school teachers like to present grammar rules as prescriptive (that is, as iron clad expressions of what you should do), but in fact grammar is descriptive, an attempt to systematize the complexities of linguistic structure.

And why do I say that grammar is about relationships? Because that’s what most constructions are trying to convey.

Consider the concept of independent versus dependent clauses. An independent clause expresses a single idea that can stand alone.

Louisa was desperately horny.

Louisa’s boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week.

English allows you to use the conjunction “and” to combine two independent clauses:

Louisa’s boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week and she was desperately horny.

This compound sentence states two facts of supposedly equal importance, leaving the reader to figure out why they’ve been conjoined. In this case, you might expect a further sentence explaining the situation, for instance:

Normally, they met for sex every Tuesday and Thursday.

A dependent clause, like an independent clause, has a subject and a verb, but the idea it expresses has some logical relationship to another clause. The nature of the relationship depends on the words used to join the two clauses into a single sentence.

Louisa was desperately horny because her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Causality)

By the time her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week, Louisa was desperately horny. (Sequence)

Louisa was desperately horny long before her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Also sequence, but with a somewhat different meaning.)

Louisa was desperately horny even though her boyfriend Jim had been in Hong Kong for a week. (Contrast/conflict)

This last, somewhat peculiar, example suggests that maybe Louisa has somebody on the side, but that she hasn’t been able to hook up with him or her!

Verb tenses are another example of grammar constructs that are used to establish relationships, in this case relationships related to time. You don’t need to know the names of the verb tenses to understand the temporal relationships in the following sentence:

(1) Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she had slept with several men.

The whole narrative is in the past, but it’s clear that the sleeping with several men occurred before the time of the story.

It would mean something different to say:

(2) Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she slept with several men.

This is also grammatically correct, but implies that Genevieve continues to sleep with the men at the time of the story, that it’s an ongoing state of affairs.

Contrast the previous examples with the following:

(3) Genevieve is still a virgin, even though she has slept with several men.

In this case, we’ve pulled the story into the present, but the time relationship between the events hasn’t changed from sentence (1). Her experiences with men still occurred before the main time of the story. However, we have to use a different tense to express that relationship, because we’ve changed the first clause from past to present.

To extend this further:

(4) Genevieve is still a virgin, even though she has slept with several men. Her mother had told her to keep her pajamas on until she was sure she’d found the right guy to be her first lover.

Now we have three points in time, neatly signaled by the verb tenses:

Present: Genevieve is a virgin.

Past: She has slept with several men.

More distant past: Her mother had given her instructions about staying dressed in bed.

Actually, this example actually includes a fourth, more complicated point in time, the hypothetical time when Genevieve is sure she’s in bed with Mr. Right. As far as we can tell, this event hasn’t happened yet. English has clear ways to grammatically mark this sort of hypothetical statement. (Not every language does.)

If you’re a native English speaker, you will have no difficulty understanding the relationships in sentence (4), despite its complexity. Furthermore, you’ll know something is wrong if you read a sentence like this:

Genevieve was still a virgin, even though she sleeps with several men.

The relationships in this sentence don’t make sense. The first, independent clause already happened, while the second, dependent clause is happening now.

The key to writing grammatical prose resides in that feeling that “something is wrong”. You don’t need to know the grammatical terminology or the rules, but you do need to develop your grammatical intuition. You need to learn how to evaluate your sentences based not only on the basic content, but whether the relationships are sensible and have the intended meaning.

How can you do this? By paying closer attention when you read, both your own work and work by other people.

Try to notice when you get that niggling feeling that something’s not quite right. Reread the sentence or paragraph that’s bugging you, considering the implied relationships between clauses, sentences and events. If you can’t figure out the nature of the problem, ask for help, but don’t just ignore that slight discomfort so you can get on with the story. (Don’t be lazy!)

Furthermore, you can strengthen your grammatical intuition by reading really clear, well-structured prose. I recommend works from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Literate prose from that period is often far more complex than would be appropriate for modern readers, but Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, Edith Wharton and Henry James were grammar virtuosos. Educate your ear to the nuances of tense, the layering of logic. Notice how a sentence with five or six clauses can still be immediately comprehensible. You don’t have to study the structure, or figure out how it works. Just allow these exemplars to sink into your brain.

Don’t worry about the rules, just the relationships.

Of course, you also need to practice improving the grammar of your own work. Learn to recognize the mistakes you commonly make. Sensitize yourself to grammar gaffes. Finally, don’t become discouraged. Improving one’s writing craft is a lifelong process — one that can bring great joy and satisfaction.

Hot Chilli Erotica

Hot Chilli Erotica

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