Roundup, now including dinosaurs!
Been a lot going on at Adventurotica.com!
First, maybe my favorite Adventurotica article so far. This one's about writing, not sex, and I think it's one that anyone who writes will find interesting. Here's an excerpt:
Leave it to the imagination.
When you're an author who has worked hard to make your world real for yourself, it's instinctive, I think, to describe important characters in fussy detail to make sure the reader gets it "right." You want to help them create the most accurate image possible, the one that matches your inner vision most closely, because your mental image is by-god important to you . . . and it should be. It needs to be.
However, after years of writing erotica, I've come to a conclusion: the only thing that matters to the reader is what the reader is picturing. Give them the most important physical characteristics and some well-chosen details to distinguish the character in the reader's mind, then give them room to imagine the rest in a way that is interesting to them. The reader can only integrate so many details you give them into their mental image at a time, so you have to space out the rest. . . .
This is why overused devices like the character who pauses to mentally inventory every detail of their appearance in the nearest reflective surface don't work. Aside from being unsubtle and clumsy from a technical standpoint, aside from being jarring because it is something that real people seldom do, these passages often dump way too much information on the reader at once, and most of it is probably information they do not need.
Here's a huge secret: it is actually less effort for the reader to build a mental image around some major attributes and a few well-chosen details than it is for them to create a mental image that exactly matches a detailed and lengthy description. Let them do this work for you!
Earlier, I answered a reader's question:
Do you write yourself into stories?
. . . .I usually answer "no" . . . because, in the sense that the asker usually means it, I don't.
But in another sense, I do, and sometimes I like to acknowledge that.
If we are talking about primary or secondary characters with a major plot role to fulfill, well, some of these characters are a lot like me. Some are hardly like me at all. But they are all me, or parts of me. I created them, I control them, I speak and move and act for them through words and story. No matter how chatty or pushy they are - and believe me, they can be plenty of both - they are still my little puppets, and I'm the boss of them.
Sargon talks about sex and violence:
X-Rated
But most porn is not violent. It may have some icky gender-relation issues, as so much porn does, but actual meat-ax-and-shotgun violence? Not so much. The truth is that most writers of porn just do not seem to be interested, or have a knack for writing violence, and so their stories unfold without one of the staples of narrative - violent conflict.
The fiction we write here, however, is distinctly not that kind of porn. We try to write stories that hold up as stories, and a story needs conflict. Violence is not the only kind of conflict there is or can be, but it is common. Plus when you are telling a pirate story or a wild west tale, for example, then it would be weird not to have all the requisite swashbuckling, gunfights, and brawling you would expect from that kind of setting.
Which brings me to the point, which is that when you write the violence in a porn piece, you have to consider and decide for yourself what kind of violence it will be and how far to take it. In other kinds of fiction, you can set everything at a mental "PG-13" or whatever the story needs to be, and that makes things pretty easy as regards tone and feel of the overall work.
All of the articles are free to read, always. The story content requires a membership. Yesterday, Sky Pirates of the Rio Grande Chapter 18: An encounter with trans-Pecos thunder lizards went up!
Eden looked, peering from under her hat brim into the blazing midmorning sun. She didn't see anything, but the hairs lifted on her neck just the same. "I don't see it."
Then she did. It moved out of a cluster of trees into the daylight and her breath caught, because her first thought was that it was beautiful. It stood on two legs, like a man, but bent forward with a long tail giving it balance, the head was long and the jaws lined with wicked teeth. It was a brilliant shade of red, like the reddest red brick, and zigzagged with velvety black stripes. It turned its head in the sun and the eye glinted a jewel green.
Eden's relentless brain calculated distance and scale and told her it was almost twelve feet at the hip, thirty feet long from nose to tail, two or three tons weight. A massive and formidable predator like she had never seen before, not in the flesh.
"Allosaurus," Eden said.
"What?" Zenobia turned without taking her eyes from it.
"A dinosaur," Eden said. "I heard some were bred and released here, but I never thought . . ."
"Male," Mad Dog said, squinting through field glasses. "Big one too." He lowered the glasses and seemed to relax.
"How do you know?" Eden said, fascinated.
"Males are red like that, females, they are more yellow."
"Will it attack us?" Zenobia said.
"No, the males only fight for territory. The females do all the hunting. He must be a lone male or we wouldn't see him. If he is a rogue he won't attack us in daylight like this."
"Why not?" Eden said, watching the thing move. It was so alien and so graceful, it was hypnotic watching it pace through the high grass.
"Because he must be a wise one to get so big, and that means he knows not to attack guns," he laughed. "The only worry would be if-"
The allosaur suddenly lifted its muzzle and sniffed the wind, then turned and ran southeast away from them. It took long strides and quickly vanished over the gentle rise.
Mad Dog brought up his rifle. "Shit." He waved his hands to get the men moving.
"What?" Eden said, spurring her horse to keep up with him, hanging onto the saddle horn for dear life. If they had to run, she was sure she would fall right off. "What is it? More?"
Zenobia cocked her head the same time Deguello snorted and tossed his head. "What is that?" she said.
"What is-" Then she heard it, and the other horses began to squeal and sidle in impending panic as the ground rumbled and shook. "Buffalo?" she said.
"No!" mad Dog said, pointing. "Cuernos!"
Eden looked. To the right a dark mass appeared and came rushing towards them, its passage shaking the ground, and in a moment she saw it was a herd of massive, dark-skinned animals bigger than a rhinoceros and with more horns. Triple-horned, with flaring bone shields over their necks and razor-sharp beaks glinting like iron in the sun, a herd of triceratops came bearing down on them.
Cheesy? Absolutely. Fun? Absolutely!
Minimum donation to get a membership is only $5 a month. Please consider it!
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:
First, maybe my favorite Adventurotica article so far. This one's about writing, not sex, and I think it's one that anyone who writes will find interesting. Here's an excerpt:
Leave it to the imagination.
When you're an author who has worked hard to make your world real for yourself, it's instinctive, I think, to describe important characters in fussy detail to make sure the reader gets it "right." You want to help them create the most accurate image possible, the one that matches your inner vision most closely, because your mental image is by-god important to you . . . and it should be. It needs to be.
However, after years of writing erotica, I've come to a conclusion: the only thing that matters to the reader is what the reader is picturing. Give them the most important physical characteristics and some well-chosen details to distinguish the character in the reader's mind, then give them room to imagine the rest in a way that is interesting to them. The reader can only integrate so many details you give them into their mental image at a time, so you have to space out the rest. . . .
This is why overused devices like the character who pauses to mentally inventory every detail of their appearance in the nearest reflective surface don't work. Aside from being unsubtle and clumsy from a technical standpoint, aside from being jarring because it is something that real people seldom do, these passages often dump way too much information on the reader at once, and most of it is probably information they do not need.
Here's a huge secret: it is actually less effort for the reader to build a mental image around some major attributes and a few well-chosen details than it is for them to create a mental image that exactly matches a detailed and lengthy description. Let them do this work for you!
Earlier, I answered a reader's question:
Do you write yourself into stories?
. . . .I usually answer "no" . . . because, in the sense that the asker usually means it, I don't.
But in another sense, I do, and sometimes I like to acknowledge that.
If we are talking about primary or secondary characters with a major plot role to fulfill, well, some of these characters are a lot like me. Some are hardly like me at all. But they are all me, or parts of me. I created them, I control them, I speak and move and act for them through words and story. No matter how chatty or pushy they are - and believe me, they can be plenty of both - they are still my little puppets, and I'm the boss of them.
Sargon talks about sex and violence:
X-Rated
But most porn is not violent. It may have some icky gender-relation issues, as so much porn does, but actual meat-ax-and-shotgun violence? Not so much. The truth is that most writers of porn just do not seem to be interested, or have a knack for writing violence, and so their stories unfold without one of the staples of narrative - violent conflict.
The fiction we write here, however, is distinctly not that kind of porn. We try to write stories that hold up as stories, and a story needs conflict. Violence is not the only kind of conflict there is or can be, but it is common. Plus when you are telling a pirate story or a wild west tale, for example, then it would be weird not to have all the requisite swashbuckling, gunfights, and brawling you would expect from that kind of setting.
Which brings me to the point, which is that when you write the violence in a porn piece, you have to consider and decide for yourself what kind of violence it will be and how far to take it. In other kinds of fiction, you can set everything at a mental "PG-13" or whatever the story needs to be, and that makes things pretty easy as regards tone and feel of the overall work.
All of the articles are free to read, always. The story content requires a membership. Yesterday, Sky Pirates of the Rio Grande Chapter 18: An encounter with trans-Pecos thunder lizards went up!
Eden looked, peering from under her hat brim into the blazing midmorning sun. She didn't see anything, but the hairs lifted on her neck just the same. "I don't see it."
Then she did. It moved out of a cluster of trees into the daylight and her breath caught, because her first thought was that it was beautiful. It stood on two legs, like a man, but bent forward with a long tail giving it balance, the head was long and the jaws lined with wicked teeth. It was a brilliant shade of red, like the reddest red brick, and zigzagged with velvety black stripes. It turned its head in the sun and the eye glinted a jewel green.
Eden's relentless brain calculated distance and scale and told her it was almost twelve feet at the hip, thirty feet long from nose to tail, two or three tons weight. A massive and formidable predator like she had never seen before, not in the flesh.
"Allosaurus," Eden said.
"What?" Zenobia turned without taking her eyes from it.
"A dinosaur," Eden said. "I heard some were bred and released here, but I never thought . . ."
"Male," Mad Dog said, squinting through field glasses. "Big one too." He lowered the glasses and seemed to relax.
"How do you know?" Eden said, fascinated.
"Males are red like that, females, they are more yellow."
"Will it attack us?" Zenobia said.
"No, the males only fight for territory. The females do all the hunting. He must be a lone male or we wouldn't see him. If he is a rogue he won't attack us in daylight like this."
"Why not?" Eden said, watching the thing move. It was so alien and so graceful, it was hypnotic watching it pace through the high grass.
"Because he must be a wise one to get so big, and that means he knows not to attack guns," he laughed. "The only worry would be if-"
The allosaur suddenly lifted its muzzle and sniffed the wind, then turned and ran southeast away from them. It took long strides and quickly vanished over the gentle rise.
Mad Dog brought up his rifle. "Shit." He waved his hands to get the men moving.
"What?" Eden said, spurring her horse to keep up with him, hanging onto the saddle horn for dear life. If they had to run, she was sure she would fall right off. "What is it? More?"
Zenobia cocked her head the same time Deguello snorted and tossed his head. "What is that?" she said.
"What is-" Then she heard it, and the other horses began to squeal and sidle in impending panic as the ground rumbled and shook. "Buffalo?" she said.
"No!" mad Dog said, pointing. "Cuernos!"
Eden looked. To the right a dark mass appeared and came rushing towards them, its passage shaking the ground, and in a moment she saw it was a herd of massive, dark-skinned animals bigger than a rhinoceros and with more horns. Triple-horned, with flaring bone shields over their necks and razor-sharp beaks glinting like iron in the sun, a herd of triceratops came bearing down on them.
Cheesy? Absolutely. Fun? Absolutely!
Minimum donation to get a membership is only $5 a month. Please consider it!
X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count: