Monthly Archives: January 2010

http://thedesigninspiration.com/articles/crayon-sculpture-artist-herb-williams/

Crayon sculpture. This is my kind of dog. Also, something to do with all those broken crayons.

Does Your Writing Stink?
By Diane Sears

Writers, notorious for being voracious readers, are naturally the best judges of writing. We know good writing when we see it, we know what keeps us reading, sometimes eagerly devouring the piece to the very end, and we know what makes our eyes glaze over. But when it comes to our own writing, why is it so hard for some of us to realize our own writing stinks?

If reputable places have published your work, you’re probably a good writer, but if you get more rejections than acceptances or if the sales of your self-published book are depressing, maybe your writing isn’t as good as you think.

How do you know if your writing stinks?

Here are a few warning signs that will let you know:

When you show your work to someone else and ask what they think, is there an uncomfortable moment of silence before they answer?

Do people read the online excerpt of your novel and leave without buying your book?

Is a rejection the only response you get from editors?

If you answered “yes” to any of these, that’s a BIG hint that your writing stinks.

Put a clothespin on your nose — we’re going in

It’s time to hunt for the sources of the stench in your lackluster piece so you can uncover the masterpiece hidden within.

Choose one of your manuscripts, put yourself in your reader’s shoes and look at it as if you were reading it for the first time.

If you’ve written a non-fiction article,

Does it have a strong, attention-getting title?
Does it open with a good hook that compels you to continue reading?
Does it use active words?
Does it flow sequentially from one point to the next?
Is it clear? Does it make sense?
Does it stay on topic?
Is the tone appropriate for the intended audience?
Does it have proper spelling and grammar?
Did it explain words and terms the reader might not be familiar with?
Does it end with a strong conclusion?
Did it deliver what the title and opening promised?
Did it answer any questions the reader might have on the topic? If not, rewrite it and go through this list again until it does.

If you’ve written a fiction piece,

Does the title fit the piece? Is it intriguing?
Does the opening paragraph pull you in?
Does it transition smoothly?
Are you compelled to continue reading it? Is it a page-turner?
Are there just enough details to let you “see” the story in your mind?
Did you care about any of the characters or what happened to them?
Did it have any abbreviations or terms the reader might not be familiar with?
Did it leave any loose ends that should have been tied up?
Did you lose yourself in the story or did you have to force yourself to keep reading?

If not, go over it and this list again. When you’re through, let someone else have a look before you send it out for the world to see. Resist the urge to show it to a friend or family member since the people closest to you are going to hold back their honest input to protect your feelings and avoid your wrath.

Since writers make good judges, the best feedback you can get is from other writers.

Send it to your writing buddy or join a critique group and let them pick it apart. Yes, it will wound your ego, but your manuscript will improve.

Just remember – they are not “attacking” you so don’t take their comments personally. They are pointing out the weak points in your piece and ways you can make it better. And don’t forget – you asked for their help.

How can you become a better writer?

Consider other people’s comments and suggestions. Take a class online or at a local college and get feedback from the instructor. Read books on the topics you have the most trouble with. After you’ve written a piece, let it rest, then go back through it again and be sure to read it out loud too. Rewrite your pieces again and again.

Above all, follow the golden rules for writers:

Read works in your genre every chance you get.

Write every day.

Turn even the stinkiest writing into sweet-smelling prose with some work and a little help from other writers.

====================================

Diane Sears is a freelance/business writer and owner of www.CoolStuff4Writers.com – the site with Ask The Editor,
Ask The Book Doctor, and more!

Grab ‘Em By the Throat
By Katy Terrega

Katy Terrega, determined to make the sale, reached through virtual space and grabbed the intended editor by the throat. Far from offended by her bold – if viselike – grip, he was, instead, taken pleasantly off guard. Not able to resist the pressure, he delved quickly into the body of the lead paragraph.

His attention thus secured, Katy allowed her grip to relax, if only slightly, as she proceeded to tell her story.

~

And to think I was going to start this story with “Writing a good lead is as important in porn as it is in any other genre.”

Now, some of you might have continued to read, even in the face of extreme boredom, assuming I’d get to the juicy part eventually. But most of you would have yawned and then clicked your way right off of the page.

An editor, charged with keeping his readers’ best interests (not to mention their pocketbooks) in mind, is no different. As a matter of fact, an editor is even less likely to continue perusing a listless piece than is an average reader. Readers can take a chance on a dull story, they’ve lost nothing but a few moments of their time if it goes nowhere. An editor, however, has a vested interest in each and every piece that comes across his desk. It’s his reputation, and likely his paycheck, at stake, so you don’t dare bore him. He’s probably got a whole bunch of articles waiting to be attended to and he’s not going to waste much time on one that doesn’t start off with a bang. At best, you’ve got a paragraph to wow him and convince him to at least take a longer look at your piece.

In that first paragraph you’ve got to do several things. One of your most important goals is to show off your writing skills. An editor will look no further if it’s obvious that he’s dealing with an amateur. So take the time to craft that opener to perfection. Pull out all the stops as far as sentence structure and grammar. Make sure that your sentence lengths are varied, your tenses are consistent and that each sentence starts off differently than the last. Of course it goes without saying that you’ll need to edit well, also. Nothing like misplaced periods and mistakes in capitalization to turn an editor off.

You’ll also need to infuse that first paragraph with the tone of your story or article. Is it a straight-talking, graphic story, or a more thoughtful piece, full of nuance and evocation? No matter what your story’s bent, you’ll want to let the editor know right away what he’s about to read.

The basics of setting, plot and character should be included in your lead, also. Readers (and editors) want to be able to place all the action before they settle in for a good read. But don’t just “tell” your readers where, how and with whom this story is going to take place. You have to “show” them.

For example, a fiction piece about a man obsessed with his neighbor’s pretty feet could start this way:

“I live next door to Annabelle and she has the prettiest feet of any girl I know. I like to watch her while she sunbathes in the back yard. Sometimes I think that I’m getting obsessed because I like to look at her so often. I even dream about her.”

Or, if you actually want to sell this piece, you could start it another way:

“It was the delicate arch of Annabelle’s left foot that was my undoing. I was drawn to the finely boned curve – gleaming with a hint of suntan oil – as she sunned herself that hot July day. Peering through a gap in the wooden slats of the fence that separated our yards, I realized that Annabelle’s foot was quite likely the loveliest of any I’d ever seen. Of course, I didn’t know then that it was to haunt my dreams for many months to come.”

In the above paragraph I’ve tried to include all the necessary bits of information that will inspire an editor to continue reading. I’ve set the tone via the narrator and his rather flowery, obsessed speech, plus I’ve given a voyeuristic sense to the story. I’ve indicated the setting, or at least the point at which the action starts. And I’ve also given a hint of the plot; we know that dreams of his neighbor’s feet are going to complicate this man’s life, even if we’re not sure how yet. Hopefully the editor will be intrigued enough to want to know how this story is going to play itself out.

That’s your job as a writer, to convince first an editor, then a reader, that he does, indeed, want to find out what happens to these characters. Don’t be afraid to grab ‘em by the throat first thing; while it may seem a rather aggressive way to do business, they’ll thank you for it in the end.

—

Katy Terrega has been writing about sex for eight years and her credits include Gallery, Swank, Playgirl, Penthouse Forum and many others. She also edits a free newsletter for sex writers as well as a paid subscriber site for same – Sex-Writer.com Both feature articles, market listings, reviews, calls for submission, all geared toward fledgling as well as professional sex-writers.

Erotic Speculative Fiction:
An Introduction By Lady Mary

Some feelings, like lust, are universal, as the recent offerings of erotic speculative fiction show. Regardless of species, race, or planet of origin, attraction, lust, and consummation play themselves out in the pages of well-crafted prose.

Most of the time.

Like mainstream erotica, speculative fiction, which encompasses both fantasy and science fiction, contains plots that to the seasoned reader will seem clichéd. A variety of time-worn attempts at seduction, such as the alien needing human DNA obtained only by sexual encounters, the vampire who only fucks and feeds (don’t they have hobbies?), the alien seducing humans as an experiment, exist to stumble the beginning writer.

Even keeping in mind plots to avoid, the sf landscape still leaves the author much room to cultivate new tales. The sf genre prides itself on looking at our world from a fresh standpoint. Within the bounds of human sexuality, speculative fiction holds many opportunities for looking at this world (among others) and its views.

The “rules” for crafting good erotica are the same, regardless of the genre.

The author needs to know the characters. What motivates them? What drives them? What arouses them?

The setting should be fully realized. Erotica is driven by the senses. The sensual content should be real and necessary to the plot. Two aliens need just as much reason to become intimate as two humans do.

Erotic speculative fiction demands another task from the author — world building. Stories set in modern, or even historical, times come with a pre-built set of rules and regulations. When writing about a setting, whether it’s a star system several light-years away or a universe in which vampires and werewolves are real, the author creates the world from the ground up. In order for the reader to suspend disbelief, the world has to be real. Not everything has to be created, especially in a short piece of fiction, but the reader needs enough information to make him or her slip into this pretend world.

There are many places that offer the aspiring writer a foothold into this unique world. Fan fiction, stories set in popular TV or Movies, is a nonpaying, but fun way to exercise these talents. A quick web search under the television or movie (fan fiction exists for most popular shows, including those not science fiction) and the words “fan fiction” will bring up a plethora of websites. A sub-genre of fan fiction, slash, is devoted specifically to sexual pairings, and is named because of the slash used to determine gender (i.e. m/f f/f m/m). Many authors never go beyond crafting well-written slash.

However, those wishing to venture into the paying markets will find a wide opportunity, if they are bold enough. Most publication guidelines don’t specifically state that speculative fiction (or other genre fiction) is welcome. Authors need to query their favorite publications to see if they buy speculative fiction. Most editors don’t mind, as long as the story fits the other parameters of their magazine, and the author might gain a sale with a story that differs from the norm.

At the heart of the matter, a good erotic speculative fiction story will tell a tale, a good one that hopefully arouses the reader and makes the reader think. Crafting erotic speculative fiction needn’t be difficult if the author applies the same thought and care that would be given to any other genre.

E-Book ‘Em, Danno!
By Adrian Hunter

Reports of the demise of the e-book are greatly…accurate.

Two years ago, publishers watched in horror as horror fans download 400,000 copies of a digitized Stephen King short story. They figured they were about to get Napstered (in which customers abandon traditional atom-based entertainment products like compact disks for fast, free online bytes) after barely recovering from being Amazoned (in which customers abandon traditional atom-based retail outlets for online stores). They were both nervous and giddy over the prospect of getting rid of the printing process while maintaining a pricing structure that values new hardcover books just south of tickets to The Producers.

They were wrong.

Electronic versions of popular culture are a tricky beast to tame. Playback is the key; it’s easy to turn a computer into a decent stereo, but nobody reads TV, which is how e-books work today, given the paucity of dedicated devices that work as well as paper for the display of rows of tiny type in a form factor that fits in your pocket.

And it turned out that the market for literature not worthy of immortalizing on dead trees was about the same size as the market for proprietary content on the Internet in general (i.e., nonexistent), which led to the demise of dozens of companies like MightyWords that specialized in selling electronic text.

In other words, the professionals say that e-books are just another dot-coma sob story…shut down the web site, cue the pallbearers and sell the Aeron chairs on eBay.

They were wrong, too.

E-books are going to be a huge success in specific categories where paper is actually a liability. Let’s see, what kind of reading material do people not want lying around their coffee tables? Three guesses, starts with a “p”…

Pornography is the perfect field for e-books, especially in categories that appeal to niche audiences like my chosen specialty, bdsm. Before the Internet, commercially-available bondage novels were limited to The Story of O, Anne Rice’s genre experiments, John Norman’s Gor series and seedy F.E. Campbell potboilers sold exclusively in adult bookstores. Dog-eared photocopies of treasured tomes were surreptitiously traded by aficionados, which presumed the reader was brave enough to join the local knitting circle in the first place.

Distribution options increased exponentially with the advent of Amazon and other online storefronts that provided a much higher level of privacy for people who wanted to read quality fictionalized accounts of their favorite obsession. New imprints quickly filled the void with dozens of distressed-damsel titles that could be shipped in ye olde plain brown envelope.

Today, you can’t swing a bullwhip without cracking it against some great bdsm porn. But just because it’s easier to read bondage books doesn’t mean it’s easier to get them published. Either we sell our 100,000 carefully-crafted words for fractions of a penny to traditional bookmakers who handle printing and distribution, or we give them away for free on the Internet.

Enter the lowly e-book, and its digital cousin, print-on-demand (POD) services. Instead of playing “pitch ‘n pray,” writers can sell their stories as e-books directly to an audience that’s often willing to put up with the inconvenience of reading text on a PC monitor in exchange for the cloaking capability.

Of course, this isn’t exactly easy. First, you have to have an audience, which implies you’re pretty good, and you’ve published a few pieces to prove it. In this case, posting stories on newsgroups or web sites absolutely counts. The goal is to develop brand awareness in which your byline is equated with “erotica worth paying for.” Besides, if readers don’t like your tail tales when you give them away, what makes you think a publisher is going to pay for the privilege of trying to sell them? Giving away samples helps seed the search engines, too.

Second, you have to put together an e-commerce operation in which you convert your masterpiece into an appropriate format like Adobe Acrobat and program the software to collect the fees and deliver the goods. It’s not rocket science, but it’s definitely fiddling with liquid hydrogen. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’ll have to hire someone who does, or (insert vicious circle) work with an established purveyor of similar works who will naturally exact a significant percentage of your profits for their services.

Third, you have to actually sell your e-books. Perversely paradoxical as it sounds, the best marketing ploy is to make the electronic version available as traditional paper-based one, hence the earlier POD reference.

By self-publishing your pornographic novel through a 21st-century vanity press such as Xlibris.com or ImprintBooks.com, you tell the reader that the e-book they’re buying is a “real” book and not some shady “paid content” drill (the difference between The Wall Street Journal and Salon). A paper-based book also establishes a higher price ceiling, so the $7.99 you charge for the e-book looks like a heck of a deal compared to $21.99 for the trade paperback.

The real paradox is, you’ll probably sell one “real” book for every 20 e-books, which is just dandy since the per-copy net is higher for the enhanced-electricity version versus the inky tome.

There are upfront costs involved. You will have to pay the POD publisher (a minimum of $100) and the credit card processor (up to 20 percent of each transaction). But you can cut corners by using an advertiser-supported web host such as Yahoo! Geocities and subscribing to Adobe’s Acrobat conversion application for $9 a month instead of buying the software for $250.

Yes, it can be a hassle when readers have problems downloading files (hint: immediately send them the e-book via an email attachment…to be successful on the Internet, you can’t afford any unhappy customers). But the benefits of controlling your own destiny and reaping most of the profits definitely outweigh the downside of becoming intimate with CGI scripts.

Hey, your DIY labors might even catch the eye of an established publisher. Since you didn’t sell the rights to your book to anyone else, you’re free to sign on the dotted line.

Under any circumstances, selling your own e-books sure beats beating the bushes and/or begging. Then again, bondage authors are experts at those particular sports, not to mention related perverse paradoxes like pleasurable pain. Like we say on Usenet, YMMV (your mileage may vary), but at least you’re the one who’s driving.

***

Adrian Hunter began posting his fiction on the Internet in 1993. Four years later, he compiled his stories on a web site, AdrianHunter.com, which has attracted more than a million visitors. In 2000, he was the recipient of the “Best Bondage Writer” award from SIGNY. He has published two anthologies of his short stories, Crash Your Party Dress and Something Just Clicked, as well as a full-length novel, Once Bitten, with co-author Chelsea Shepard. For more information, please visit http://www.adrianhunter.com, or write to him at admin@adrianhunter.com.

Filling Up The (Column) Inches
By Emily Dubberley

A few weeks back, I was launching a new sex site for women. We’d set pretty tight deadlines for the team but sure enough, with 24 hours to go before launch, we had 30,000 words of porn to write.

Not a good situation.

Even worse, some of it was is genres that didn’t even interest me; we try to cater for as broad a range as fantasies as possible but that doesn’t mean I’m an all-round perv!

This is when I learned how to write speed-porn that (hopefully) presses all the right buttons but takes a lot less time to write. Here are a few tips that may help when you’re up against it:

1. Base as much as you can on personal experience. Remembering a particularly hot night and writing it up is a lot easier than having to generate entirely original scenarios.

2. Take horny situations you’ve been in that never amounted to anything; those nights when there’s been a frisson in the air but something stopped things from developing. Imagine what would have happened and write it down.

3. Failing that, write up your most common fantasies that have no basis in reality. It’s amazing how much you remember; after all, you’ve been using it as masturbation material for years!

4. Think of every chat you’ve ever had in which sexual scenarios have been mentioned. Write them up (changing names for obvious reasons)

5. It sounds obvious, but pick scenarios that are easy to introduce sex into. Rather than having to convolute the lead characters into ending up in the sack, go for something like playing naked twister, being drunk at a party or having a girlie night in with a friend you’ve always fancied. It may lead to slightly clichéd stories but given that most people read porn for masturbation material, as long as the sex scenes are well written, they probably won’t mind too much.

6. Start listening to every conversation around you, no matter how mundane. Inspiration can come from the strangest places. Hearing a barman saying ‘I’ll be coming right over in a second’ or a business colleague saying ‘I’m tied up all afternoon’ can trigger erotic stories if you’re keeping your dirty mind running full time.

7. Keep it real. You may be on deadline but it still needs to sound convincing. If you’re writing about anal sex, mention some form of lube. If you’re talking about blowing a 14 inch cock, mention some hand action (or gagging, but that’s far less erotic!) And if you’re writing about group sex, make sure the scenarios are physically possible.

8. Where possible, don’t write group sex on a deadline. It’s way harder to keep track of what five characters are doing than two or three, particularly if you want all of them to come. The less characters you have, the quicker you can write it up.

9. Ask everyone you know (via e-mail; you are on deadline) to suggest scenarios. If you’re a porn writer, throwing in the sex once you’ve got a prompt should be pretty easy.

10. Don’t masturbate or have sex until you’ve met deadline; that pent-up tension makes for great porn!

—

Emily Dubberley is the editor of http://www.cliterati.co.uk.