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This is number fifteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
OVER THE PAST THREE MONTHS, I’ve mentioned the editing process several times. This week, I’ll talk about the path I use in getting a book from first draft to published.
I am convinced there are authors—not just on SOL—who spew out a first draft of a story and post it immediately without ever having even re-read it. There are readers who will gladly tell those authors about every perceived error they make. When a reader sends me a comment, I take it seriously. I might not do anything about it, but I listen and try to avoid the same mistake again.
Unfortunately, when readers on SOL send me comments about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, the story they are reading is already published—sometimes years earlier. I might not even have the original files for a book on my computer anymore. I archive things. And once a book has been published, correcting an error involves correcting two websites, as many as three different versions of eBook, and sometimes a paperback across as many as six platforms. Unless I’m being sued for something, the chance that I’ll be going back to make corrections in the Model Student series, for example, are remote. I barely remember the story because I’ve written literally millions of words since that book was published. Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from pointing out my errors, nor should it.
Let’s take a look at the process I used for writing Team Manager SWISH! I started writing this book on March 15, 2021. Anybody remember what was happening about then? Yeah. Fun times. I was locked in my trailer in Phar, Texas and not going anywhere. I finished the first draft with 155,335 words on April 14. Yes, I really write that fast. My alpha reader, GMbusman, read each chapter as I finished it and provided feedback, even engaging with me on where the story was going to go and brainstorming ideas. My Sausage Grinder Patrons began reading the unedited raw content on March 28 and offered feedback.
But on the first of April, I began rewriting the story, while I was still finishing it. Rewriting means actually reading the story and getting it ready for editors to look at without choking on it. I sent the first ten chapters to my three editors, cie_mel, Old Rotorhead, and Pixel the Cat. These guys have been with me for a long time and I value their input. I had all their comments back by April 11. Then I had to incorporate and consolidate their three different views into a single final doc. I had to re-read and understand what each of the editors was saying. But that wasn’t the end.
I hand code the html for all my stories because I put them on my own site before they go to SOL. This is for my Sneak Peek patrons ($5/mo), and I started posting the story there on May 15. I don’t start posting a story for pre-release until I have all the editors’ comments folded in, have read and coded the story, and then reread it as a web page. But it is a pre-release edition and I have some leeway to make changes from their suggestions. And I read it again.
Finally, on May 25, I posted the first chapter on SOL and the entire book for sale on Bookapy. By that time, by the way, I’d already written 100,000 words of SPRINT! and had started re-reading and sending rewritten chapters to my editors.
So, let’s count it. Before the official release day of May 25, 2021, I had personally written and read the book five times. Patrons who pay for the privilege, had read and commented on the first draft before it had seen a red [blue] pencil at all. [Pixel the Cat reminded me that elementary school teachers use a red pencil. Editors use a blue pencil.] Three other independent editors had read, searching for factual errors, continuity errors, and proofreading for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And when the book released, I still got email pointing out errors—some of them actually errors and some not. “That’s not the way lenses for a nearsighted person work!” I note that I was making changes in the posted content up through the end of August. But by then, SPRINT! was through the editing cycle and ready to begin posting. And I was nearly finished writing COACH!
I read every chapter again once it was posted to make sure I was satisfied that nothing egregious has escaped. Yes, it takes something pretty awful for me to go back and correct it at that point, and sometimes I only correct it on SOL and not in the eBook or my own site. But it’s important to me to read what my readers are seeing that day. It helps me respond when I get email and to understand what has their undies in a bunch in the public comments.
I believe that an honest reading of your own work is the most important (not sufficient) step in editing your manuscript. Every chapter I post, I’ve read at least five times. I started this post by saying I’m convinced there are writers who have never read what they’ve written. I’ve spoken to writers who have even said that and say it’s too hard to read their own work, or it’s embarrassing.
If you cannot sit and enjoy reading something you’ve written, why would you ever imagine that someone else would enjoy it?
One practice that I have used successfully on tricky books is to sit and read the book aloud. This can’t be overemphasized when applied to dialog especially. It has to sound right! And be sure you read the words as they are written. If something doesn’t sound right and you want to read it differently, then change it. This often reveals places where you would naturally use a contraction, but have used two words, for example. You will hear whether your characters have unique voices or if they all sound alike. You will find out exactly where readers are going to laugh or cry.
I will also mention that there are readers who will become volunteer editors for a specific project—subject matter experts. For example, when I wrote the Hero Lincoln Trilogy, reader iamblindman read the books and corrected any places where I had violated the rules of the Damsels in Distress universe, or could use a previous story innovation. When I wrote Pussy Pirates and The Assassin, a bunch of other SWARM Cycle authors read, commented, and corrected the manuscripts for canon violations—most notably Zen_Master and Omachuck. In writing the Photo Finish series, two professional photographers, Nightmare and ilox11, read the manuscript after the editing was finished to make sure I hadn’t made errors in any of the photographic processes I write about. These subject matter experts are incredibly valuable in the creative process.
My Sausage Grinder patrons ($10/mo) read and comment on my stories before they have seen the first rewrite or edit. These folks vote with their dollars to keep me writing. And I would be amiss if I didn’t recognize GMbusman who practically reads over my shoulder as I write and is often engaged with me in brainstorming where a story is headed and whether something I’m planning will work.
And after all the above, stuff still slips by us.
I’m sure I’ve failed to mention some of the important editors I’ve had. Two have passed away and are still missed. Pixel the Cat even reviews these blog posts for me. Next week I think I’ll talk about criticism: Fair and Unfair.
This is number fourteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I DID A TALK at Exxxotica in Denver back in 2017 titled ‘An Erotic Author’s Guide to Talking Dirty.’ Essentially, I said we needed more writers with a larger vocabulary than “Uh uh uh. Oh. Harder. Uh uh. Faster. Oh, F! I’m coming!” After you’ve heard that line in more than a dozen porn videos, or read it in a hundred erotica stories, it’s meaningless.
Of course, in video porn, it would also require actors and actresses who could remember their lines during sex. Writers shouldn’t have that problem.
I believe the reason most sex scenes fail, whether on screen or in writing, is because they are boring. The sex scenes are repetitive. One after the other everything is the same. I could sit down and write half a dozen sex scenes and writers familiar with the work of the other authors could identify exactly who I was imitating, because every sex scene that author writes is the same. Same foreplay. Same sequence of positions. Same result. Same afterglow.
Back in the early ’80s, I worked with an IBM Selectric Memory Typewriter. It had a cassette tape that could record a sentence or a whole page of type so I could produce form letters and only have to manually type in the name of the respondent. “Dear ____, [Execute]. I’ve been going over your rental agreement, ________. [Execute] You are currently delinquent by $______. [Execute] Please remit this amount by return mail. Sincerely.”
Each time the cassette stopped, I typed in the name or the amount, then pressed the execute key to resume having the cassette take over typing. I’m convinced some authors acquired the device, long before they had access to personal computers with word processors that have the same function, just so they wouldn’t have to retype the same sex scene over and over. “Bill and Mary [Execute] It was the best ever!”
Part of the reason sex scenes become repetitive is because we lack an adequate sexual and emotional vocabulary. In writing Model Student 2, Rhapsody Suite, I came to a point where Tony was blindfolded and his girlfriends and their friends tormented him by making him guess which one had just kissed him. Eight kisses and about 3,000 words later, I had what I consider one of the sexiest scenes I’ve ever written and there was absolutely no sex!
Tony had to consider and describe to himself what each kiss was like, how the girl tasted, moved her lips, and used her tongue—even how far she opened her mouth. He had to compare what he knew about each girl with what he was experiencing.
‘Slip’ and ‘slide’ are two perfectly good words, but there are more words than that to describe how one person moves against or in another. And if he slipped his hand under her shirt as she slipped her tongue into his mouth and he slipped into her, the reader has already taken a vacation and jumped down several lines.
What’s more, simply going to a thesaurus and looking up synonyms won’t help. There aren’t that many to be had that convey the same meaning. So, you need to completely recast the scene. Think beyond the description of the act itself. Try, “His hand stole up her ribcage, like a thief moving from the shadow of one rib to the next, his prize almost at hand.” When you expand the vocabulary used for common acts, you open the door to far more interesting scenes.
Search out comparisons of each sense. If there isn’t a different word for it, use a simile or comparison. There is a scene in Model Student 5: Odalisque in which Tony finally discovers the scent of his lover Lissa in a spice rack as he is cooking and is transported by the smell of cardamom to thoughts of his lover’s embrace. Yes, you will never smell cardamom in the same way again.
At the same time that I advise authors of erotica to expand their dirty talk, I caution them not to overdo it. Just because you know a hundred slang words for penis and ninety-seven for vagina doesn’t mean you need to use them all in your story.
You shouldn’t be hunting through the Kama Sutra to find a new position for every scene. But if you are looking for ideas, The Joy of Sex is a great book even fifty years after its publication. You’ll also find a new website called OMGYES that talks to women about getting greater enjoyment from sex in very frank terms. Terms that women use.
In my experience, women use much less slang for genitalia than men do. I guess that having grown up with a vulva and vagina makes a woman more comfortable using those terms than men are. Having it while growing up, though, probably isn’t an adequate reason. Men can barely whisper the word ‘penis’ without choking on it. The word, I mean. A man is likely to use a number of different euphemisms for sex organs, while a woman will use the actual name or a single favorite.
Remember that men in general are so threatened by the use of some words that they restrict their use, as in ‘gay.’ Using euphemisms for genitalia builds a defensive barrier between the reader and the reality. If I say, ‘I petted her pussy,’ you have to draw your own conclusion as to if I’m actually talking about the vulva.
So, when you are writing a sex scene, find ways to describe the act that expand on it rather than trivializing it. When a man enters a woman in intercourse, believe it or not, other parts of his body have feelings as well as his penis! The shiver that begins in the back of the neck and runs down the spine like an electrical shock until his butt cheeks clench, for instance. If you cannot imagine it, you cannot convince your reader of it.
Engage all the senses. You don’t necessarily need to run down the list of see, hear, smell, feel, taste every time, but one might come to the fore. “I’ve never touched lips as soft, yet insistent as yours.” “Mmm. You brushed your teeth. I taste peppermint.” “Pinch. Harder. I need to feel you pinching me!” You get the idea.
Talk dirty to me, baby. It doesn’t mean just using vulgar words. Convince me that you are fully engaged.
This is number thirteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
WE'VE ALL HEARD the writing advice ‘show, don’t tell.’ But what the hell does it mean. I started writing to tell a story. Now you’re telling me I can’t tell it? WTF?
I’m one of a hundred thousand writers who can’t define exactly what that means, but I can give countless examples. I’ll start with, “She was so funny we laughed our asses off.” That was an actual line I wrote in LNDtH6 El Rancho del Corazón. And then I reread the chapter, as I always do. Groan! I’d spent an entire chapter telling about how funny Elaine was, but nowhere in the chapter was she actually funny.
This presented a real challenge. How do I write a funny twenty-three-year-old woman in 1991? I am an avid observer of people, and especially enjoy observing young women. I found what comediennes were enjoyed by my daughter and ex-wife. When I was writing the story in 2014-2015, many comediennes were making a name for themselves on Comedy Central and HBO. I watched them all. I noted their mannerisms. I noted their language. And I set about writing a comedy monologue for Elaine to give and Rhonda to film. It wasn’t only the words that were to be used, it was the expressions, the camera angles, the intonation. I had to capture all that in a monologue that was actually funny.
After I wrote the monologue—and I thought it was pretty funny—I sent it to several trusted women and asked if they thought it was age appropriate and 23yo female appropriate. Even my ex-wife said I should consider writing comedy routines for comediennes. That was just the first. I had to maintain the conceit that Elaine was truly funny in her television show, Chick Chat. I ended up writing a dozen monologues for her.
It wasn’t the first time I’d had to deal with the issue, and certainly not the last. This is where research can only take you so far. Sometimes you have to become the character, at least in your head.
When I wrote Nathan Everett’s The Volunteer (Wayzgoose on SOL), I had to put myself in the head of a chronically homeless man. I began drinking wine—a little too much wine, but carefully rationed out because I couldn’t afford to over indulge. I went hunting for scraps of cardboard boxes and scrawled signs on them. I even considered standing on a street corner with a pile of book boxes and a sign that said, “Wrote a book. Please Help.”
I had to get inside the head and thoughts of the homeless man I was portraying in the book, and it nearly drove me crazy. I couldn’t just say, “And then he stood on a street corner panhandling.” What was going through his mind? What was his reality? How did he respond to the dollar dropped in his hat? And then, I needed to express it as G2 experienced it. I couldn’t just tell his story. I had to bring the reader inside that chaotic mind of this homeless man.
I’m pretty sure that all ten or twelve copies of the book that will ever sell, already have, though I’ve just released it on bookapy, ten years after it was first published. Once I was inside the mind of that man, I couldn’t write a happily ever after ending. I didn’t kill him off, but he ended the story much as he began it: alone and empty.
The Unitarian church I attended didn’t appreciate my telling them that their efforts to end homelessness were failing. They were doing good, but they weren’t ending homelessness, which was even on the rise in our county. What’s more, I told them there were people who would always be homeless. Some were even phobic when it came to houses. That’s a hard thing to consider when you just want to do the best for everyone and have defined ‘the best’ as being a roof overhead.
I never got closer to actually being homeless than having a sixteen-foot travel trailer pulled behind a pickup truck from campground to campground, wherever I found was cheapest. I have a bigger trailer now and don't move around quite as much, but that's still the way I live.
One of the things I have discovered as I attempt to show and not just tell—notice I’ve put a modifier in now because you will always ‘tell’ part of the story—is that it prevents me from taking the easy route out. I can’t say, “Every time anyone brought up the joke, they laughed.” In reality, I have to know what the joke was, what the environment was in which it became a standard of humor for this group, and what the key word was that caused people in this group to start laughing. Then I could set it in improbable situations.
The three stood looking at their departed friend in the funeral home, tears running from their eyes. “Royal flush,” one said, just loudly enough for his friends to hear. Sam covered his laughter with a renewed bout of noisy weeping as Lil dug her fingernails into Jack’s arm on one side and into her own palm on the other. Someone in the back of the chapel whispered, “They really loved that guy.”
When I wrote Devon Layne’s “Model Student” series, I thought of a character who became so obsessed when he was painting that everything else ceased to exist. He had a playlist that he listened to as he painted the Mural and each song led him into another part of the painting. You had to feel what he was feeling in order to see what he was painting.
That is showing, not telling.
Next week, let’s get into some of the nitty gritty: Talk Dirty to Me, Baby.
FOLLOW-UP
It was completely coincidental that today's chapter of Exposure also contained a female comedienne that I had to write a routine for. It was fun and challenging!
This is number twelve in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
The first time my editor told me to ‘steal their shoes,’ I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. His comment was, “Everything is too easy for both the hero and the villain. There is no reason for them to fail. It’s a walk in the park. You need to steal their shoes.”
The reference was to that great Christmas movie, Die Hard. While sneaking around the building, trying to get to the hostages, McClane (played by Bruce Willis) is discovered while he’s barefoot and a bunch of windows are shot out. He has to run across the broken glass in his bare feet. That not only means he is injured and it is difficult to walk, but also he’s leaving a trail of blood, so the villains can track him.
In Nathan Everett’s The Gutenberg Rubric, I rewrote the beginning to injure Keith in both his eyes and hands, two things critical to the success of his mission. But I’ve found I need to remember this advice over and over while writing.
Lazlo Zalezac, rest his soul, created a fun universe called “Damsels in Distress” and I decided to write a series of stories in it. They aren’t long stories, but were incredibly fun to write. I checked in with him before making my contribution to be sure my concept was in keeping with his vision for that universe. He said he liked it and to publish it.
I’d read all the stories in that universe and discovered how some authors had gotten around different strictures Lazlo had put on it. They were making firearms out of ceramics, having portals open directly between earth and Chaos, and developing technology that the medieval planet was not supposed to have. And, it seemed, all the heroes were military heroes and engineers. With their superior technology and experience, there was really no reason they shouldn’t succeed.
So, in Sleight of Hand, I took away their shoes. I first went back to the initial restrictions on the universe and abided by the rules that had been set up. Second, I started with a hero that was as far from being a military hero as I could make him. He was a theatre major who was paralyzed from the waist down in an auto hit-and-run while saving his sister-in-law and niece. In my book, he’d shown his heroism, but he was crippled. He had no engineering or military background. He had nothing but his wits, acting ability, and his sister-in-law to get him through.
He had every reason to fail and die on his first mission. He didn’t. He succeeded, was healed in the healing chamber, and brought back a damsel as well as his sister-in-law. Working within the increased restrictions of this universe challenged me to think of all kinds of ways that this hero could use the talents he had to accomplish things that were normally relegated to people who were fully able-bodied and had military and engineering backgrounds.
This was obviously not the only time. My heroes are often—maybe usually—underdogs. They don’t have the stature or physical capability of their contemporaries. They have to overcome a disability. And they have to solve problems that they don’t have the usual skillset to solve.
In Living Next Door to Heaven 6, El Rancho del Corazón, the euphoric beginning of the book is shattered by the news that the farmhouse where they were planning to live has burned to the ground—just before they were to move there. I mentioned in a previous post that I was close to 40,000 words into the story (that would eventually be 200,000 words) and I threw it all away to start over. Sometimes I’m slow at realizing things. It took me that long to realize that everything was too easy for the clan. I had to steal their shoes.
In my original draft the parents stepped in with an insurance settlement that rebuilt the house in time for the clan to start classes in the fall and get Brian’s TV show on the air. It was all too easy. The parents took care of everything. Not only was it too easy for the clan, it was boring. They didn’t need to work for their home. And rewriting it made a lot of things clearer in the conflicts that would drive the story later.
I often read stories and think, the main character is a superhero. There’s no reason for him to fail. There’s no real conflict in the story. Take The Da Vinci Code, for example. Robert Langdon, the hero played in the movies by Tom Hanks, was an expert in symbology, had an eidetic memory, could hold his breath as he swam multiple lengths of the pool, and had contacts all over the world. There was no reason for him to ever face failure, and so the conflict felt forced. You knew from the very beginning that he would walk in, solve the mystery, and walk out. By the time Langdon was immersed in a sensory deprivation chamber and presumed dead in The Lost Symbol, I was ready to breathe a sigh of relief that the guy was finally gone. And I simply couldn’t force myself to read Inferno or Origin. Give the guy amnesia and let him become the person who could figure things out instead of already knowing them. Take away his shoes.
There is a common theme in most do-over stories. An old guy gets electrocuted, struck by lightning, caught up in a wormhole, contacted by aliens, shot, or run over by a cement truck and then wakes up in his fourteen-year-old body to live his life over again. He has Wikipedic knowledge of everything that happened during his lifetime so he knows all the best bets, investments, or inventions to make in this lifetime that will make him rich. He understands all the things that went wrong in politics so he can save the world from the current moral collapse. And most of all, he has years of experience with women which he can put into play to seduce all the fourteen-year-old girls he wants and it’s okay because even though his head is 80, his body is only 14.
When I wrote Double Take in “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” series, I stole his shoes. Yes, he is sent back to his fourteen-year-old (almost fifteen) body, but he is in an alternate universe. It’s very much like what he grew up in, but he didn’t go back in time. The new timeline picks up at the same time his old body dies. So, all that perfect memory of the past sixty-five years is worthless, not to mention it’s not perfect. “So, I can’t beat the Koch Brothers in cornering silver?” Jacob asks. “That was the Hunts. The Kochs tried to corner the government. No billions for you,” responds the powers-that-be.
Without knowing what got him there, he has to deal with his new self’s history—the nightmares and desires that led him to attempt suicide. And he doesn’t know the history and society that resulted in this new world he’s living in. His old self is as much a stumbling block for him in the new world as he is a help.
There is so much more. Next week, I’ll talk a little about what it means to “Show, Don’t Tell.”
Enjoy!
This is number eleven in my blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.
I don’t make a secret of my multiple writing identities. I publish under the name of Devon Layne (aroslav) and as Nathan Everett (Wayzgoose). I consider them divided by the concept that Nathan Everett doesn’t write erotica. Although there are a few steamy scenes, I turn the head before the consummation most of the time. So, I’m going to use one of my Nathan Everett books as an illustration for this post.
The writing community often talks about an author needing to “kill his babies.” This has nothing at all to do with abortion, so step down off your soapbox and give a listen. It means that sometimes you have to edit or rewrite something in your story that you really really like, but it just doesn’t work for the story. Could be a scene, a sentence, a concept, a location. But you love it like a little baby. Whatever it is and no matter how much you like it, it deserves to have a red pencil mark drawn through it. You have to kill it.
Back around 2007 or 2008 when I was still getting my boutique publishing company (LongTale Press, now defunct) off the ground, I attended a writers’ conference in Seattle. There was a social time and I chose to sit at a table with a topic marker that said “Thriller.” For a while, I was the only person there, then one of the speakers came to the table to join me. It was my first encounter with spy thriller author Gayle Lynds. For the better part of an hour we discussed what made a thriller and what we were working on.
I’d recently started planning a novel I was calling “Gutenberg’s Other Book.” I said it would revolve around what happened to the Library of Alexandria. Gayle confided that she was also working on a spy thriller that included a secret library. Her book, Library of Gold, was published in 2010, just a little before mine was. Before her book had gotten very far, the title was changed to The Book of Spies. Mine was changed to The Gutenberg Rubric, and won the second prize in the thriller category at the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Literary Competition. It is now, finally, also available on Bookapy.
Gayle advised me to be very careful with my research because people were hyper-critical about any historic or even mechanical detail that was out of place in a thriller. I’d been researching Gutenberg and the Library of Alexandria for over twenty years, so I set about carefully constructing my story. I began writing on January 1, 2009. By August, I had 45,000 words, and hated most of them. I’d carefully plotted a plausible rescue of the library that moved it from location to location for several hundred years until it came to rest in a secret and mysterious location in Turkey.
I interspersed that tale with the story of a librarian who was drawn into the mystery of the location by a hint he’d found in an old manuscript. Of course, some wanted to find the secret location to preserve it, some to destroy it, and some to profit from it. It should have been exciting. But it wasn’t.
I sent my 45,000 words off to The Book Doctor, Jason Black, and asked him what was wrong with it. His words were disheartening.
“Start over. Cut all the stuff about where the library moved over the centuries. It’s stuff you need to know to write the book, but none of your readers need to know it. Then start with some action and steal their shoes!” I’ll talk about the last part next week. Where I got stuck was “Cut all the stuff about where the library…”
I’d spent years working out those details. I’d researched shipping routes, conquests, legends, and myths. I’d read a history of ink that spanned forty centuries! It was over half of what I’d written so far. It was my baby!
And I killed it.
The book turned out very successful, though every time a native German speaker reads it, I get a different set of corrections for the few German phrases included in the book. But there are only allusions to the long history of movement I’d researched and written. I needed to know all that in order to write the book with a realistic foundation. My readers didn’t need to know it at all.
It’s not the last time I scrapped major portions of something I’d written that I really liked. I was some 40,000 words into Devon Layne’s LNDtH6, El Rancho del Corazón when I scrapped the entire draft and started over. When I wrote Nathan Everett’s City Limits, I rewrote and changed over 80% of the book in the second draft—and believe me, some babies fell on the cutting room floor.
Those things are not all lost and gone forever. When I wrote Devon Layne’s Bob’s Memoir, 4,000 Years as a Free Demon, I resurrected some of the material I’d researched about the Library of Alexandria and made saving libraries a passion of Bob’s. I have one little interchange between two unnamed characters that’s just three sentences. I’ve been saving it for two years, waiting for a place that I could use it. Until I find that place, it stays in the nursery. I can’t force it into a story where it doesn’t fit, just because it’s clever.
Ultimately, the goal is to make the story a better read. It’s one of the reasons I don’t understand people who say they just write for themselves, but then subject readers to what they’ve written. If you are going to offer what you’ve written to people to read and enjoy, then someplace along the line, you’ll have to kill your babies.
I mentioned another bit of advice The Book Doctor gave me when writing The Gutenberg Rubric. Next week, I’ll investigate "Stealing Their Shoes."
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