dr_mabeuse
seduce the mind
- Joined
- Oct 10, 2002
- Posts
- 11,528
A thread for you to share some tidbits of what you've learned about the art and craft of writing, porn or otherwise. I'm starting this thread after having read a bunch of stories by new authors and finding the same basic defects in all of them.
MMy tip concerns concrete sensual detail. I leanred about this a long time ago in a writing class, and it's still one of the cornerstones of fiction for me, right down there along with plot, character, and conflict...
--Concrete Sensual Detail. It's what brings a scene to life and makes us feel like we're there.
Concrete: Real things. Not ideas and feelings and thoughts. Not your opinions on things. Stuff that's out there in the real world. Ashtrays and streelamps and shoes and rainstorms. Frowns and smiles and shrugs. Not "she had the nicest set of legs I'd ever seen." More like, "She had legs that looked like they could have been made of chrome."
Sensual: Appealing to the senses. Things that we can see and hear and feel and taste. The sound of tires on a wet street; the slant of late afternmoon light; the feel of wind on sweat; the softly yielding feel of lips against yours
Detail: The little things you see in a scene that mean more than what they are. The frayed bathrobe that shows how she feels. The set of his jaw that shows his anger. The half-empty bottle of booze on the kitchen table. The empty fridge.
CSD's are the props that set a scene, and without them your characters are working on an empty set. You can tell me your heroine is in the cabin of a ship on a stormy sea, but unless I see the stuff moving around and the pull chain from the overhead light swinging back and forth, I won't really believe it. When we talk about showing and not telling, very often it's the concrete sensual detail we want to see.
They do something else, too. When you're writing a story, you're trying to get your reader involved. One of the ways you do this is by showing him a scene that demands he try to understand it. Why is there a half-empty booze bottle on the table? What does that say about the person who lives there? The reader has to process that information, and now he's in the story. If you tell us "He's lonely", then we're sitting outside the scene listening to you. If you show us the half-empty bottle of scotch, we're in the room with him.
I've read a lot of sex scenes. but I still remember the first one I saw where the woman clawed the sheets. Among all those throbbing manhoods and aching femininities, that one concrete detail jumped out at me and showed me more of what she was feeling than any yards of prose telling me how good everything felt.
So that's my first piece of advice. Concrete Sensual Detail.
Your turn.
--Zoot
MMy tip concerns concrete sensual detail. I leanred about this a long time ago in a writing class, and it's still one of the cornerstones of fiction for me, right down there along with plot, character, and conflict...
--Concrete Sensual Detail. It's what brings a scene to life and makes us feel like we're there.
Concrete: Real things. Not ideas and feelings and thoughts. Not your opinions on things. Stuff that's out there in the real world. Ashtrays and streelamps and shoes and rainstorms. Frowns and smiles and shrugs. Not "she had the nicest set of legs I'd ever seen." More like, "She had legs that looked like they could have been made of chrome."
Sensual: Appealing to the senses. Things that we can see and hear and feel and taste. The sound of tires on a wet street; the slant of late afternmoon light; the feel of wind on sweat; the softly yielding feel of lips against yours
Detail: The little things you see in a scene that mean more than what they are. The frayed bathrobe that shows how she feels. The set of his jaw that shows his anger. The half-empty bottle of booze on the kitchen table. The empty fridge.
CSD's are the props that set a scene, and without them your characters are working on an empty set. You can tell me your heroine is in the cabin of a ship on a stormy sea, but unless I see the stuff moving around and the pull chain from the overhead light swinging back and forth, I won't really believe it. When we talk about showing and not telling, very often it's the concrete sensual detail we want to see.
They do something else, too. When you're writing a story, you're trying to get your reader involved. One of the ways you do this is by showing him a scene that demands he try to understand it. Why is there a half-empty booze bottle on the table? What does that say about the person who lives there? The reader has to process that information, and now he's in the story. If you tell us "He's lonely", then we're sitting outside the scene listening to you. If you show us the half-empty bottle of scotch, we're in the room with him.
I've read a lot of sex scenes. but I still remember the first one I saw where the woman clawed the sheets. Among all those throbbing manhoods and aching femininities, that one concrete detail jumped out at me and showed me more of what she was feeling than any yards of prose telling me how good everything felt.
So that's my first piece of advice. Concrete Sensual Detail.
Your turn.
--Zoot