An example of great detail

[sirhugs]

I know. An An AH thread discussing writing. How unlikely!

Regular readers know how much I obsess about detail in good erotic writing.

Now I noted an example from mainstream literature.

Jane Smiley, in her current novel, Ten Days in the Hills on page 7 of the hardcover edition, spends 3/4 of a page describing one kiss - compare and contrast this with the haste most Lit stories rush past the same moment.

I'm not saying every kiss needs to be that long, but Smiley shows how detail is riveting.....

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I would love to be able to wax-erotic about some details in my stories like that. I just can't come up with enough to words to make it sound good. There have even been times where I have tried to make a kiss in one of my stories last that long, but I couldn't get it to work.

 

[Liar]

I'm always the most proud of my writing when I'm able to contain the physical and emotional complexity of something like that in one swift and precise line, instead of half a page.

Or even shorter:

pithy > verbose

 

[Recidiva]

Stephen King convinced me once that less is more. I was reading "Dreamcatcher" and he was waxing rhapsodic about deer hunting technique and all I could think was..."I GET IT. I GET IT."

I appreciate brevity. This also explains why I dislike Stanley Kubrick films. "I GET IT."

I suppose this means I prefer my writing to be suggestive, much more like Japanese calligraphy, than a panoramic shot. I think film has explicit covered.

I try to dictate less of the content and leave more to the imagination of the reader, who I believe can then use that space to feel what they want about it. It's on purpose. I want my writing to be as interactive as I can manage.

 

[jomar]

Detail can be good, but more is not necessarily better. It's tricky to know when write more and when not to. I had to quit reading James Michener because I could no longer tolerate ten pages on a cup of coffee and such.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I know. An An AH thread discussing writing. How unlikely!

Regular readers know how much I obsess about detail in good erotic writing.

Now I noted an example from mainstream literature.

Jane Smiley, in her current novel, Ten Days in the Hills on page 7 of the hardcover edition, spends 3/4 of a page describing one kiss - compare and contrast this with the haste most Lit stories rush past the same moment.

I'm not saying every kiss needs to be that long, but Smiley shows how detail is riveting.....

I may have found an excerpt with that kiss Sirhugs mentioned.

"No. You are not going to be useful in my film about you." He was propped up on his left elbow now, looking down at her. His right hand slipped behind her back and turned her toward him. She let her head loll backward, lengthening and exposing her neck, and he kissed her along her jawline. When she turned her head toward him, he kissed her on the lips. He had a certain way of kissing that Elena liked very much, not active but quiet, springy, and full of suction. During the kiss, she contemplated their connection—tight, warm, and comfortable. Everything promised was delivered, adjustments were made in which he claimed more and more of her lips, and then, in a moment of common agreement that she suspected was visceral or even biological, they broke apart, in order to kiss again. Each long kiss built on the previous one as more and more nerve endings came into play. Each kiss was a surprise to her lips. Her brain remembered that they had kissed and that the kisses were always seductive and good, but her lips were won over anew every time. Each kiss, also, she felt as a material and particular assertion of his masculinity—steady, strong, orderly, desirous, and, above all, intentional, as if kissing her were something that he paid attention to each time. Elena, of course, had been kissed thousands of times over the years—she was fifty, after all—and she had been married once, and of course there had been high school and college and graduate school, and if marriage was like a thousand-dollar bill, rare but tangible and possessable, and going steady was like a hundred-dollar bill—more common than you thought when you didn't have one—then kisses were like pennies, easily disregarded, hard to remember, or even inconvenient and annoying. And yet she could say with perfect honesty (and she was far too meticulous to allow any other kind of honesty) that Max's kisses were always to be noticed, valued, and cherished, since they could not be preserved, which was, by the way, too bad.

Let me know if I missed the mark, Sirhugs.

And while I think it's a very good piece of writing by a Pulitzer Prize winner, and my Pulitzer seems to be missing, I honestly don't think my little four paragraph, 184 word "first kiss" scene is too shabby in comparison.

From Chapter One, THE KISS

He paused in the middle of a sentence, apparently having noticed something around her eyebrows. In a casual tone, he said, "Close your eyes a second.”

Assuming he wanted to remove whatever he’d just spotted, she obeyed—and was stunned to feel Matt's lips press gently against hers. An intoxicating erotic energy, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, took possession of her body. No hands touched her, but she couldn’t move. As if in a dream, she responded to the unexpected kiss.

The tip of his tongue met no resistance as it slipped between her lips. Once inside, it made slow sensuous love to her mouth, caressing and coaxing her into returning its touch. She felt powerless to resist. All she could do, all she wanted to do, was savor the feel of Matt Cahill's mouth against hers.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days later, she couldn't be sure, he broke the kiss and leaned back. Gwen opened her eyes and saw him looking straight at her. What he’d done wasn’t right, she was certain of that. But what was she supposed to do now? After all, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and she’d loved the kiss.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Recidiva]

I may have found an excerpt with that kiss Sirhugs mentioned.

"No. You are not going to be useful in my film about you." He was propped up on his left elbow now, looking down at her. His right hand slipped behind her back and turned her toward him. She let her head loll backward, lengthening and exposing her neck, and he kissed her along her jawline. When she turned her head toward him, he kissed her on the lips. He had a certain way of kissing that Elena liked very much, not active but quiet, springy, and full of suction. During the kiss, she contemplated their connection—tight, warm, and comfortable. Everything promised was delivered, adjustments were made in which he claimed more and more of her lips, and then, in a moment of common agreement that she suspected was visceral or even biological, they broke apart, in order to kiss again. Each long kiss built on the previous one as more and more nerve endings came into play. Each kiss was a surprise to her lips. Her brain remembered that they had kissed and that the kisses were always seductive and good, but her lips were won over anew every time. Each kiss, also, she felt as a material and particular assertion of his masculinity—steady, strong, orderly, desirous, and, above all, intentional, as if kissing her were something that he paid attention to each time. Elena, of course, had been kissed thousands of times over the years—she was fifty, after all—and she had been married once, and of course there had been high school and college and graduate school, and if marriage was like a thousand-dollar bill, rare but tangible and possessable, and going steady was like a hundred-dollar bill—more common than you thought when you didn't have one—then kisses were like pennies, easily disregarded, hard to remember, or even inconvenient and annoying. And yet she could say with perfect honesty (and she was far too meticulous to allow any other kind of honesty) that Max's kisses were always to be noticed, valued, and cherished, since they could not be preserved, which was, by the way, too bad.

Let me know if I missed the mark, Sirhugs.

Rumple Foreskin

Hm. Ew. TMI.

 

[tickledkitty]

I'm constantly trying NOT to use too much detail. I have a tendency to go overboard, because all the minutia seem very important to me. I think this is why I enjoy writing flash fic. It's a good exercise.

 

[Carnevil9]

I am also in the "brevity is the soul of wit" camp. I like to read (and therefore write) just the essential structure, letting the mind fill in the rest.

I remember a section in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues, etc. etc." (even his titles were too long) where he spent about five pages describing the fish swimming outside the porthole of his cabin in the Nautilus. All it suggested to me was that he had done his research and wanted to show it off.

EDIT:

Another thought occurs: Sirhugs titled this thread "great detail" and most of us assumed that this must mean LOTS of detail. But why can't a small number of perfectly chosen words be considered "great detail"? Great, that is, in the sense of meaning "very, very good" rather than merely "huge."

 

[Liar]

Another thought occurs: Sirhugs titled this thread "great detail" and most of us assumed that this must mean LOTS of detail. But why can't a small number of perfectly chosen words be considered "great detail"? Great, that is, in the sense of meaning "very, very good" rather than merely "huge."

Ah. Very good. The trick is not to mention all the details, but to choose the right ones. Me likey.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

I gotta admit, that while I've enjoyed several of Smiley's books and think the opening lines of the paragraph are first-rate, its complex sentence structure:

Each kiss, also, she felt as a material and particular assertion of his masculinity—steady, strong, orderly, desirous, and, above all, intentional, as if kissing her were something that he paid attention to each time.

and rambling thoughts, especially in the backstory following that sentence, doesn't appeal to me. Reading it, I'm reminded of Elmore Leionard's famous advice, "Leave out the parts readers skip."

Rumple Foreskin

 

[Recidiva]

I gotta admit, that while I've enjoyed several of Smiley's books and think the opening lines of the paragraph are first-rate, its complex sentence structure:

Each kiss, also, she felt as a material and particular assertion of his masculinity—steady, strong, orderly, desirous, and, above all, intentional, as if kissing her were something that he paid attention to each time.

and rambling thoughts, especially in the backstory following that sentence, doesn't appeal to me. Reading it, I'm reminded of Elmore Leionard's famous advice, "Leave out the parts readers skip."

Rumple Foreskin

That's exactly the sentence that caught me. Before I was going to say "Three adjectives always separated by a comma?"

Then I got to FIVE adjectives in a list and I was done.

 

[MarshAlien]

I gotta admit, that while I've enjoyed several of Smiley's books and think the opening lines of the paragraph are first-rate, its complex sentence structure:

Each kiss, also, she felt as a material and particular assertion of his masculinity—steady, strong, orderly, desirous, and, above all, intentional, as if kissing her were something that he paid attention to each time.

and rambling thoughts, especially in the backstory following that sentence, doesn't appeal to me. Reading it, I'm reminded of Elmore Leionard's famous advice, "Leave out the parts readers skip."

Rumple Foreskin

I "liked" this phrase:

. . . adjustments were made in which he claimed more and more of her lips. . .​

I kept imagining little dials somewhere.

I've had a number of readers tell me that they actually skip over the sex in my stories . . . But if I leave those parts out, it's not really Literotica, is it? And given my writing, it's already perilously close to not being Literotica, so that leaves me with " ."

 

[Stella_Omega]

This is a good kiss, written by a fellow amateur;

He'd thought it was rage, even as his mouth came down -- he did not know what else to do -- upon Martin's, even when he felt the heat of Vincent Martin's body as he pinned and pressed it against the dark grainy wood. But oh, what surprising sweetness, and delight, and light, and a want for which Elias had no words. Not that he could have spoken: not that he could, for the moment, remove his mouth from Martin's, or withdraw as Martin's tongue, terrifyingly wondrously eager, insinuated itself between his lips and began to explore every tingling corner of Elias's mouth. And the kiss went on, and on, until Elias wondered if it would ever end.

"You're going, then," said Martin thickly, pulling his mouth a scant inch back from Elias's, breathing hard. Elias leaned unthinkingly closer, to feel the rise of Martin's lungs as he sucked in air.

Purple prose makes for a good kiss

 

[sirhugs]

to me, the poetry loses its power if you deconstruct it, and I read the long passages as prose poems - designed to elicit emotion, and paint a picture in broad strokes, and on that basis, it worked for me. I understood Elena's attraction to Max, his reciporation, and the passions unleashed. As I'm progressing through the novel, this scene becomes vital to accepting and 'buying' the relationships - the absurdity that is life- because underlying it is this force, this connectedness.

Though the passage is not perfect, it fulfills a purpose far better than would a quick one line " And then Max folded his arms around Elena and they collapsed into a passionate kiss" , which is the more typica Lit level of detail.

 

[Brute_Force]

I appreciate brevity (as in Heminway), but I also admire beautiful descriptions. Writers who describe well (IMHO) are:

Anais Nin
Tennessee Williams
Henry James

 

[MarshAlien]

to me, the poetry loses its power if you deconstruct it, and I read the long passages as prose poems - designed to elicit emotion, and paint a picture in broad strokes, and on that basis, it worked for me. I understood Elena's attraction to Max, his reciporation, and the passions unleashed. As I'm progressing through the novel, this scene becomes vital to accepting and 'buying' the relationships - the absurdity that is life- because underlying it is this force, this connectedness.

Though the passage is not perfect, it fulfills a purpose far better than would a quick one line " And then Max folded his arms around Elena and they collapsed into a passionate kiss" , which is the more typica Lit level of detail.

That's quite true; and I'm sure it would have worked for me in context. I think the problem with a lot of things like this is when you do take them out of context, which is itself a form of deconstruction (ooh, listen to me), you're really destroying the entire scene that the writer intended. It's like looking too closely at brush strokes; you see the grass close up, and you start thinking, "purple? What the hell kind of grass is that?"

"...collapsed into a passionate kiss and took off their clothes," you meant.

 

[Stella_Omega]

to me, the poetry loses its power if you deconstruct it, and I read the long passages as prose poems - designed to elicit emotion, and paint a picture in broad strokes, and on that basis, it worked for me. I understood Elena's attraction to Max, his reciporation, and the passions unleashed. As I'm progressing through the novel, this scene becomes vital to accepting and 'buying' the relationships - the absurdity that is life- because underlying it is this force, this connectedness.

Though the passage is not perfect, it fulfills a purpose far better than would a quick one line " And then Max folded his arms around Elena and they collapsed into a passionate kiss" , which is the more typica Lit level of detail.

Yeah, but then they spend two thousand words on the fuck that comes right after...

Two thousand words on a kiss-- you can find that in any Harlequin Romance paperback, although I won't guarantee the quality of the writing... And then one sentence alluding to His Masterful Taking Of her.

At least, that's how it used to be. These days, those romances have gotten pretty explicit-- but I still won't guarantee the writing. Some things are traditional.

 

[champagne1982]

I took part in a flash fic challenge on a different forum and there were some great "First Kiss"-es written between 450 and 515 words.

Try it... Third Person (limited) Point of View, Present Tense. Required words: frond and metallic.

There they stand, in the misty rain. Ella's following the track his zipper takes with her eyes, looking upward and finally, focusing on that nearly invisible shiver as his carotid pulse confirms that he is alive. Joey - her dream made flesh. She thinks she's read that before and the words fall, tumbling off her tongue.

Joey's telling her to hush and Ella can't seem to stop the nonsense that's stammering through her lips: her tongue keeps churning out the words and her vocal chords are true anarchists; disobeying her rules; letting noise escape the prison of her thoughts.

She's watching his words form inside his mind. They flicker behind his blue eyes. Does he know that? Does he understand that she can see what he's deciding? She can barely breathe for what she thinks she knows. Joey's got no secrets from her; they've been friends as long as they've existed. Is that from before they were born? Ella doesn't know that, but she knows that she's loved him forever.

Her toes ache. She doesn't want him to keep her poised on this threshold any longer. Now, this is the moment he should bend his head to her, fold her in those arms that she can feel trembling beneath her fingertips. He must give her his lips before she is forced to take them. Kiss.

Metallic taste floods her mouth. She thinks "Crap! I’m bleeding-- Don’t kiss me now. Wait, oh please, wait. I- Joey don’t go." Her fingers explore her lip and a glance at them confirms that yes, she, too, is alive. "I won’t be if you walk away. I’m going to die."

Ella wants him to stop looking at her with that teasing grin. She knows she's an idiot. Joey's pulling her close to his chest and he's placing his hand beneath her chin. Is this the point of no return? Ella's eyes plead for it to happen, now, uncaring if her lip bleeds all over his shirt.

She feels his tongue flick across her mouth. Joey tastes her, her blood. Does that mean he belongs to her, forever? She's wondering if her breath is horrid.

He touches her lips with his, so gently. They sway, like a frond of seaweed swept along in the tides. How she wants to be carried away. His jaw tenses as the kiss deepens; eager to absorb her lips.

Hearing gasps as his teeth bruise her tender lip; Joey pulls back as she winces. Ella's arms lift up, locking around his neck, holding mouth against mouth. She doesn't want him to stop.

Her entire body pleads with him to keep doing this. It's what they're meant to do. Her eyes remain open and her love and desire shine through. She wants him to look and see what she's thinking. Kiss.