Erotic writing basics - sound effects?

[TarnishedPenny]

A clatter, a rattle, and a clunk?

OK, I will accept those, along with chuff, as proving the value of sounds in our stories. Attempting to draw the reader into a web of illusion, the difference can be profound. Nobody being seating in a Traby, can be expectong a chuff when the door closes, any more than a protagonist getting into a Ferrari, hears a clank.

 

[ElectricBlue]

OK, I will accept those, along with chuff, as proving the value of sounds in our stories. Attempting to draw the reader into a web of illusion, the difference can be profound. Nobody being seating in a Traby, can be expectong a chuff when the door closes, any more than a protagonist getting into a Ferrari, hears a clank.

I'm going to write a tall girl going click click click along the pavement in high heel shoes. We've all heard that sound and most men turn to look, many women too.

 

[NotWise]

I'm going to write a tall girl going click click click along the pavement in high heel shoes. We've all heard that sound and most men turn to look, many women too.

I once took a course in short story writing, where a big challenge is to write characterizations as succinctly as possible. One of the techniques was to describe common attributes that most everyone notices and has associations with. The sound of someone's foot fall was one of the examples.

I've used it. The opening line of "The Gift" is

The precise click of Kate's heels resonated in the hallway while she went about her work.

That's not the same thing as trying to reproduce the sound with some non-English combination of letters.

 

[KeithD]

I'd be propelled into a story that started:

Click. Scuff. Click. Scuff. I had thought I was alone in the office as I was shredding the documents, but I obviously wasn't. And, without turning, I knew I was all alone with Mickie. A chill spiraled up my spine.

 

[HBergeron]

To me, emphasis on the actual sound anything makes (of course, there can be exceptions) is superfluous 'shoe leather' (broadly, it's the term used to describe the unnecessary). Examples like the sound a car door makes when it slams: just say the car door slams. Writing it out as any group of letters is the sheer sign of the amateur.

Do we really need to read 'Whoosh!' when describing a wind that sweeps a hat off of a head and sends it dancing on the breeze down the street? Even in a porn story, the sound effect does not keep you in the moment - it takes you OUT of the moment as it focuses the reader's attention, even momentarily, on the affectations of the writer, rather than the unfolding story.

A car door slams. A grandfather clock strikes the hour. A foghorn blows. A tree falls in the forest. Spare me the fucking sound effect. Fiction works when it engages the imagination.

And it looks stupid to read dialog with way too many vowels, like "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck meeeeeee!"


Puh-lease.



PS: I often break all of these rules in private sexy conversation, where I often looooove the sound of my cock pounding in and out of her pussy: "Squoosh Squoosh Squoosh!" - that's sexy fun. A story, even a porn story, needs a little more discipline (No, not THAT kind... unless you're writing in the BDSM category)

 

[KeithD]

Variety is the spice of written fiction.

 

[Oblimo]

Word Crimes

F/X, in my opinion, are to be used sparingly and with great caution. The two great considerations when using them are character and context.

Some characters are the kind of people who sometimes say, “Nuh-uh,” or, “Uh-huh,” and similar. In the right context and from the right characters mouth, a “Mm-hmm” can be devastating.

I have a set of (if I were honest, I’d call them arbitrary) rules for F/X becuase I think breaking them looks amateurish and also can break immersion.

As part of sexytime dialogue, I limit non-verbal vocalization F/X to 3 characters long. Mm, Mmf, Ahn (a Japanese favorite), Aah, Gah, etc.

Never, EVER, use all capital letters for emphasis.

Never use ellipses to convey and emotion or feeling. Avoid using ellipses to convey a pause in dialogue as much as possible. Don’t write...

“That makes sense...Wait, no it doesn’t.”

...when you can write...

”That makes sense.” He paused. “Wait, no it doesn’t”

Since high-heels and boots are fetish objects, it’s good in smut to describe the action of the girl or guy wearing them when s/he moves with F/X. A confident walk in high heels on a hard surface goes thup-tup, boots go whick! whack! Of course, this should only be mentioned once per scene at maximum. Honestly, I try to limit a particular F/X schtick to once per story.

Also, invented onomatopoetic verbs, such as “slurch” and “smooshed” are also okay when used sparingly. Again, context reigns supreme. Bodies don’t smoosh together in a tense or dramatic scene.

There is a trick I see more and more English writers using on the web. To convey more than one person speaking in chorus, the author uses multiple quotation marks. For example, to convey three people saying the same thing at the same time, the author would write...

“””Yes it does.”””

This practice is anathema and we must do everything we can to stop it.

 

[LoquiSordidaAdMe]

Never use ellipses to convey and emotion or feeling. Avoid using ellipses to convey a pause in dialogue as much as possible. Don’t write...

“That makes sense...Wait, no it doesn’t.”

...when you can write...

”That makes sense.” He paused. “Wait, no it doesn’t”

Oh, I have to disagree with the ellipses rule.

Good dialogue has a rhythm, a flow. The timing of pauses can be important, especially if two people are having an emotional conversation. The character's struggle to find just the right word, the silent beat as they try to process what they just heard, the intentional pause for emphasis. Sure, all of these are things that you can write out, but doing so risks breaking the rhythm of the conversation. And what if your conversation is full of pauses? Are you going to write out "He paused" in the middle of every line of dialog? That seems like it could become annoyingly repetitive.

An ellipses is an elegant way to convey the speaker's flow without interrupting the speaker's words.

"I just... I don't think this... thing... 
between us is going to work out in 
the long run... you know?"

Has a very different feel than

"I just don't think this thing between 
us is going to work out in the long 
run, you know?" he struggled to say.

And is far more readable than

"I just," this wasn't easy to say. 
"I don't think this," he struggled to find 
the right word. "thing" he finally settled 
on. "Between us is going to work out in 
the long run." When she didn't respond, 
to fill the awkward silence he added 
"you know?"

The first and second examples illustrate "showing" versus "telling". Rather than just telling the reader that the speaker is struggling to say the words, the first example shows the reader the struggle and gives the reader a feel for how the words sound to the listener. The third example is simply over written to the point of being irritating.

 

[KeithD]

Oh, I have to disagree with the ellipses rule.

I liked it better with the ellipsis too (although that wasn't a publisher's ellipsis).

 

[ElectricBlue]

Never use ellipses to convey and emotion or feeling. Avoid using ellipses to convey a pause in dialogue as much as possible. Don’t write...

“That makes sense...Wait, no it doesn’t.”

...when you can write...

”That makes sense.” He paused. “Wait, no it doesn’t”

Rubbish. Never state absolutes without authority, that's just silly .

Designating a pause is what the ellipses is used for, in fiction, so use it (in moderation).

Those two examples are both legitimate, but they have a different effect, a different beat. "He paused" is a longer pause, and could signify another thought, whereas the first example suggests a delayed continuation of the same thought, to me. It's subtle, but those two examples say different things, I reckon.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Designating a pause is what the ellipses is used for, in fiction, so use it (in moderation).

Those two examples are both legitimate, but they have a different effect, a different beat. "He paused" is a longer pause, and could signify another thought, whereas the first example suggests a delayed continuation of the same thought, to me. It's subtle, but those two examples say different things, I reckon.

I must agree. Subtlty is at the core of the writer's art.

 

[LightningSeed]

It's subtle, but those two examples say different things, I reckon.

Absolutely agree. Two different things convey two different ideas.

 

[Oblimo]

Oh, no! Reasonable people disagree with me for reasons that make perfect sense!

*Dies*

I came up with the ellipsis rule because I was personally using them way too much. I never meant to imply it was anything more than that.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Oh, I have to disagree with the ellipses rule.

Good dialogue has a rhythm, a flow. The timing of pauses can be important, especially if two people are having an emotional conversation. The character's struggle to find just the right word, the silent beat as they try to process what they just heard, the intentional pause for emphasis. Sure, all of these are things that you can write out, but doing so risks breaking the rhythm of the conversation. And what if your conversation is full of pauses? Are you going to write out "He paused" in the middle of every line of dialog? That seems like it could become annoyingly repetitive.

An ellipses is an elegant way to convey the speaker's flow without interrupting the speaker's words.

"I just... I don't think this... thing... 
between us is going to work out in 
the long run... you know?"

Has a very different feel than

"I just don't think this thing between 
us is going to work out in the long 
run, you know?" he struggled to say.

And is far more readable than

"I just," this wasn't easy to say. 
"I don't think this," he struggled to find 
the right word. "thing" he finally settled 
on. "Between us is going to work out in 
the long run." When she didn't respond, 
to fill the awkward silence he added 
"you know?"

The first and second examples illustrate "showing" versus "telling". Rather than just telling the reader that the speaker is struggling to say the words, the first example shows the reader the struggle and gives the reader a feel for how the words sound to the listener. The third example is simply over written to the point of being irritating.

I agree. I've used them for one sided phone conversations, which saves on writing uneccesary bullshit.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

And yet, people know what fucking is and how it feels, so why describe? Or a kiss? Or fist fight. Or a sword fight? ... Why not say: They made love. (End scene).

You write in the way that feels right. If you like the way a sound effect reads, put it in, if you don't, you don't. Everything goes to mood, setting, ambience, (a bunch of other technical words) ... sometimes they're fun, different, unexpected, sometimes they are not. In a bad writing, they are just bad, in good writing, they are either just another word or interesting to read. They may help put certain readers into the scene, others not. (But, if people are reading books just to pick out what they don't like, fuck them - NOT you guys, but them.)

Don't over think it. Do as you do and don't let someone else tell you how to write UNLESS you like what they have to tell you.

Edit: On a side note, unless I'm watching Adam West in Batman, I think POW in a fight scene is stupid. And I'd never have someone say "Ugh." But if someone wanted to emphasize the creak of a door or the chugga-chugga-chugga of a train, I'd wouldn't mind. Things like that in books have ehanced atmospheres for me. (I'm sure I've read that somewhere, Stephen King? Children's horror stories? Somewhere.)

But the thread is about Erotic Writing. In sex scenes, I don't mind a little sound effects, sometimes they add to the intensity of a really good stroking scene, but I don't know how they'd play out in something romantic.

She pulls her lips off his dick.

Slurp!

He taps her nose with it, looking down triumphantly, slightly pulling it to the side and smaking her across the face.

Pow!

She stumbles back on her toes, wiping the throat phlem and precum from her face. She lunges. Jumping in to his arms, legs wrapped around him, tits smashed in to his face.

Smush!

They fall back on the bed. Batman struggles to reach his utilitybelt for a bat-condom.

Snap!

Robin is paralyzed with lust, with his dick out, staring at Catwomans soaked pussy.

Wack! Wack! Wack!

Catwomans ass crashes down on that dark knight dick.

Shthunk!

 

[LightningSeed]

That was actually pretty funny.