How far can one go in detective fiction?

[drlust]

Hi everyone:

I'm working on a detective novel in which the killer's tragic flaw is that after killing she needs to talk about it to someone. So, where does she do this talking--in adult chat rooms that she frequents. What I'm seeking advice about is how far one can go with erotic description and still get published by a mainstream publishing house. At the moment, I think my descriptions of erotic moments in the novel -- she has sex with her victims before killing them -- are too explicit. I've toned them down once already from their original form--more like what one would read on this site, but I don't want to go to far in that direction if I can help it, because I think it is the eroticism that helps give the novel its bite.

Any advice about this would be greatly appreciated!

Allan, aka the sexblogger formerly known as Dr. Lust

 

[shereads]

She should definitely talk in some detail how she sucked the victim's fingers.

 

[Dirt Man]

Hi everyone:

I'm working on a detective novel in which the killer's tragic flaw is that after killing she needs to talk about it to someone. So, where does she do this talking--in adult chat rooms that she frequents. What I'm seeking advice about is how far one can go with erotic description and still get published by a mainstream publishing house. At the moment, I think my descriptions of erotic moments in the novel -- she has sex with her victims before killing them -- are too explicit. I've toned them down once already from their original form--more like what one would read on this site, but I don't want to go to far in that direction if I can help it, because I think it is the eroticism that helps give the novel its bite.

Any advice about this would be greatly appreciated!

Allan, aka the sexblogger formerly known as Dr. Lust

The someone she needs to talk to is the investigating officer of the murders she has commited. This works quite well, or has in many similar stories. Just a thought.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man

 

[Boxlicker101]

I don't think a chat room would work too well. Someone could blow the whistle and she coud be traced from her chatroom name. If she talks to a psychiatrist or a member of the clergy or a lawyer, that would be a priveleged communication. Maybe she could have a confidsante who is also a criminal. Honor among thieves sort of thing.



http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=118747MyChristmasStory

http://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=207952MyOtherSmut

 

[Wills]

drlust

Your question concerns the degree of erotic content for mainstream publishing.

If you are sufficiently advanced with the novel, search for a literary agent with a record for dealing with erotic fiction, push a synopsis out to them seeking guidance making it clear that you want to be published but need advice on the erotic content.

An alternative would be to describe the eroticism second hand, talking about to another party, I am thinking here of a lover or very close friend, it distances the reader from the action and requires a diffent structure that may convey the erotic content without necessarily the graphic detail. The introduction of a lover or close friend could add another dimensional tension to the story.

Just some thoughts.

Will's

 

[Weird Harold]

What I'm seeking advice about is how far one can go with erotic description and still get published by a mainstream publishing house. At the moment, I think my descriptions of erotic moments in the novel -- she has sex with her victims before killing them -- are too explicit.

Mainstream authors can get away with a good deal of Erotic Content -- sometimes more than is good for the story, like Jane Auel's Earth's Children series.

I don't read many mysteries, but the Erotic content in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and mainstream Fiction has gotten to about where Romance Novels started out in the Sixties and Seventies.

What I have read in the Mystery genre has always struck me as "tamer" as far as erotic content than contemporary work in other genres. Idon't think mystery fans like anything to be very explicit except the detective's explanation of how he figured it all out at the end.

I'd say, "If you can't read it aloud on latee-evening TV, it's probably too explicit for Mystery fans."

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My definition of pornography is that it's writing whose primary goal is to incite sexual excitement in the reader. It's not a hard and fast definition, but as a writer I think one knows when one's crossed the line into the realm of the cheap thrill and the purely prurient. If you're writing your sex scenes with an eye to incite, then you've probably gone too far for most straight-ahead mystery fans.

Sex is pretty mainstream these days, and is splashed about gratuitously even where it doesn;t really belong. I find that kind of embarrassing, not because it's sex, but because the writer seems to feel he has to get down there and do a little of the old in-and-out just to show he's with it. Kind of like violence in movies.

---dr.M.

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Birds do it. Bees do it. EVen former Presidents do it.

The doctors Lust and Mabeuse managed a minor miracle by getting me to thinking. And what they got me to thinking about is sex-at least sex in mainstream books.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has just released a novel that, I've been told, has a "bedroom" scene. I suppose if a Baptist Sunday School teacher's doing that, so is everyone else.

Dr. Lust, IMHO, odds are your sex scenes won't get you published or rejected. If an agent/publisher likes the story and your writing, the sex scenes can always be "turned up" or "toned down" depending on the likely market.

By-the-by, has anyone read the book or that particular section of the Carter book? Is so, what did you think?

Rumple Foreskin