My Hallowe'n story was supposed to be amusing but they only have a category for humor

gauchecritic

When there are grey skies
Joined
Jul 25, 2002
Posts
7,076
My favourite joke of the moment as told by Alan Davies:

Two beekeepers are chatting and one asks the other how many bees he keeps. "About 60,000." is the reply.

"So how many hives do you have then?"

"Twenty." The second asks of the first "How many bees do you keep?"

"A million."

"A million." Impressed. "So how many hives do you have then?"

"One."

"One? You've got a million bees and you keep them in one hive?"

"Yeah. They're only bees. Fuck 'em."


Not only is this seriously amusing to me (still laughing whenever I think about it) but it gave me a reason for a new thread.

Expletives. Cursing. Swear words. I realise that it's partly the shock value that makes this particular joke funny but it also makes the punch line. This thought led me to think about erotica and dirty words.

Do expletives enhance an erotic story? Does overuse make it smut? Should you have "Fuck my cunt." as your opening sentence or are you condemning your story to parody? Where can you possibly go from there without desensitizing readers to the effectiveness of similar words?

Never having knowingly read a story from the Romance category, I wonder: Do shock words have any place there?

Gauche
 
whenever I submit I never see "Halloween" related topics, am I missing something?

Curiously,
Medi
 
Re: My Hallowe'n story was supposed to be amusing but they only have a category for humor

gauchecritic said:
Never having knowingly read a story from the Romance category, I wonder: Do shock words have any place there?

Gauche

That depends on what the fuck you think Romance is.:D
 
gauchecritic said:
Do expletives enhance an erotic story? Does overuse make it smut? Should you have "Fuck my cunt." as your opening sentence or are you condemning your story to parody?
Gauche, I think your audience/reader matters re. your overall query. Some people are not used to ordinary 'improper' words and so might be more aroused (or offended) by reading "Fuck me" than others (not to mention being personally confronted with the demand, or promise).

I do think in American ‘culture’ even young children are desensitized by cuss words and sexual terms. “FUCK me” or "Fuck ME" is a rather common way now to express, “Wow!” or “Really?”

However, "Fuck my cunt" as an opening sentence would not necessarily lead to parody; I could use it so, might even.

Where can you possibly go from there without desensitizing readers to the effectiveness of similar words?
Here it’s a matter of skillful writing, using words (any words really) so that the desired impact is achieved. I take care in where I place a ‘cock’ or ‘cunt’, or whether I use ‘pussy, tits, clit’, etc. Depending on the syntax I sometimes feel as if I'm placing a 'fuck' in a sentence or phrase the way a jeweler attempts to set a common stone to create a special impression. I do the same with non-fuck type words too.

Never having knowingly read a story from the Romance category, I wonder: Do shock words have any place there?
I don't read Romance either but it seems to me sexual expletives would be out of place, dunno really.

All in all how a writer of erotica (or smut) uses sexual language or terms is what will distinguish her work above or below a level of good to brilliant writing, and then follows good/brilliant erotica. That’s my opinion and how I judge the work on this site, judge meaning only whether I read beyond a first paragraph or two.

An analogy might be sex scenes in film, e.g., some of the most erotic images I've seen have had little nudity or virtual fucking.

Frankly, when it comes to writing an erotic work the language of fucking can be the least of an author's concerns.

Fuck me, Purr
 
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Medieval-Man said:
whenever I submit I never see "Halloween" related topics, am I missing something?
Medi, sweetie, I think you're in the wrong thread.

Perdita :heart:
 
Curse words have a value in writing, whether you are writing erotica or not. The question of shock value is going to hinge a great deal on you as the writer and on your characters. A dockside trollop saying "Fuck me, baby" in a bored voice while her john gets off has little shock value, perhaps it would carry more shock value if she didn't curse. Suzy the prim librarian scaming fuck me at the top her lungs while people might still be in the library would be much more shocking. The intensity of the efect is really dependent on what you write, how you write and how you have developed the characters.

Do expletives enhance an erotic story? Does overuse make it smut? Should you have "Fuck my cunt." as your opening sentence or are you condemning your story to parody? Where can you possibly go from there without desensitizing readers to the effectiveness of similar words?

Fuck my cunt. The words weren't articulated, but they ran through Karen's mind as Tommy pounded into her yeilding body. They weren't her words, they belonged to Kenny. Kenny. Her first boyfriend, now three years dead. Fuck my cunt. Those were the words he had always wanted her to say. He always hoped to get her so hot she could just left go and scream them out loud, but she never had. Now it was too late to give him what he wanted, and perhaps too late for her to ever reach a point where she could utter those three words without cringing. Tommy couldn't do that for her, he was a good kid in his own way, but he didn't excite her as Kenny had. Fuck my cunt. Had that been too much to ask? She would never know.

"Fuck my cunt," she whispered. Tommy was too far gone to hear or care what she said. Perhaps it was for the best.

It dosen't neccessarily have to be parody, you could start a story that way that had a serious theme. By and large curse words are the stock in trade for erotic writers. We use them as descriptive words all the time in our explicit descriptions of what characters do to one another. Even then, for heightened drama or effect we can have the characters speak them and breathe new life into them as dialogue rather than description.

-Colly
 
Colleen, that was absolutely lovely! I'll never forget the time my mother said only the work "Fuck" to me for several days, since I said it to her once as a teen. That was a major shock! Everything I said, she replied, "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" It was awful...

Gauche, you didn't PM me on my story you were supposed to edit, but I received an edit nevertheless. Are you intimidated by me, just don't like me, or can't deal with me?:confused:

Halloween... I'd better get busy on that one.

Smiles,
Wantonica :rose:
 
When I read the average story on Lit, a "cock/cunt" factor above about 2.7 in the first 500 words definitely desensetizes me to anything that might happen later. Words like that with a strong emotive connotation should be used sparingly; like chili powder, it's easy to sprinkle too many in and the entire mess becomes unpalatable.

Personally, I've never used "cunt" in a story (I prefer the alliterative "slime slit"). Curse words as expletives are essential to some stories, but the graphic descriptions of different body parts really torpedo some stories for me.
 
Seattle Zack said:
Personally, I've never used "cunt" in a story (I prefer the alliterative "slime slit"). Curse words as expletives are essential to some stories, but the graphic descriptions of different body parts really torpedo some stories for me.
You see, that's the difference between you left coast folks and us good old boys here in Lone Star state. In light of the re-make of Texas Chainsaw coming out, I'm now a big fan of, "axe wound." :)

--

Do expletives enhance an erotic story? Does overuse make it smut? Should you have "Fuck my cunt." as your opening sentence or are you condemning your story to parody? Where can you possibly go from there without desensitizing readers to the effectiveness of similar words? Gauchecritic

Gauche, IMHO, it's always a case of the language having to match the story and the audience. And to the best of my knowledge, there's no rule or formula for what's "right." That, I suppose, is part of the art of writing.

I've written a few "Romance" stories and, to the best of my fading memory, I believe all of them have some curse words. If my characters are two college kids in the late '60's for instance, it's hard to imagine them having a conversation that didn't include "four letter" words.

Rumple
 
Wantonica said:
Colleen, that was absolutely lovely! I'll never forget the time my mother said only the work "Fuck" to me for several days, since I said it to her once as a teen. That was a major shock! Everything I said, she replied, "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" It was awful...

Gauche, you didn't PM me on my story you were supposed to edit, but I received an edit nevertheless. Are you intimidated by me, just don't like me, or can't deal with me?:confused:

Halloween... I'd better get busy on that one.

Smiles,
Wantonica :rose:

Thanks :)

Just an off the cuff way the line could be used as an opening in something serious. From a matter of personal taste I use the big "C" only very rarely. It has enough negative connotation that it is a very limited descriptive word and only a specific type of character is likely to utter it.

-Colly
 
Scene from Sex And The City

Samantha walks into the office where her boss is yelling at a German business partner.

Richard: "How do you say fuck you in German?"
Samantha: "Fick mich!"
Richard (into the phone) "Fick mich!!!"
Richard (to Samantha): "He hung up!"

Samantha: "Come to think of it, that wasn't fuck you, it was fuck me..."
 
I'd say have to say cursing and expletives like any other language has to be matched to the characters in the story.
Assuming that the author has basic chracter development down
, it shouldn't be to hard to validate the use of cursing. Also if it's ingrainied in the chracter development then overuse isn't really a problem the reader comes to expect such language.
 
The variety of replies is indicative of why I had to ask so many different questions about a single subject, and there were lots more that I deleted, when the post got to essay length.

Perdita,
I think you probably captured my thoughts entirely with your last sentence: An analogy might be sex scenes in film, e.g., some of the most erotic images I've seen have had little nudity or virtual fucking.
But then I remembered a post from a while back which included a piece from I don't recall where which went along the lines of "I fucked her, I fucked her sister, I fucked her mother and I fucked her cousin."
Not arousing by any means but managing to convey something other than the act by speaking only of the act. Wish I could remember where it was from.

Colleen,
I really enjoyed that piece, but you fudged the issue by going on to a different tack: lost love, anonymous sex etc. Still enjoyed it and hope you use (or used) it to springboard to a full story.

Wanonica,
You're mother captured the very essence of shock effect which I wanted to address in this thread. And like Perdita says: daily use = no shock.
Editing. I was following orders from mine Gruppenfheurer WSO. 'Twas she who distributed the lot. If you still want a fist fight about my mauling of your work, I'm ready.

Zack,
Slime slit? Eeeoooough.

Rumple,
= right again.
Another reason for the very many questions. I've always considered the crudeness of language to be an aid to build up, along with shorter sentences or long non-stop sentences too.

Like we all seem to be saying: Depends on 2 things; Audience and skill.

Gauche

Flicka: How many more times are you going to repeat that awful joke?
 
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Gauche,

You began this thread with a joke, of sorts. I thought it might be fitting to bring it to a screeching halt with sort of a joke sent to me by a newspaper friend.

Rumple

--

WHY MEN LIE:

One day, while a woodcutter was cutting a branch of a tree above a river, his axe fell into the river.

When he cried out, the Lord appeared and asked, "Why are you crying?"

The woodcutter replied that his axe has fallen into water, and he needed the axe to make his living.

The Lord went down into the water and reappeared with a golden axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord again went down and came up with a silver axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

Again, the woodcutter replied, "No."

The Lord went down again and came up with an iron axe. "Is this your axe?" the Lord asked.

The woodcutter replied, "Yes."

The Lord was pleased with the man's honesty and gave him all three axes to keep, and the woodcutter went home happy.

Some time later the woodcutter was walking with his wife along the riverbank, and his wife fell into the river. When he cried out, the Lord again appeared and asked him, "Why are you crying?"

"Oh Lord, my wife has fallen into the water!"

The Lord went down into the water and came up with Jennifer Lopez. "Is this your wife?" the Lord asked.

"Yes," cried the woodcutter.

The Lord was furious. "You lied! That is an untruth!"

The woodcutter replied, "Oh, forgive me, Lord. But you see, if I said 'no' to Jennifer Lopez, You would have come up with Catherine Zeta-Jones. If I said 'no' to her, you would have come up with my wife. Had I then said 'yes' you would have given me all three. Lord, I am a poor man and could not take care of three wives, so THAT'S why I said yes to Jennifer Lopez."

The moral of this story is whenever a man lies, it is for a good and honorable reason, and for the benefit of others. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
 
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