Ridiculous sexual language in romance novels?

[SuperWriter]

I was thinking about writing one like 50 shades of grey and read some of them for reference and literally laughed at the replacements for penis and vagina. I understand cunt and gash might be a bit aggressive, but can't you use vagina or slit?

 

[KeithD]

Did 50 Shades sell?

Why should every author only use the words you like? (No, I don't have sympathy for writers who want to rag on the writing of others rather than just doing their own thing and leaving others to rise or fall on how the public receives them.)

 

[NotWise]

Was 50 Shades of Grey a Romance novel? I haven't read it.

Lit offers a huge library of romance stories. You can check the top list there to find out if the sexual language is as in Shades.

On the other hand, as KeithD pointed out, the financial success of the story should tell you that the audience has less of a problem with weird euphemisms than you might think.

 

[SimonDoom]

I read 50 Shades. The whole damn trilogy.

It is definitely a romance. It's a traditional, gothic romance dressed up with an inauthentic BDSM veneer. But it hit a nerve and was hugely successful.

If you haven't read it, it's not as explicit as you might think. It's told from the point of view of a young and inexperienced woman, and the terms she uses to describe anatomy are more chaste than in a lot of Lit stories.

You have to ask, first, if you want to write for a particular audience, or if you want to write for your own artistic purposes.

The romance audience, toward which 50 Shades definitely was pitched, doesn't want to read "cunt" a lot. So James used euphemisms.

 

[SuperWriter]

I read 50 Shades. The whole damn trilogy.

It is definitely a romance. It's a traditional, gothic romance dressed up with an inauthentic BDSM veneer. But it hit a nerve and was hugely successful.

If you haven't read it, it's not as explicit as you might think. It's told from the point of view of a young and inexperienced woman, and the terms she uses to describe anatomy are more chaste than in a lot of Lit stories.

You have to ask, first, if you want to write for a particular audience, or if you want to write for your own artistic purposes.

The romance audience, toward which 50 Shades definitely was pitched, doesn't want to read "cunt" a lot. So James used euphemisms.

I get what you're saying; that makes a lot of since.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Sometimes I get sick of the euphamisms and just write dick and pussy, as crude as they may be. Sometimes I try to use what I'd expect the character to use. They can be repetative words and it can be offputting or detremental to the story.

 

[Jada59]

50 Shades holds no interest to me. I've heard from people who read it that it's badly written.

I do remember being told to give out free samples of a Harlequin Romance book where I used to work. I began to wonder when people wouldn't take them. So I took one home and read it. Thankfully it was small.

Yikes! The men were dark and swarthy. The women had creamy, heaving bosoms.

At the time, a professor told me I should write those under a pen name because they were good money makers. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

50 Shades holds no interest to me. I've heard from people who read it that it's badly written.

I do remember being told to give out free samples of a Harlequin Romance book where I used to work. I began to wonder when people wouldn't take them. So I took one home and read it. Thankfully it was small.

Yikes! The men were dark and swarthy. The women had creamy, heaving bosoms.

At the time, a professor told me I should write those under a pen name because they were good money makers. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I would have. Fuck, I want to. I need all the money I can get. I don't expect to buy a house with books, but I might he able to fix my car and have some petty cash.

 

[Jada59]

I would have. Fuck, I want to. I need all the money I can get. I don't expect to buy a house with books, but I might he able to fix my car and have some petty cash.

I have no clue what the market is now. This was in the 70's. Porn used to pay 10 cents per word. That's not the case any more.

 

[jaF0]

My take on these 'novels' is best portrayed by the swashbuckling pirate episode on 'Married, With Children'

 

[JaneRamsey]

The writing itself in 50 shades of grey was absolute adolescent level garbage. Fans responded way more to the Twilight esq romance than the actual writing. My advice would be to avoid writing anything that 'sounds' like that book.

 

[Handley_Page]

To my mind, the term 'Romance' is a bit of a problem.
The works of authors such as Sir Walter Scott or H. Ryder Haggard, are/were often described as 'Romances'.
Then we got what in the UK is published by Mills & Boon (there are others, but in my youth they were It (when I was young & ill, it was about all I could get).

Over a few decades, the more lurid stories appeared.
And the reader can get a lot these days. . . .

 

[BuckyDuckman]

I was thinking about writing one like 50 shades of grey and read some of them for reference and literally laughed at the replacements for penis and vagina. I understand cunt and gash might be a bit aggressive, but can't you use vagina or slit?

It's a matter of catering to your audience. Let's take it out of the sex realm for a moment. If you were writing for one audience, you might describe a person pulling out a gun. For another audience, the gun becomes a pistol or revolver or even a .38 pistol. For yet another audience, you would do better to describe it as a Ruger LCR-LG 38 Spl+P revolver with crimson trace lasergrips. You might even mention it's ultra-light alloy frame.

Applying the same reasoning to body parts: his lust showed vs. his engorged manhood vs his throbbing, veiny meat missile of lust and satisfaction.

When writing for the magazine market, we used to send off for Writer's Guidelines along with our SASE.

 

[tomlitilia]

Whenever I can get away with it, I use nothing. We all know what parts are involved, and e.g. "he pushed his cock inside her pussy" can often be shortened to "he pushed inside her."

 

[MelissaBaby]

Sometimes I get sick of the euphamisms and just write dick and pussy, as crude as they may be. Sometimes I try to use what I'd expect the character to use. They can be repetative words and it can be offputting or detremental to the story.

I decide which terms to use based on the point of view of the characters and their appropriateness to the situation. In that, it is no different than writing any other kind of scene.

Imagine the characters go out to eat. If they go to McDonalds. I might say "They ate Big Macs and slurped down Cokes." If they were having an elegant dinner in a five star restaurant, they would "dine on beef wellington and sip a fine red wine".

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Consider the many 'styles' of writing erotica here on this one site. Some readers drool over impossibly large cocks (not 'organs' or 'penises') and painfully large bosoms - plot be damned, I want a stroker. Others want plot, deeper personalities, more description. To some, 'cunt', 'prick' and such are turn-offs; their tastes are their tastes.

The 50 Shades series has been described as 'mommy porn', something aimed at otherwise-staid women who would never consider looking at S&M otherwise. Whether or not one considers it well-written or adolescent pulp is immaterial. It was written for a specific audience and did very, very well in terms of sales. By that one metric, it was successful.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Whenever I can get away with it, I use nothing. We all know what parts are involved, and e.g. "he pushed his cock inside her pussy" can often be shortened to "he pushed inside her."

I often do just that, but I'm writing plot heavy, relationship oriented long form romance. That approach might not work for someone going for more immediate erotic impact.

 

[tomlitilia]

I often do just that, but I'm writing plot heavy, relationship oriented long form romance. That approach might not work for someone going for more immediate erotic impact.

My stories are quite pornographical in their nature, at least such that the main story arc builds towards an erotic climax. But it still doesn't necessitate a lot of genital descriptions. When they are necessary, I use cock or erection (men are usually erect when the cock is worth binging up, pun intended) and pussy or cunt, the latter only sparsely and in heated moments.

 

[MelissaBaby]

My stories are quite pornographical in their nature, at least such that the main story arc builds towards an erotic climax. But it still doesn't necessitate a lot of genital descriptions. When they are necessary, I use cock or erection (men are usually erect when the cock is worth binging up, pun intended) and pussy or cunt, the latter only sparsely and in heated moments.

Do you think there are some readers for whom particular words are triggers, that they would not be satisfied if they aren't used?

 

[tomlitilia]

Do you think there are some readers for whom particular words are triggers, that they would not be satisfied if they aren't used?

No, not really. I think the bigger hazard is to use (or overuse) certain terms. I occasionally use "slut" in my stories, though the point is to use it as a positive epithet. I know that's hard for some readers to accept.

 

[KeithD]

Do you think there are some readers for whom particular words are triggers, that they would not be satisfied if they aren't used?

Yes, because, over the years, there have been posters here who have started threads by saying that, threads where lots of other posters piled on. The kicker is the "some" word. Figuring out the balancing of the competing "some" preferences becomes maddening and invariably settles down to "write your own voice," or, as you put it in another post, "write dialogue in the separate voices of your separate characters."

I'm sure there are some words I'd never use even to establish the character (like the n word), but I probably avoid them mainly because they trigger me.

 

[Kantarii]

I would suggest using the words for the audience you are trying to target to read your stories. That makes perfect sense to me. I steer clear of certain words in my stories ( ie. Cunt being one of the main words.) I use it sparingly and only when I when to shine a negative light on an antagonist for particular reasons. Again, keep your target audience in mind when choosing the words that are considered trigger wordsKant

 

[KeithD]

Or have faith that audiences are targeting the authors they want to read based on the author establishing his/her own style and language sets rather than striving for largest-audience-possible pabulum.

 

[Yorkiechai]

Or have faith that audiences are targeting the authors they want to read based on the author establishing his/her own style and language sets rather than striving for largest-audience-possible pabulum.

Indeed! Interesting how things shift as triggers as well. As a female, I'd always found "cunt" to be an extremely offensive term but, when writing, found "pussy" to be quite silly sounding and vagina, on the other hand, to be too scientific (although the diminutizating of clitoris to clit feels comfortable), until a friend mentioned to me, and I confirmed through research, that cunt has its roots in Anglo Saxon (I'm a Canadian of English/German ancestry) and now I have no problem with including cunt in my writing.

 

[SuperWriter]

I would suggest using the words for the audience you are trying to target to read your stories. That makes perfect sense to me. I steer clear of certain words in my stories ( ie. Cunt being one of the main words.) I use it sparingly and only when I when to shine a negative light on an antagonist for particular reasons. Again, keep your target audience in mind when choosing the words that are considered trigger wordsKant

I think this is pretty good advice