What is the best way to construct this sentence?

[AG31]

I got to noodling about this when I got inspired by a bit in a book I was reading. It will probably never see a real story, since I no longer have fantasies feature female MCs. But I would like to pin it down and put it in the Writer's Notebook thread.

Her whole body was was suffused with warmth. It focussed/was concentrated deliciously(??) on/gathered deliciously in her breasts/nipples and vagina/between her legs.

I'm not particularly happy with any of the choices of words. Hoping you brilliant writers can come up with something better!

 

[TheRedLantern]

Her whole body was was suffused with warmth. It focussed/was concentrated deliciously(??) on her breasts/nipples and vagina/between her legs.

Personally, what I'd do is scrap this whole bit and rewrite it from scratch. I don't mean that as an insult, and i wind up saying the same thing about my work all the time (I'm pretty sure the people who have beta read my work will tell you that I don't get too precious about ripping out chunks and rewriting them)

This bit screams "the author's heart is not into it." Passive voice. Adverb. Clinical words. "Suffused." (again, not trying to beat up your writing, just trying to show what it is that I'm seeing and how I approach a revision for something that doesn't feel like it's working the way I want)

Maybe something more like this:

Warmth spread through her body. A bead of sweat rolled between the curves of her breasts. Her hands pressed against her stomach and slid downwards, drawn to the heat of her own sex.

I still don't totally love that, and I would make another pass or two over it before I considered it "good." But my boyfriend has decided to make breakfast and only a great fool says "no" to free waffles.

 

[EmilyMiller]

The heat spread through me irresistibly, each fiber, every nerve, alive and tingling. Heart pounding, breath faltering. And the surge of stimulation arrowed inexorably toward my bullet hard nipples, and my throbbing, needy clit.

 

[SimonDoom]

Totally agree with TheRedLantern's advice here.

"Body was suffused with warmth" is passive, and it's a cliche. No insult -- I think we've all dealt with writing choices exactly like this. I know I have, and I'm sure I've been guilty of this sort of thing countless times.

Scrap the thing and focus on the one thing you really want to say. Decide exactly which body part you want to focus on, rather than the "body" generally. Then pick your verb. Verbs are the key. Make it active voice.

Boil it down to the essentials. "Her vagina warmed at the touch of his finger." In this case you turn "warmth" into the verb "warm." You focus on one body part. And you focus on the thing that's doing the warming.

It's still a bit of a metaphor/cliche, because, really, does the vagina get "warm" when somebody touches it? Not exactly, but it probably DOES accurately describe how a woman might feel when that's happening.

The key is to burn all the cliches, passive voice, and generalizations to the ground and start from the beginning by trying to express the point as precisely as possible. Only you can decide that, because you know what you want to say. We don't.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Her whole body was was suffused with warmth. It focussed/was concentrated deliciously(??) on/gathered deliciously in her breasts/nipples and vagina/between her legs.

Her body sang with the thrill of arousal. Her nipples tightened, her clit throbbed.

"Darling, more tea?"

(It was an EB café, after all.)

 

[TheRedLantern]

These threads are gold, @AG31 ! Thank you for opening your work up for us to feast on. I love revising prose and I enjoy seeing how other people approach it. @EmilyMiller has some great word choice in her version, and @ElectricBlue has a great minimalist style that is worth examining (I confess to having studied his previous Hammered story when I was trying to write mine)

Edit: And @SimonDoom agreed with me, which reveals him to be a person of taste, intellect, and quality

 

[Dreamerman77]

How about something simple like: Her body bloomed with heat...