Authors - Biggest Pet Peeves?

[EmilyMiller]

Authors - Biggest Pet Peeves?​

I read less here than I probably should (I still read non-erotic books avidly). A lot of what I read is alpha or beta reading.

In that, my biggest criticism is, why did they do that? What were they feeling?

Now I write [im]pure strokers where the only point is to get the reader to cum ASAP. I don’t mean them. I mean works intended to be actual stories.

Often something is described, say the FMC stripping, but nothing is mentioned about the effect this is having on the onlooking F/MMC. Apart from: it made me throb / wet.

I like sex and sexy acts described as much as the next person, but it’s even more stimulating if you can put yourself into the shoes (stilettos) of the character and feel what they feel.

Emily

 

[mildlyaroused]

To assert that there is 'no cardboard at all in stroke stories'

To be fair, they actually said "in the simple erotica [stroke stories] I'm supporting." It wasn't a sweeping argument for all so-called 'stroke stories.'

Personally I think it's important to distinguish between writing and storytelling. 'Storytelling' can fall under the umbrella term 'writing', but let's separate them for a moment. Storytelling encompasses characters, themes and narrative. Writing is prose.

Well-written stories can exist without nuanced and deep characters, themes or narratives. Pure erotica - a story confined to a single lust-driven sex scene - can be well-written. Prose and command of language can be enough if your intent is to illicit sexual excitement (the literal definition of erotica), not to craft a masterpiece.

I can tell if something is well-written by an author's turn of phrase, or choice of language, or flow of prose. I can call something well-written by the way its rhythm pleases the tongue, or its imagery pleases the mind.

I don't want to win the Pulitzer with my erotica. My characters and narratives are a vessel for arousal. I don't go back to edit once I'm done. I don't consider my prose or imagery to the same extent I do in my novels. That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't well-written.

'Stroke stories' might not be literary, but neither is a lot of mainstream publication. How is a 'stroke story' any different from the innumerable thrillers and crime novels that clog up shelves in popular fiction aisles? The ones where the author publishes thirty books in one series with one cardboard detective as the MC all the way through. I'd argue it isn't. One serves to thrill, one serves to arouse; and neither will win the Pulitzer.

It doesn't have to be deep to be "of much quality at all" or "the real stuff."

 

[OffNSFW]

Putting together a long string of crowd-pleasing events and calling it a "story." Superficial bits and pieces, little pandering moments, a checklist of things already proven successful in other, better stories. You see this everywhere from amateur sites like this one to movies that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make.

You know when this is happening. It's painfully obvious. It feels like storytelling by committee.

Real stories have structure. They please their audience not by trying to second-guess what they'll like, but by playing fair, by building tension, by earning that moment of release. They're not afraid of alienating people by challenging what they think they want.

I realize an awful lot of people do believe that art is nothing more than a constantly flowing pipeline that provides blips of pleasure. But I believe that bad art creates an audience for itself, not the other way around. I also believe that, sooner or later, people get tired of being pandered to, and that's usually when they discover art that gives them something they didn't realize they needed. Something they may very well remember forever.

I wrote a story called "Claire's Belly" that ends on a note of disappointment. (I didn't leave out the sex. There's plenty of it to go around.) There was quite a conversation in the comments section, between people who got what I was going for and--in my opinion--people who've been conditioned to believe that a story is doing something wrong if it doesn't indulge their demands at every turn.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

To be fair, they actually said "in the simple erotica [stroke stories] I'm supporting." It wasn't a sweeping argument for all so-called 'stroke stories.'

To be fair it's just part of AG's argument stretched over several posts that I am just wrong in my assessment of stroke material.

Well-written stories can exist without nuanced and deep characters, themes or narratives. Pure erotica - a story confined to a single lust-driven sex scene - can be well-written. Prose and command of language can be enough if your intent is to illicit sexual excitement (the literal definition of erotica), not to craft a masterpiece.

Sure, and they do. They're just quite rare (so rare that they're almost not worth the effort to search for) since they have no plot elements and lack depth, they have to rely on mere style voice and flow to engage the reader, or else make a bee line to the kink, which I think that I have already made clear more than once.

How is a 'stroke story' any different from the innumerable thrillers and crime novels that clog up shelves in popular fiction aisles?

I have already argued (although it may have been in a different thread) that Harlequin romances are equally thin, formulaic and appallingly weak. I'm sure there are other formula type genres that are equally bad and thoroughly uninteresting to read.

 

[GemmaGemmaGemma]

I got back into writing recently and I have spent a fair bit of time hitting 'said synonym' on google so threads like this are good for teaching me it's just not that necessary. I'm going to try and phase it out ha!

 

[KeithD]

I got back into writing recently and I have spent a fair bit of time hitting 'said synonym' on google so threads like this are good for teaching me it's just not that necessary. I'm going to try and phase it out ha!

Yep "said" is just fine most of the time. It's used so often that it sort of disappears in a read, while still keeping clear who said what. That's pretty much what you want to be happening.

 

[SimonDoom]

Scrivener has an option to highlight adverbs. I dropped in an excerpt from King's "Salem's Lot":

View attachment 2312667

21 adverbs in two paragraphs (counting "all right" and "after all" as one each).

To be fair, from what I recall of "On Writing", it was focussed on adverbs that just add a little detail to description, the "-ly" kind. I don't think he meant to suggest that writers should cut adverbs like "not", "never", or "maybe" which significantly change the meaning of a statement rather than just refining it. Many writers might not even realise those are adverbs.

Even making allowances for that, though, he still has quite a few "refinement" adverbs which could be removed with no great change to the meaning, including two "-ly" ones.

Adverbs should earn their keep, but we don't need to kill all of them.

I

Scrivener has an option to highlight adverbs. I dropped in an excerpt from King's "Salem's Lot":

View attachment 2312667

21 adverbs in two paragraphs (counting "all right" and "after all" as one each).

To be fair, from what I recall of "On Writing", it was focussed on adverbs that just add a little detail to description, the "-ly" kind. I don't think he meant to suggest that writers should cut adverbs like "not", "never", or "maybe" which significantly change the meaning of a statement rather than just refining it. Many writers might not even realise those are adverbs.

Even making allowances for that, though, he still has quite a few "refinement" adverbs which could be removed with no great change to the meaning, including two "-ly" ones.

Adverbs should earn their keep, but we don't need to kill all of them.

I agree with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with that passage's use of adverbs. One reason is that it's in free, indirect style, so we are meant to understand that the words represent the spontaneous thoughts and impressions of the POV character moving through that scene (Ben Mears, if I recall correctly). The other is that I think he's talking about the "ly" adverbs.

Example:


"Wanna come up to my room," she smiled seductively.


That sort of thing drives me crazy. First, because of the use of "smile" as a tag, which is wrong because you cannot "smile" a spoken statement. And, second, because the ly adverb is superfluous; we already know from her statement that she's acting seductively and we don't have to be retold with an adverb. It's like an overbearing soundtrack telling me what my emotional reaction should be rather than the action itself.

When I see too much of this thing it reminds me of "Tom Swifties" I learned in school, like "That thermometer is turned up too high," he said heatedly. Or, worse, "I dropped my toothpaste," he said crestfallenly.

 

[mildlyaroused]

When I see too much of this thing it reminds me of "Tom Swifties" I learned in school, like "That thermometer is turned up too high," he said heatedly. Or, worse, "I dropped my toothpaste," he said crestfallenly.

Tom told an expansive story about the day he lost his trousers!

 

[Djmac1031]

I've probably been guilty of adverb overuse. Probably? I meant definitely. Something I've been working on for sure.

I'm probably worse with adjectives though. Especially double adjectives. Sometimes even triple adjectives. "Her large, round, firm breasts."

Just stop it, DJ. They're breasts. Odds are they're at least somewhat round. At least chop that one out.

My personal pet peeve in any story I'm reading is One Dimensional Characters.

As has been mentioned, there is a phenomenon of what I like to call Inexplicable Sexual Activity (ISA) in many LE stories, and it's almost always due to One Dimensional Characters.

If your story reads like a transcript of any modern porno, I'm out. I'd rather just go watch the video.

 

[AG31]

"I dropped my toothpaste," he said crestfallenly.

 

[cababge]

Tom told an expansive story about the day he lost his trousers!

This one took a while to get. Expansive isn't an adverb though

 

[mildlyaroused]

This one took a while to get. Expansive isn't an adverb though

No, but 'expansively'... Come now, we can't be having that.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Simply put, cheap titles. No attempt at anything more creative than, Nailing GFs Mom or Cock Sucking Teacher.

 

[SimonDoom]

No, but 'expansively'... Come now, we can't be having that.

I've seen it as an example. Something like "I lost my trousers," Tom said expansively.

To be a true Tom Swiftie it must be an adverb that plays on the quoted dialogue.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I've seen it as an example. Something like "I lost my trousers," Tom said expansively.

To be a true Tom Swiftie it must be an adverb that plays on the quoted dialogue.

I know!!! I was sadly compelled to break the Tom Swifty.

Unfortunately "I lost my trousers" is not expansive by any stretch of the imagination.

Guilty as charged. Tom told his story without quotation marks.

 

[SimonDoom]

Simply put, cheap titles. No attempt at anything more creative than, Nailing GFs Mom or Cock Sucking Teacher.

Oh, I could not disagree with you more on this one, but it depends on the category/subject. I see mom/son incest stories as inherently over-the-top and ridiculous, and the title should match the tone. What should I do, swap out "Mom, You're A Hucow" for "Revelations About My Mother"? Be serious. Go for the buzz. Grab your audience.

This is my mantra, it's worked for me, and I'm sticking with it: the text of your story is your art; the rest is marketing.

 

[Rob_Royale]

Oh, I could not disagree with you more on this one, but it depends on the category/subject. I see mom/son incest stories as inherently over-the-top and ridiculous, and the title should match the tone. What should I do, swap out "Mom, You're A Hucow" for "Revelations About My Mother"? Be serious. Go for the buzz. Grab your audience.

This is my mantra, it's worked for me, and I'm sticking with it: the text of your story is your art; the rest is marketing.

I see your point but when I'm scanning for a story, one cheap title gets lost with the others. And I wouldn't call Mom, You're a Hucow a cheap title. It's imaginative.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I agree with you. I don't think there's anything wrong with that passage's use of adverbs. One reason is that it's in free, indirect style, so we are meant to understand that the words represent the spontaneous thoughts and impressions of the POV character moving through that scene (Ben Mears, if I recall correctly). The other is that I think he's talking about the "ly" adverbs.

Yep, and even though the two "ly" adverbs there might not be essential, I think the "exactly" at least is defensible. At this point in a horror story, one usually wants to create a sense of foreboding without going too hard too early. We haven't reached the "shit, vampires!" point of the story, so the foreboding needs to come from somewhere else.

Here, it comes partly from Ben's jumpiness, but also from his attempt to convince himself that things are going to be okay. We don't yet know why it wouldn't be, but "that barn looks just like it used to, so maybe everything will be all right!" is very unpersuasive, the kind of thing people tell themselves when deep down they don't believe it'll be all right. The "exactly" adds to that impression of denial - nothing's ever going to be exactly the same after so many years away, he's trying way too hard, and that creates a bit more tension.

Example:

"Wanna come up to my room," she smiled seductively.

That sort of thing drives me crazy. First, because of the use of "smile" as a tag, which is wrong because you cannot "smile" a spoken statement. And, second, because the ly adverb is superfluous; we already know from her statement that she's acting seductively and we don't have to be retold with an adverb. It's like an overbearing soundtrack telling me what my emotional reaction should be rather than the action itself.

That style often gets me wondering if the author has doubts about whether they've adequately conveyed the mood/etc. in the places where it should already have been conveyed. Usually, that line would be preceded by some dialogue or other developments that show them developing attraction, enough to make the invitation seem natural, but it's hard to assess one's own work.

Other issue here is that there are so many ways to do "seductively", and describing one of them would be an opportunity for characterisation. Is she speaking in a throaty voice? Batting her eyelids? Popping a button? Deep-throating a banana while maintaining eye contact? All of those say different things about her style.

 

[StillStunned]

Deep-throating a banana while maintaining eye contact?

A woman who can say "Wanna come up to my room?" while deepthroating a banana would be very difficult to resist.

 

[Bramblethorn]

A woman who can say "Wanna come up to my room?" while deepthroating a banana would be very difficult to resist.

Plot twist: it's written on the banana.

 

[StillStunned]

Plot twist: it's written on the banana.

Bonus points if she stops when all that's left is "Wanna come"

 

[SimonDoom]

I use unnecessary intensifier/qualifier adverbs all the time when I'm writing in a casual first person POV or a third person POV where I'm holding close to the character's POV, because people actually (there's an example) think and speak this way. They qualify things all the time with adverb/adverb phrases like "pretty," "fairly," "somewhat," "really," "kind of," "absolutely," "exactly," etc. In fact, I find myself often trimming these words from my initial draft. It seems more, like, realistic, to write in a way that people talk, you know?

 

[Rob_Royale]

A character that is "hot enough to be a porn star." If that's your best shot at a description of an attractive person, maybe writing isn't for you.

 

[StillStunned]

A character that is "hot enough to be a porn star." If that's your best shot at a description of an attractive person, maybe writing isn't for you.

"Desperate enough to be a porn star", on the other hand...