
I'll admit it. I'm having trouble with the latest of the Grantham, CO series. I want the gang, you know the ones…Caitlin, Marianne, Leila, Crys and Frank-kay to interact with Zoe, Trevor and Samantha but haven't found a way to do it yet. And, it's driving me NUTS! (Yeah, I know. It's a short trip.)
So, instead, I bumbled around with Jax's story.
What IS it about men with an 'X' in their names?
Because, frankly? I fell totally in love with this guy. But, then, we all know I have a weakness for people that want to change their lives, to grow and become the people that have always been there, hidden and crouching inside them, all along.
I want to also talk about writing sex scenes because I get a LOT of emails about them. To answer your questions…No (4), yeah (12), on occasion(19), I didn't but he did (3), you'd think (12), uh-uh (5), and are you freaking kidding me (9)? And, finally… girl, you've got that and your complaining about not getting this (15)? One question, though. Is his dad still alive and is he single?
Sex scenes are HARD to write, no pun intended.
First, you've got to worry about if you've done your build up (the foreplay) enough. Does she want him, really? Is there joy in his boy-toy? Would I, in the ad naseum of edit re-reads, want to be with him, like, you know, in THAT way?
Then, there's body placements. Where are they? How are they dressed or undressed? Who's hand goes where? What's the response to this touch, that caress? Who's the aggressor and who's reacting? Do they talk or are they quiet?
It's not just tab A going into slot B. Oh, heck, no. None of us enjoy reading just the basics. Never mind the consideration if the story has too much or too little of the physical act.
Are you getting it yet?
And the words. Holy, moly, the words. Do you know I have four thesaurus (how do you plurarlize that?) I use when I write? There's the 'synonyms' I use on the MSWord program, Roget's Super Thesaurus, dictionary.com's version as well as (OMG) Val Kovalin's "How to Write Sexy Descriptions"--which is blazingly hot and should, in my opinion, be required reading for EVERYONE.
Let's face it, you can't use the word 'tongue' seven times in three sentences. It even gets old even when just you type it. So, what do you do? You look it up. Then, oh yes ma'am, THEN you type words like mouthed, licked, sucked or laved, wetly circled and the like.
See?
Big difference. Huge!
I'm hoping to have Everything Falls out by the end of this week.
Then, and only then, will I go back to working on Bewitchments.
But, if any of you have any ideas on how to get Cait, Marianne, Leila, Crys or Frank-kay into the local sex shop, please let me know!
To Reese, Lori, Rita, Margarita and Jenny (my girls!), couldn't do any of this without you.
Smiling and waving into the scorch of an Arizona summer morning,
~J.A.