The Peculiarities of Writing/Editing Erotic Fiction

So I recently finished editing my first erotic fiction novel, Just One Night. It was an interesting experience in that it really is different from editing other kinds of fiction. Before this my editors looked at all my manuscripts (save one) and asked me to trim this or that passage down. Longer isn't necessarily better, get to the point, how does this scene move the plot forward and so on.

But here I have an editor's note saying, "I think we need to extend this sex scene by a page or two."

A page or two? The sex scene being referenced was already four pages long! As you can read in this excerpt, a character known as Mr. Dade has my protagonist, Kasie, in a chair, against a wall and on the floor in this particular love making session so my feeling was, that's enough! Girlfriend needs a nap!

And then it occurred to me that maybe my editor wasn't counting the foreplay as being part of the sex scene (typical man, right?). So I looked to see how I could actually expand the sex which was harder than I thought it would be. As a woman I value sex and foreplay fairly equally but as an author I find foreplay much more interesting. You can get more creative with foreplay. Even Kama Sutra was only able to come up with 64 positions, but when it comes to foreplay there are hundreds of options. I read a Cosmo once that suggested you get mangos and combs involved in your foreplay! Mangos and combs! Of course I don't remember what it is you're supposed to do with them...I think you're supposed to chew up some chilled mango before going down on your guy while the mushed fruit's still in your mouth...that would be bad for me because I'm afraid I would forget myself and start chewing again at a really inopportune moment. God only knows where the comb comes in...but I digress (full disclosure, there are no produce or hair products involved in any of my sex scenes...although my characters do find some creative uses for expensive scotch). But my point is that I give Cosmo props for their creativity. Mangos and combs...that's the kind of stuff that just can't easily be included in the act of actual intercourse.

In the end I did lengthen the sex scene, not by a page or two but certainly by sevearal paragraphs and I can see now that my editor had a point.

But then he had another request...he wanted me to get more graphic and descriptive in regards to the actions of Mr. Dade while he's administering oral sex to Kasie. At first I thought, "Sure, I can do that..."

And then I realized that I had a problem. For me to get graphic about what he's doing I'd have to know what he's doing and honestly guys? Women don't know what you're doing when you go down there. Every woman who has ever told me how great a particular guy is at oral sex has always said something along the lines of, "I don't know what he was doing down there but it was great!"

That's the thing, we can't actually see what you're up to...and even if we could we probably wouldn't want to. It's just not a moment when most women want to take notes.

But I needed to be more graphic...

So fifteen minutes later I'm reading an About.com article on How To Give A Woman Head and wondering about what's going on with my literary career. It's not that I'm unhappy about writing erotica. I actually am enjoying writing Kasie and Mr. Dade's story quite a bit! I like my characters, I like my story and their inner and external conflicts and I think I'm pretty good at writing sex scenes. But this is definitely a different kind of research. Between this and the research I do for my murder mysteries I write...well, if my computer ever gets confiscated I'm in trouble.  It'll look like I'm a homicidal, bi-curious nymphomaniac.

For the record, I'm not...but if I'm ever called upon to write a book about a homicidal, bi-curious nympho I'm ready.

Kyra Davis

Bestselling Author of:

The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series, 

SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING

And the upcoming

JUST ONE NIGHT erotic fiction trilogy

Read the first few pages here!

The Dangerous Subtlety Of Sexism

When I turned 36 I was told that I could officially be a cougar since the definition of "cougar" was a woman who dated a man who could be at least half her age and have it still be legal.

I didn't like that. I'm the first to admit that I joke around with the word "cougar" all the time but I do understand the inherent insult. When a man dates someone who is half his age he's being a man. When a woman does it she's being a predatory animal.

Double standards in regards to women and sexism are frequently pooh-poohed. Jennifer Weiner has frequently pointed out how so called "women's fiction" is ignored and scorned by critics while fiction written by men, even escapist fiction, is more likely to at least merit a review. Some supported her but many lambasted her, telling her the only reason people weren't reviewing her work is because the quality wasn't good enough, her subject matter wasn't compelling enough, her entire genre just wasn't up to par. The people who make those kinds of statements understandably look to the Hillary Clintons and Nikki Haleys of the world and think sexism just isn't an issue anymore. If women aren't getting the same opportunities that their male counterparts are getting then they must be doing something wrong.

To test this theory a professor at Harvard Business school recently did a little experiment. He examined the real life work experience/career path of successful Silicon Valley types. He gave the information for one guy's career to one class and gave the information of a women's career to another. Then he asked each class if they would hire the person they were studying. According to the students, the guy seemed very likable. He was a person they felt they could work with and, most importantly, trust, so yes they would absolutely hire him. But the class that studied the woman didn't like her much at all. They felt she was too aggressive, self-agrandizing and perhaps not all that trustworthy. So no, they weren't giving her the job.

"That's an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it."

The kicker is that the guy and the woman were the same person. All the professor did was change the name from Heidi to Howard.

I doubt that the students in the class that scored Heidi so poorly consider themselves to be sexist and I know that many of the students who said Heidi was too aggressive were women. That last point's important because frequently when a woman defends supposedly sexist behavior (particularly on a societal level) many seem to believe it's proof that the behavior she's defending must not be sexist after all. But the truth is that maybe the woman doing the defending has had certain sexist concepts so fully ingrained in her from such a young age that she doesn't even recognize them as being sexist.

I'm not one of those people who thinks both sexes are the same and the only difference is upbringing and societal norms. I do think women and men are very different from one another in the way they think, act and prioritize. I believe that's more nature than nurture. I also think that when a woman does the things that a man does she's often judged for it. Society loves to pay lip service to how much it loves individualism but it doesn't like those kinds of anomalies.  And I think that while society is more accepting of women who embrace what they consider to be more traditional femininity they still rank that femininity as being somehow inferior to masculinity. Books about family and relationships are less important than books about battles. Newscasters and political pundits love to tell us that we're falling behind in math and science (both consider masculine pursuits) and must catch up but we never hear about how we're not as well read as we once were or that less and less students are versed in humanities (considered to be feminine pursuits). Music programs are always cut before sports programs, and escapist fiction written by men is much more likely to be reviewed by the New York Times.

The problem with sexism these days is that, like much modern racism, it's subtle. There are so many women accomplishing so much we fail to see that there's a problem anymore...which is the quickest way to lose the progress we've already made.

Kyra Davis
Bestselling Author of:
The Sophie Katz Murder Mystery Series, 
and 
SO MUCH FOR MY HAPPY ENDING