December 12, 2007 • Print This Post
Why is it so important? Because you have only a few seconds to get a reader’s attention in a bookstore or online. Writing a historical? Beware the overly lyrical opener. A lonely bird warbled in a glade, its piercing notes a cry of longing inchoate. The dark-shrouded sky was suffused with dreamy pink as the gentle sun peeked shyly over the rugged mountains that scratched the low-hanging belly of the clouds above … Um, better get the rugged hero into the glade and skip the mountains. Skip the sound effects and stage lighting too. Try not to use words like inchoate. Scratched a low-hanging belly? Reminds me of a pregnant alley cat. And it goes without saying that clouds will be above it all. Can the proliferating adjectives while you’re at it and get to the action right away. Writing a scary contemporary thriller? If you start off with a prologue that begins the dream was always the same, in which the heroine or hero foresees most of the book, thus guaranteeing a browsing reader will put it back on the bookstore shelf, I will personally come to your house and shoot you. Dreams are never the same, but that sentence sure as hell is, word for word. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen it as the first line of mysteries, thrillers, romantic suspense, paranormals, and more.
Get to the point. It’s easy to fall in love with your own lovely, lovely words but readers won’t. They want to be entertained. Unless you are writing fiction that is so hopelessly “literary” no one will ever read it, you are writing entertainment. Here’s what readers want…
Emotion! Power! Blood! Sex! Death! Cheap thrills! Big laughs! Brave dogs! Plump tits! Huge dicks! Hidden treasure! Weird aliens! Justice with no damn blindfold! Popular and successful writers deal in extremes and they serve them up fast. Never forget that. Yes, an occasional bestselling book meanders. Mostly not, though. Some writers seem to be born knowing how to keep up a breakneck pace, many more learn by doing. Some never learn and languish in the slush pile. However, slow pace can be a common problem with midlist writers in mid-career. Once the first two or three books are done and published, complacency can set in, and a going-through-the-motions tone is the result. Getting your butt in the chair to write is only part of staying the course in your career. But don’t just sit there. The Hounds of Plot should be snapping at your butt and keeping you on the edge of your seat, and snapping at the hero and heroine’s butts too. By the way, the wise writer always bestows a beautiful manly muscular butt on the hero, of course, for reasons that have nothing to do with pace—and you can give him long, strong legs—and dimples–and, um, other stuff. Just in case the pace slows down.
Posted by Hilary Sares @ 6:00 am • Filed under: Hilary Sares
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Gotcha.
Emotional deaths…bloody sex…cheap aliens with tits…plump dogs…powerful, funny justice…weird treasures…hidden dicks…
er, um. Maybe I better read this again.
Seriously, all great points to remember!
Yes! Give this woman a contract!
I’m so posting this on the wall above my desk. *grin* I’ve got the brave dogs part down. I do love me a book with a brave dog (and everything else on the list, barring the aliens, though I can see where those would have their place).
I think “Justice with no damn blindfold!” is my favorite mandate, though. Gives me all sorts of ideas.
Love this! In books we can go to the extremes we avoid in life! I need to print this and slap it on my computer.
Well, of course. Morning, Hilary! Thanks for the words of inspiration. Now, back to the wip. The hounds are snapping.
Tracy G.
To Kalen: we love twisted. Also warped. Freaky vengeance is lots of fun, go for it. To Tracy: cowboys put the male American butt on the romance map. To Jennifer: how do you avoid extremes in real life? I have never managed to do this.
“To Tracy: cowboys put the male American butt on the romance map.”
Amen! I just put another one on my map.
Tracy G.
Well, CRAP! Now I know why my WIP seems so bland. It’s that frikkin’ opening line: The dream was always the same…
Looks like it’s back to the drawing board…
Yeah, Hilary, and you are never going to let me forget that I started one of my books with the hateful phrase “The dream was always the same,” are ya? In my own defense, of course, it was my very first single title, so I was very innocent. But still.
Love the good advice, and its always good to hear it again, even though after how many books is it? I’ve definitely heard it before! I try always to take it to heart.
I will now go and revise my manuscript, making the tits plumper and the butts tighter and the dogs braver and the thrills cheaper! Maybe I’d better not make the dicks any bigger, though. There is a point of diminishing returns, when it comes to, um, those . . . before I know it, I’ll be segueing into the category of wierd aliens.
Shannon
Shannon, I didn’t mention your name! Wouldn’t, uh, dream of it. But OK, you outed yourself as a former member of The Dream Was Always The Same club. Now the whole world knows.
It may be the only mistake you ever made.
One of the professors in my undergrad creative writing program at Hollins (proving that not all MFA programs are useless!) gave our class a great piece of advice: In fiction, you can usually cut the first 3 paragraphs to the first whole page; In poetry, you can usually cut the fist stanza or two. Much as you may love the language, those bits are usually part of your warm-up, not part of your finished work.
I frequently find I have to go back and find the “hooky beginning” that’s been lost in the warm-up. It’s always there, it’s just buried under too much scene setting.
Emotion! (check)
Power! (check)
Blood! (hell yes)
Sex! (check check check)
Death! (heads literally roll)
Cheap thrills! (I’m all about the cheap)
Big laughs! (check, despite cutting the elephant joke)
Plump tits! (check)
Huge dicks! (check, though precise dimensions are left to reader imagination)
Justice with no damn blindfold! (slimebag gets put in his place by the villain, of all people)
I strongly feel djinn, werewolves, and dragons compensate for lack of weird aliens. Or am I tragically mistaken?
Does it have to be a brave dog? Can it be evil instead? Otherwise, I’ll have to recast Muffin, the vicious toy poodle.
(Skulks off to hide treasure, for which there is no substitute.)
Kerry, supernatural critters of all kinds fall into the weird aliens category. Evil toy poodles do too.
Kalen, your professor got it right.
My cowboys always have nice tight butts and big peckers.
All great points to remember, Hilary. Love the “justice with no damned blindfold.” Yeah, just what I needed to hear.
YAH for big dicks and cheap thrills, WOOOHOOOO!!!!!!! See, this is one of many reasons why I puffy heart you, Hilary
Hmmm. Okay, so I guess you’re okay with my latest hero having a dick the size of Mt. Everest, eh? How about big juicy dangling balls? Come on, that’s sexy too!!!
Off to add more bounce to her tits and more schling to his schlong…
Oh snap, I forgot. I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question in our many conversations, so hell, thought I’d ask your thoughts here. What do you think about authors talking about bodily fluids? Seriously! I know it’s erotic romance, but hell, do I REALLY need to know she gushed fiery hot liquid on his torgid cock? Or that she oozed thick white cream from her love portal? Hell, if a chick is that uh…gushy, she might need to seek some medical attention quick fast and in a hurry, I’m thinking. And if it’s thick and white, that sounds to me like she really has need of medical attention. now. do not walk. RUN your ass to the ER
Kim is very shy. Please watch what you say around her, ladies.
OK, Kim, re: bodily fluids. Subtlety is key, especially if the character in the throes of bliss is female. But advertising has dibs on words like “moist.” So what are you going to do? Your sweet thing is going to sound like a Duncan Hines cake. A male character, well, now. He gets to frost it. Ha ha.
No set guidelines on this. Women readers tend to be a whole hell of a lot more interested in the hero’s body, anyway. Which is another reason why an overly drippy heroine makes us think of metal stirrups and crackly no-ass gowns and co-pays. Would agree that it’s not particularly sexy. The thrill is what he looks like naked and what he’s doing to her and how about the sensual cuddling afterwards in his arms, hmmm? Sighhhhhhhhhh….
Janette writes tough-but-tender cowboys that are superstars in the sack. Treat yourself to one!
Plump tits! Huge dicks!
have lots of those. working on the other stuff.
very funny Shannon - sometimes I wonder how some of our heroines make it through the night without a little help from the KY
Believe it or not, I have yet to read anything about KY or Astroglide or similar fine products in a romance or erotic romance! Brand names are intrusive enough in a non-sex scene, so, yeah, skip it. Even just the word lube makes me think of an oil change while I yawn and tap my fingers on the steering wheel and hope the guy in coveralls doesn’t find anything dire under the hood that I didn’t know about.
Anyway, writers find it a manly shortcoming, I think, for the hero to use lube. Heroes usually have heroic tongues, put it that way.
I’ve read one book where the hero used lube because he knew she’d have trouble - ahem - accommodating him. I still have mixed feelings. on the one hand, I like the fantasy element of her being so turned on lube is totally unnecessary. On the other, some readers (coughhusbandcough) have remarked on my heroes’ consistent use of condoms (and the unrealistic ease of one handed application :)). if my heroes are considerate enough to pack a raincoat, why not a little extra help easing the way for their massive poles?
One book. Out of 9,000,000 romances.
However it happens, make it fast. The ten commandments of sex scene writing begin with Thou Shalt Not Write A Health Department Pamphlet. Unrealistic? You bet.
It is actually the hero’s brain that needs industrial-grade lube, so he can pledge his undying love without a second thought. Grease him good and down he goes, down down down the slippery slide of a committed relationship and zip! through the tiny circle of an engagement ring, to be impaled on the white picket fence of s-u-b-u-r-b-a-n m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e. How come happy endings never happen in a cool downtown loft? Can there be a satisfied heroine who would rather NOT be married?
Gee, Hilary, if I’d known you were going to share my top-secret formula for writing the best selling novel, I’da locked it in a safe and guarded it better. Now everyone knows my methods. Guess I’d better slink back into my dark dungeon and start working on a newer, better formula…
Thinking furiously. Hmmm.
Sweaty, nekkid male flesh, whips, chains and handcuffs seem like a good start…. Ride him hard and put him away wet…
Devyn!
Don’t be too scared, she sends me cards with puppies and kittens on them (and she really does rescue strays). But she does write HOT.
I read to be entertained and this blog certainly fill the bill.
If I was going to write books with a contemporary setting I think they’d usually end with the happy couple boffing away in a great urban flat, child-free, and planning that next trip abroad . . . that’s my idea of heaven (oh, and they’d be a dog, too; heaven must include dogs).
Since I write historicals (and I’ve been told that settling down happy with ones mistress is neither “heroic” nor “romantic”) I’m still wrangling my characters down the isle. One of these days I’m going to write something about a younger son who gets to do just that though!
To Kalen: I think happy-ever-afters are getting a little more varied but romance readers want a payoff or they will be pissed off. A lot of you have heard me say that commitment is by far the biggest female fantasy of all, and never mind the throbbing whatevers. However, for those of us who have been married and even some of us who haven’t, the ring and veil and shrimp puffs are just not that big a thrill. Forever and forever is, though. Female hearts LOVE forevering. So the hero pretty much has to promise her that. Somehow.
Romance conventions dictate that red-gowned, fickle-hearted Jezebels don’t get forevered. Supposedly, they munch husband-topped Ritz crackers and swan around in lonely but glamorous pied-a-terres in SF or NY or Paris. Hmm. Scratch a dutiful wife and you will find red satin. And vice versa. Women are women.
Anyway, whoever said that after years of marriage you could write an entire book just about the weird way your spouse eats, got it right. So…
Write what you want! Settling down happy with a mistress is a HEA that works for me.
As a “red-gowned, fickle-hearted Jezebel” myself I really love seeing women I can relate to getting a HEA that I can understand. I think this may be why I read a lot of Brava and Aphrodesia books. *Grin*
Go for it. Jezebels do not, as a rule, belong to critique groups, for obvious reasons.
Hmm…
What if “The dream was always the same…” because it featured a gigantic schlong having a miraculous effect on the heroine?
Diane, who’s obviously spent far too long at the SDJ
Great Blog, Hilary! ROTFLMAO– but it still has great info, too.
We got kinda off-topic but it was fun! Talk to you all in January.
As far as lube in erotic romance goes, it depends on the territory traveled. If a hero doesn’t lube up to venture along chocolate lane he should be kicked to the curb. Pronto.