A Writer’s Guide to Being Sexy

…in your writing. Sorry, I can’t help you with the real thing.

Whether you’re writing hardcore erotica, sizzling romance, or just a single scene requiring some Tab A into Slot B action, I’m here to help you bring the sexy back with this series on sexy writing.

Today we’ll talk about the language of the scene.

Let’s face it: it’s very easy to write a bad sex scene. You run the risk of clinically sterile language, or the opposite – coarsely pornographic language. There’s also the potential for unintended comedy. I don’t want that to happen to any of you, so I’ve compiled a few guidelines. Note that I didn’t say rules. It’s up to you to decide if/when to use each of these tips. And fergawdsakes, don’t overdo it with any of them!

More descriptors ≠ more sexy

Breasts are not made any more appealing when described as amazingly perky, round, brown sugar-colored globes of desire. Really? Would you say that to your partner, or want it said to you in a moment of passion? ‘Course not. You/they would likely burst into a fit of laughter. Stick to one, maybe two descriptors, or let the image stand on its own. This also ties into my next point:

Euphemisms are your enemy

If everyone calls it a cock, there’s probably a good reason. Don’t go trudging through the thesaurus looking for other names for human anatomy. Abandon the above mentioned globes and just call them breasts. Or maybe your character would say tits. Titties and boobies are giggle-worthy and should be avoided at all times, in my opinion.

When in doubt, revert to the standard slang, or DON’T NAME BODY PARTS at all. Yeah, you heard me. She let go a breathy moan as he pushed into her. No need to say what pushed where – we already know.

Here are some tried-and-true words to use (try not to blush):

• cock
• tits
• ass
• breasts
• dick
• pussy
• clit

C*nt has become much more mainstream of late, but I’d be careful with it. I won’t even type the actual word here, and I won’t say it. I just don’t like it, and that’s a personal preference. But of course, if it fits the character you’re writing, it may be appropriate. Use it sparingly, at your own risk. I think it even sounds awful. Go ahead, say it out loud (preferably when you’re alone – not on the bus or at work). It’s guttural – all hard consonant sounds. Doesn’t scream sexy to me. Which brings me to my last point for today:

Pay attention to sound

No, not those sounds. Yuck. I’ll leave that for another post. I mean, pay attention to how the words you choose sound to the ear. I don’t know about you, but even when reading silently to myself, I still hear the words in my head, and, to a lesser extent, feel them in my mouth (oh boy, you’re gonna have a field day with that phrase, I’m sure.)

Never underestimate the sexiness of well-placed alliteration. His thumb slid over the sliver of skin peeking out above the waistband of her jeans. That s sound is just sensual, both to hear and to say, isn’t it?

To me, open, round vowel sounds as well as softer consonant sounds like f, h, and l (to name a few) can be the sexiest. The heat of his breath sends a slow shiver from the nape of her neck to her toes. Mmm, sounds yummy, right?

To contrast, clipped vowels and hard consonant sounds often are the least sexy. You’d do well to notice that most of your standard curse words have this characteristic – fuck, shit, bitch, etc. I’m not saying there’ll never be a place for an urgently whispered Fuck me! in your manuscript – there is certainly occasion for something like that. But an entire scene, or even just a few sentences, full of those types of words can really kill the mood.

Especially use this guideline any time you’re thinking of some anatomical euphemism. As I mentioned, c*nt sounds harsh to me. Words like rod and pole don’t sound particularly sexy either, and even invoke painful images at times. Unless you’re writing some sort of BDSM scene, these are not the images you want to paint in your reader’s mind.

Keep these tips in mind the next time you write a sex scene, and I promise you’ll have something that gets the heat level rising. Next time I’ll discuss realism when writing sex, so I hope you’ll stay tuned!

Do you have any favorite words that you find super sexy, or words that make you cringe?

Fake Pocket Syndrome

Continuing the theme of strange analogies from my last post, I’d like to talk about fake pockets and writing today.

Fake pockets are the bane of my fashionable existence. Nothing’s worse than going to stash my bank card or chapstick, only to encounter resistance. No pocket for you! It’s a disappointment, to say the least. Words can scarcely describe the letdown. In your writing, you should be aware of Fake Pocket Syndrome, to avoid irritating your readers and turning them off of your story.

Fake pockets promise, but don’t deliver. So your hero is a tough manly man who finds himself relying on the aid of a sultry vixen to accomplish his mission. The entire book is rife with sexual tension, but in the end the two shake hands and part ways like old drinking buddies. I call Fake Pocket Syndrome (FPS)! You can’t string a reader along like that, and not follow through. I’m not saying you have to write a torrid bedroom scene, but they had better at least kiss, or you need to at least allude to what we’re all expecting to happen. If your significant other spends an hour getting you worked up, then heads to the bedroom and….. goes to SLEEP, you’d be pretty pissed, wouldn’t you?

Fake pockets have no function. Even their aesthetic function is questionable. If you’re going to do horrible things to my bum by slapping a set of flap pockets back there, there had better be a good reason for it - like a place to put my credit card and ID when I don’t want to carry a purse. If your book starts with a character going on for two paragraphs about what she ate the day before, there should be a good reason for that. And sorry, but “I thought it was funny” is not good enough. For example, she’s a hypochondriac who woke up with a slight cough and is convinced that something she ate was tainted and has given her a horrible disease. Well now, that could be an interesting introduction to your character. But if her eating habits have nothing to do with anything, why are you boring the rest of us by detailing them? Also, just because a passage “sounds nice” doesn’t make it relevant. Sometimes you gotta kill your darlings. It’s up to you, though, and if you can really justify something, keep it.

Fake pockets take time and energy to create. No pocket at all would be quicker, easier, and more cost-effective. Save yourself and your editor some time and effort, and be aware of FPS from the beginning, and avoid it at all costs. The less junk you put in, the less you’ll have to cut out later on.

So take a long hard look at your manuscript. Are you a victim of FPS? Fear not, with a few snipped stitches here and there, you’ll have those pockets functional in no time.

Snazzy Dialogue III: Using Dialogue to Differentiate Characters

Oh my gosh, it's been ages since I had a Snazzy Dialogue post!  I'll try to do better, I promise.  If you haven't make sure you read Part I, and Part II. Here's the next installment, and I hope it makes up for the huge amount of time I've been absent from the blog.

As I’m embarking on new writing projects and editing older ones, I continue to scrutinize my dialogue. The main characters in my current projects are very different women, and they all have different ways of speaking, which brought me to this current post about using dialogue to differentiate characters.

In my critique group, an old member had a few characters who were very similar in terms of race, class, socioeconomic background, education, etc. She was struggling with how to differentiate them, how to make each one unique from the other. One possible way, I think, is through dialogue.

One way to do this is through the content of the character’s dialogue, and using that to express the different personalities, desires, and goals of the characters. For example, having a character simply saying the things that make them different from other characters. However, you can run into the problems of using dialogue too much for exposition, and also being too obvious with the dialogue. What I want to discuss today is the more subtle way to differentiate characters simply by their manner of speaking.

For example, I have two characters in To Call Home who are similar in many ways. Charlotte and Lora are the same age, grew up together in the same town, both white females, similar socioeconomic standings, etc. But you can see the differences when they speak to each other. Charlotte has a tendency to avoid difficult questions through silence or circumlocution. Lora gets straight to the point, asking lots of questions and giving blunt answers. Here’s a small excerpt of an argument between the two girls.

Lora put a hand on her shoulder. “What’s going on with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re freaking me out a little bit. I’m sorry if it makes me sound like a jerk, but you weren’t even this…crazy—” (she winced when she said it) “—right after your mom died. What’s going on now?”

Charlotte shrugged, exaggerating the movement of her shoulders and slumping her chin to her chest.

“I don’t know what I should tell you. What I can tell you.”

“It’s fucking me you’re talking to,” Lora whispered. “That shouldn’t even be a question in your mind.”

But it was. She couldn’t help it.

“I don’t have anything useful to say right now. I just don’t even know what words should be coming out of my mouth. But please don’t leave right now, okay? Please?”

The content of the dialogue isn’t as important as the manner in which the girls speak to each other. You can see Lora’s dominating personality in the way she asks questions plainly, and doesn’t hesitate to potentially insult her friend by calling her crazy. Charlotte, on the other hand, can’t give a simple answer to anything at this point. She talks a lot here, but doesn’t actually answer Lora’s questions. These two interact like this a lot, no matter what they’re talking about. And it’s much more interesting to see the conversations and relationships develop this way, instead of having Charlotte and Lora say the exact feelings behind the dialogue, which would read something like this:

“You were really depressed and confused after your mom died, but that was three and a half years ago. Why are you still being so immature and evasive?” Lora asked.

Charlotte stared at her. “Because I think I’ve fallen in love with Steven, who you don’t know is our new English teacher. Sorry I didn’t tell you about that sooner.”

“Your summer fling is our new teacher? Crazy! But what’s so bad about falling in love?”

“Since my dad was a rat bastard, I have it ingrained in my subconscious that all men will eventually hurt me.”

“Oh. Makes sense.”

Yeah, not very interesting. Maybe a little funny, but that’s not what we’re going for. We want subtlety.

Very briefly, since this post is getting quite long, I’ll mention a couple other things that go along with differentiating characters through dialogue. You can use speech impediments or catch phrases to make characters unique. You can use a style of speech - more formal, a lot of vernacular, etc. Charlotte doesn’t hesitate to say things like “Jesus!” or “Christ!” But there are other characters who wouldn’t say that. I know a lady from work who always says “How ’bout it?” in her thin, gravelly voice. It makes me laugh. It would make for a great catch phrase for just the right character. These are all just little ways we can use dialogue to add further depth and dimension to our characters.

Snazzy Dialogue II: Dialogue Tags

(Read Part I here)

Before I get into the main part of this post, I wanted to mention an only-slightly-related dialogue issue. Literary Agent Nathan Bransford had a contest for Preposterously Magnificent Dialogue on his blog. For the hell of it, I entered. (Wasn't a finalist, and now that I think of it I don't think I selected my strongest bit of dialogue.) You could submit up to 250 words of dialogue and the intermittent action. Obviously, I wanted something with more dialogue than not, since it was a dialogue contest. So I went searching through Charlotte to see what bits of dialogue I liked enough that I would pick from for my entry.


It was then that I realized that I have quite a bit of intermittent/supporting action. It's not too often that I have more than three lines of dialogue without some action in between. And really, my dialogue, while not necessarily scarce, is fairly limited. And much of what's said in dialogue is directly related to the intermittent action in such a way that the dialogue may be misunderstood or not have the same impact should the action be pared down or cut. Is this good? Bad? Or is it just.... the way it is? I'm not sure. But I've decided for now that it's good, at least for me. If you think about it, in our real conversations, how much importance do you give to what is actually said compared to the tone of voice in which it's said, or the hand gestures and facial expressions of the person saying it? It's all pretty closely intertwined and can say a lot more than the words themselves.


But on to the main post topic of dialogue tags. My above tangent really is related because I'm going to suggest that instead of the usual dialogue tags (he said, she said, he asked, told, yelled, etc.) you can use some bit of action instead. If you write "It's freezing in here." Johnny hugged himself and rubbed his hands over his arms. then we'll know that it was Johnny who said it's freezing. It can get really repetitive reading "said" all the time. And it's not necessarily better to use every alternative to it, either. Commanded, growled, purred, shouted, uttered, announced, exclaimed, cried, replied, disclosed, mumbled, stated...... Really, by trying to come up with a clever synonym for "said" EVERY time you use a dialogue tag, you just end up making your writing appear immature and not very clever. ALSO, please try to avoid this:

"Give it to me now," he said angrily.
"But it's mine!" she shouted loudly. "You can't have it!"

Adverbs are NEVER the answer. You're telling the reader everything and showing them nothing. (yeah, that old adage....) Now I know I've probably broken this rule of mine far too many times to count. That doesn't mean it was good. And you definitely shouldn't do it. There are instances where a nicely placed adverb can be brilliant, but don't overdo it.

In addition to avoiding repetition and giving you a way to show rather than tell, action can do a lot for your scene in tandem with your dialogue. It can potentially change the meaning of the words. It can alter the mood of the scene, the pacing, it can ease or create tension. Let's look at the following exchange between Charlotte and Steven the morning after they're passionately reunited :

“I have bacon?” he asked.
“No. Your refrigerator was pathetic. I had to steal your car and a twenty from your wallet so I could make breakfast,” she said.
“And just how do you plan on paying me back?” he asked mischievously.
“The bacon’s going to burn,” she said when he unbuttoned her pants.
“Let it.”
“We’ve got all day for that,” she said, grinning.
“All day?” he asked.
“Well, most of it. My plane doesn’t leave until six.”
“Stay,” he implored her.
“Steven, I can’t,” she insisted.
“I know. But I had to ask anyway.”
“I’m glad you want me to, though,” she said. “Now put a shirt on and sit down. Breakfast is almost ready.”

Eh. It's just okay. Nothing spectacular. All dialogue. No pacing. Not much on the descriptive or emotional side. There's no action from either character to help us understand how they each feel during this scene. Not to mention it sucks to read "he said," "she insisted," "she said" every other sentence. Let's see what some supporting action can do for us:

“I have bacon?” he asked, coming up behind her.
“No. Your refrigerator was pathetic. I had to steal your car and a twenty from your wallet so I could make breakfast.”
“And just how do you plan on paying me back?” He put his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck. Her hair was still damp from the shower and he could smell his shampoo, his soap. She still wore his T-shirt, though she’d put on her own jeans. She’d never been more sexy.
“The bacon’s going to burn,” she said when he unbuttoned her pants.
“Let it.”
She squealed as he slid his hand down between her legs, but she managed to wriggle out of his arms.
“We’ve got all day for that,” she said, grinning.
“All day?”
She looked away, turned back to the stove. “Well, most of it. My plane doesn’t leave until six.”
“Stay.” They’d just found their way back to each other and she was leaving already.
“Steven, I can’t.”
“I know. But I had to ask anyway.”
“I’m glad you want me to, though.” She turned around and kissed him. “Now put a shirt on and sit down. Breakfast is almost ready.”

Not to toot my own horn (well okay, maybe a little) but I think the second version is much better. (This isn't what I submitted for Nathan's contest, BTW, but I think this would've been better than what I did submit.) When Steven puts his arms around Charlotte and reacts to the scent of her, we can sense the sexual tension. And then it's not nearly so shocking when he puts his hand down her pants! And the fact that she "squeals" shows her playfulness and willingness to participate. Otherwise the scene could come across as super creepy. There's some tension of the non-sexual variety when she turns away from him before mentioning her plane leaving at six. So now we know that she's leaving, and that seems sad because they appear to be having fun. This min-scene ends hopefully, though, when she turns around and kisses him.

And thus ends this very long post. :-)

Read Part III here.

Snazzy Dialogue I: Catch-22

I was recently complimented on the dialogue in the opening chapter of my novel. I was stunned! Dialogue is a big deal for me. I fret over it all the time. But I'm apparently doing something right! So I thought I'd compile some of the things I keep in mind when writing dialogue.

"Hey bro. What's up?"
"Nothing really. You?"
"You know. More of the same."
"Yeah dude. I know."

Not terribly exciting, is it? But I bet you've had - or overheard - this very conversation, dozens of times. That doesn't mean you need to write it in your story.

Dialogue needs to be meaningful. It needs to be real. But it can't be real. Get my drift? I don't care how many times you scream "But I've heard dozens of people talk like that!" Just because people have long conversations about their bowel movements or their cousin's husband's predilection for online porn, doesn't mean your characters should.

Dialogue should tell us something about the character speaking it. It should illuminate the situation. It should create tension or assuage it, clarify a problem or confuse it, whatever the goal of the scene-at-large, the dialogue should work in tandem with the rest.

Throw in something unexpected. Have a character lie. Have them be painfully honest. Have them misunderstand what another character says and respond accordingly. Don't be boring!

Let's think about that and revisit the above conversation:

"Hey bro. What's up?"
"Cut the shit. How much you need to borrow this time?"
"Dude, a grand should cover me. Blackjack table got me this time."
"Yeah, more of the same."

See? At least now we know a little bit about what's going on. We can see distinct personalities int he speakers. There's connotation to the remark "more of the same."

Now get out there and write some great dialogue!

Read Part II here.