boundries between erotica and writing a hot sex scene in a romance

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mirrorkisses

mirrorkisses

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So, I was looking for a certain book on the netlibrary website and I happened to find a book on how to write erotica. I read it because I was curious, and I liked a few of the ideas (albeit very trim as far as "how to" goes) about writing erotica.

I'm not writing an erotic novel, but I want my sex scenes to be pretty hot. Is erotica "just in the details?" I also find it hard to find the right words I'm looking for, any suggestions for decent online thesauruses (thesaurus.com doesn't really do it for me.)?

I don't want it to go into the erotica domain, but I do want it to be pretty hot. I have written sex scenes before, but I'm not exactly "experienced" in writing them.

Oh, btw, my story is not a typical romance. I expect it to be placed in literary fiction... So no need to point out that romance readers might be offended.
 
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JanDarby

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If you're writing for the literary crowd, there's a book called "The Joy of Writing Sex." For anyone writing popular fiction, I'd advise just reading the first chapter, and ignoring the rest, which is very lit-fic focused. But if you're writing lit-fic, then the whole book may be of use.

The bottom line, either way, is to focus less on body parts and more on the emotions and how the sex changes the character and moves the plot forward.

JD
 

Jeff Colburn

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In my opinion, having erotic scenes in a story doesn't make it an erotic piece. What makes an erotic story fall into the erotic genre is if the focal point of the story is the erotica.

Have Fun,
Jeff
 
veinglory

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The scene can be 150% singe-your-eyebrows-off erotic and the book still not in the erotica genre. Erotic content is a separate issue to your stories genre so long as the genre you are in (and so the target publisher) is erotica inclusive (i.e. not inspy or YA).
 

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mirrorkisses said:
I'm not writing an erotic novel, but I want my sex scenes to be pretty hot. Is erotica "just in the details?" I also find it hard to find the right words I'm looking for, any suggestions for decent online thesauruses (thesaurus.com doesn't really do it for me.)?
Click to expand...

Are you referring to the erotica-specific problem of what to call body parts and how to describe sex acts? Clinical vs. poetically euphemistic? A good rule of thumb is to use whatever terminology your characters would use. What details do your characters focus on?

I think this rule is spelled out in the book JanDarby mentioned "The Joy of Writing Sex," (Elizabeth Benedict) which I recommend as well along with the advice to focus on character and emotion rather than body parts. I think that you should resist the urge to use a thesaurus at all when writing a sex scene. Your characters should be guiding your word choice.

Also, my personal rule of thumb: "When in doubt, be vague."
 
mirrorkisses

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I'm more just trying to find out what would not be accepted in "mainstream" fiction in a sex scene, but would still be very hot.
 
JanDarby

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In mainstream fiction, anything is acceptable, short of the oft-cited taboos you'll find listed in erotica submission guidelines. And even then, if it's lit-fic, and one of the taboos is being presented for non-titillation purposes, that's acceptable too.

Just write it and submit it, because that's the only way you'll know for sure if a given publisher/editor/agent is okay with the story.

JD
 
veinglory

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It depends on the genre and publisher. Some literary and fantasy books would be to extreme for some erotica publishers.
 
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