- Joined
- Apr 4, 2018
- Messages
- 23
- Reaction score
- 2
So, last year I had set out to write kind of a smutty romance novel, thinking I'd submit to Harlequin or someone like that. The resulting story came out a bit different from what I had intended, and it finally struck me it might work better marketed as a crime novel with a love story in it, rather than as primarily a romance (since my research is suggesting that the romance crowd might be too repulsed by the amount of violence in the story; and submitting to publishers so far only got Nos.)
Thing is I still have all these smutty sex scenes, and actually they are fairly vital to the plot (I hate scenes of any type that don't move the plot forward, sex scenes included.) But when going for the crime novel angle, it seems like they might be a bit too much -- especially since they're told in first person by one of the characters and she doesn't have a very discreet vocabulary. Now, the first book I ever read that had detailed sex scenes in it was a Dean Koontz crime novel, so I know it's done in the genre; but also I recall those scenes were told in omnipotent viewpoint, used terms like "the sex" to refer to the genitals, etc.
So I am trying to figure out what is "the right amount" of sex/smut for a story like this. I'm wondering if I maybe ought to just trim the scenes down for length to the most minimal possible versions so that they just kind of rocket by?
Thing is I still have all these smutty sex scenes, and actually they are fairly vital to the plot (I hate scenes of any type that don't move the plot forward, sex scenes included.) But when going for the crime novel angle, it seems like they might be a bit too much -- especially since they're told in first person by one of the characters and she doesn't have a very discreet vocabulary. Now, the first book I ever read that had detailed sex scenes in it was a Dean Koontz crime novel, so I know it's done in the genre; but also I recall those scenes were told in omnipotent viewpoint, used terms like "the sex" to refer to the genitals, etc.
So I am trying to figure out what is "the right amount" of sex/smut for a story like this. I'm wondering if I maybe ought to just trim the scenes down for length to the most minimal possible versions so that they just kind of rocket by?