Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Looking for advice and help

I am working on a short story titled, "Sweet Surrender", and there is a sexual encounter between the two characters. I want it to be tasteful, somewhat romantic and not just a couple who are hot for each other.
In a word, I want it to be unforgettable.

I am appealing to anyone who has written any type of sexual encounters into their books, how you may have made it seem less "dirty", as it were, and more memorable.

4 comments:

  1. Word choice and the setting are a big part of what separates an erotic scene from a romantic scene. You have to find the balance that will focus your readers on the emotions involved, not the sexual act itself.

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  2. I am writing a novel in which the husband wants to make love to his wife before he goes to work. They are a young couple. He calls it a "morning quickie". His wife teases him before giving in. Needless to say he ends up being late to work.

    Because I created the characters in my pending novel, i let them use me as a tool to tell about their emotions, their likes and dislikes. Before writing the love scene I remembered being in love, how I felt when he touched me.I let my imagination take me where I needed to be to write the love scene. I was pretty impressed with the finished page.

    My best advice is to go with the flow, and let your imagination write the love scene.

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  3. re: book review request by award-winning author

    Dear Terry,

    I'm an award-winning author with a new book of fiction out this fall. Ugly To Start With is a series of thirteen interrelated stories about childhood published by West Virginia University Press.

    Can I interest you in reviewing it?

    If you write me back at johnmcummings@aol.com, I can email you a PDF of my book. If you require a bound copy, please ask, and I will forward your reply to my publisher. Or you can write directly to Abby Freeland at:

    Abby.Freeland@mail.wvu.edu

    My publisher, I should add, can also offer your readers a free excerpt of my book through a link from your blog to my publisher's website:
    http://wvupressonline.com/cummings_ugly_to_start_with_9781935978084

    Here’s what Jacob Appel, celebrated author of
    Dyads and The Vermin Episode, says about my new collection: "In Ugly to Start With, set in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia, Cummings tackles the challenges of boyhood adventure and family conflict in a taut, crystalline style that captures the triumphs and tribulations of small-town life. He has a gift for transcending the particular experiences to his characters to capture the universal truths of human affection and suffering--emotional truths that the members of his audience will recognize from their own experiences of childhood and adolescence.”

    My short stories have appeared in more than seventy-five literary journals, including North American Review, The Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Chattahoochee Review. Twice I have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. My short story "The Scratchboard Project" received an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007.

    I am also the author of the nationally acclaimed coming-of-age novel The Night I Freed John Brown (Philomel Books, Penguin Group, 2009), winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers (Grades 7-12) and one of ten books recommended by USA TODAY.

    For more information about me, please visit:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Cummings

    Thank you very much, and I look forward to hearing back from you.

    Kindly,

    John Michael Cummings

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  4. Make sure you include the word 'cornhole' if you want the sentence to pop.

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