Answers To Ken Levine's Questions

I have been wanting to start a blog for awhile now, but have been a loss when it comes to where to start. Luckily for me, Mr. Ken Levine decided to help me along by posting a series of questions for erotica writers on his blog. http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2012/09.... Here are the questions along with my answers. Unfortunately, I may not be the best to answer these questions. I'm still a newbie.

How do you avoid cliches? I honestly don't give a thought to cliches one way or the other. If the cliche fits the scene I wouldn't hesitate to use it, but I don't compile a list of the things and try to incorporate them. I believe that cliches can have a certain degree of usefulness, mostly in the fact that they are familiar to people, and some level of familiarity can help a particularly extreme sex scene be a little more relatable. I do always ask myself, is this a cliche because it happens to so many people that it's an accepted aspect of our lives, or is it a cliche because of its inherent ridiculousness. The first have their uses, and honestly so do the second in the right circumstances.

Is it possible to write a sexy novel without using the word throbbing at least once? Though I'm yet to write a sexy novel, I've written enough short stories to add up to the length of a novel, and I've written more sex scenes than any novel is likely to include. Strangely, throbbing isn't one of my go to words. I'm mostly indifferent too it. I also don't really like to use the word member. Really, my go to word for the male sex organ is cock. Dick is okay (as a word, as a thing it's pretty fantastic), but cock is just so much more masculine. I like cunt better than pussy, but I think pussy fits most sentence constructions better (and pussy lips sounds so much better than cunt lips). My go to word is spasming, even though the program I use for my writing refuses to accept spasming is a word. I like my sex a little more wild. Throbbing to me is like a heartbeat. It's too even in its beating for my taste. I prefer the wildly irregular feel of spasms. So if you read a bunch of my stories, you might get awfully tired of reading about spasming cocks and spasming cunts. I'm an erotica writer though. I think throbbing is more a romance writer thing.

Comedy writers rarely laugh at what they've written. Do romance writers get turned on by their work? This is a tough question, because it has a two-fold answer. While writing certain scenes I definitely get turned on. I think that's one of the ways you know the sex is working. If you're not at least a little turned on, why would your readers be? On the other hand, writing is a craft, and you don't want to get so wrapped up in your own arousal that you neglect properly describing what is going on. During the editing and post-editing process it's a different matter entirely. Sometimes when I'm editing my stuff, I'll realize that I need to go back over the scene because I got so caught up in reading it that I probably breezed right past grammatical errors and typos. I find post-coital editing to be perfectly effective. You're still aroused enough to really feel the scenes, but you have the patience to give the editorial side its due diligence. To me I know a story really worked after I've finished reading it if I think about it later when I'm horny.

Do editors give you a lot of notes? I don't get the types of notes Mr. Levine describes, such as substituting one object for another (could she use a butterfly vibrator instead of the wand?) or even substituting one orifice for another (I really think it should go in her ass now instead of her mouth), but the small editorial crew that helps me out doesn't hesitate to recommend wholesale story revisions if the mood just doesn't seem right or if the character just doesn't fit the sex. Some stories have had to be rewritten from the ground up after a nice long discussion with my editor. Also, more than a few stories have been scrapped altogether after my editors have discovered some intrinsic flaw that I somehow missed. Sometimes a fantasy, though wonderfully delicious in my head, doesn't have the backbone to be a story.

Do you need to get in the mood? I tend to have a lot of projects going at once, which is easy to do with the length I work with (no double entendre intended there). This allows me the luxury of only writing sex when I feel like writing sex. If I'm writing a story and get to the good part, but discover I'm just not really in the mood to write it, I move on to something else. Some days I'm in the mood all the time, and I can write multiple sex scenes in one sessions. Some days I enjoy the task oriented process of plotting. I know it may not seem like there's a lot of plotting involved in erotic shorts, but I promise you that setup and payoff still matter a great deal.

At what point do you realize that imagery is not your friend? Honestly, when it comes time to write about fucking, I'm ready to write about fucking. I can get very wrapped up in whose doing what to who and forget about anything but the play-by-play, but then I remember that I'm writing erotica and not porn. It's very important to know the ins and outs of what's happening, but description matters too. To me, describing what the character is feeling is what matters, much more than what the images of what they are seeing. In most my stories it is up to the reader what the characters look like because I want to put them in a sexy situation and let them dictate the cast.

What do you think of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY? Is this a trick question? Honestly, I thought it was a pretty fun read, though it trended a little too much to the romance and away from the sex for my tastes. Also, and this is probably just a personal issue, I thought the transition from virgin was too fast. But my biggest problem was the alpha not being alpha enough. When it gets to the point where Christian tells her he's going to fuck her mouth, I was screaming with excitement. But then she takes control and gives him a good old-fashioned blowjob with no mouth-fucking at all. There's nothing wrong with a blowjob, but if I'm reading about a man who takes what he wants, but then every sex scene seems to be more a negotiation than anything, I'm a little disappointed.