Tag Archives: characters

The Beautiful Experiment

431px-Medusa_Mascaron_(New_York,_NY)(While The Beautiful Experiment was first posted on the Erotic Readers and Writers blog, Nov 2013, it was very much front and centre in my mind when I wrote Interviewing Wade)

I was bored. My flight had been delayed. I’d already been traveling forever, and I’d reached that point at which I was too tired to read, too tired to concentrate on writing, too tired to sit still without being twitchy. I didn’t want to drink, I didn’t want to eat. I just wanted to be done travelling. That’s when I began The Beautiful Experiment. I was seated off one of the main concourses, which was a constant hive of activity, of people coming and going, popping in and out of shops and scurrying to make tight connections. It was the ideal place to people watch. But with a twist. I decided to watch the masses to see just how many truly beautiful people I could spot.

Okay, I know everyone has a slightly different ideal when it comes to beauty, but we all know it when we see it. We all know that look that turns heads, that look that makes us want to stare, to take in all that loveliness just a little longer. I didn’t care if the real lookers were men or women. I mean if we’re honest, we look at both, whether we admire it, want it or envy it. So I sat and I watched. … and I watched … and I watched. Since that time I’ve carried out my little experiment in pubs, in museums, on the tube, in busy parks, and the results are always the same. There just aren’t that many real stunners out there!

I was struck by that fact in the airport that day, so I decided to add another dimension to my experiment. I decided to look for people who were interesting. It didn’t necessarily have to be their looks that were interesting, it could just as easily be their behaviour, their dress, something, anything that made them worth a surreptitious stare. And wow! Being delayed in an airport suddenly became a fascinating grist mill for story ideas and intriguing speculation.

I’ve carried out this experiment lots of time now, and the results are always the same. There are very few stunners out Bernini Hades and Persephone close uptumblr_lg4h59T3z31qe2nvuo1_500there, and even when I spot one, even when I find myself sneaking glances at a beautiful person, my eyes, and my attention, can always be drawn away by the interesting people.

In erotica and, in particular erotic romance, the characters are usually voluptuous, sculpted beauties and broad shouldered, wash-boarded hunks. It’s fantasy after all. But how long can a story focus the reader’s attention on washboard abs or perfect tits? Descriptions give us a handle. Descriptions are like the label on a file. They might attract us to the file, but if the file is empty, it won’t hold our attention. It’s what makes the described beautiful person interesting that makes the story.

In our genre, sex is a large part of what makes our beautiful people intriguing; how they think about sex, their kinks, their quirks, their neuroses, their baggage – all of those things make the fact that our beautiful people are interesting way more important than the fact that they’re beautiful. Add to that some seriously delicious consequences for that sex, some chaos and mayhem, a few character flaws that catch us off our guard, that draw us in and voila! A gripping story is born!

Perfection in a story, in characters, is the equivalent of a literary air brushing. No flaws = no story; no rough spots = nothing to hold our attention. Our characters’ beauty is only their handle. Their flaws and their intriguing quirks are what catapult us into the plot, what make us want to stay on for more than just a look-see and to dig a little deeper, to really know those characters and become emotionally involved with them.

Recently on the tube in London, I tried my little experiment again, just to make sure. More data is always a good idea, and good science has to be repeatable, doesn’t it? Taking into account my own preferences and prejudices, the results P1020562

were the same. I can remember a half a dozen really interesting people, people I could very easily write a story about. There wasn’t a single stunner among them, which leads me to the conclusion that we’re more interesting in our flaws than in our perfections. We’re more interesting in our experiences and the way they manifest than in the static beauty of the moment. It also excites me to think that I’m surrounded by interesting people all the time. A story is never farther away than the next intriguing person. Is this an ordinary-looking person’s version of sour grapes? I don’t think so; I hope not. Truth is there’s an astonishing transformation that takes place in the company of truly interesting people. Before long, right before my eyes, those truly intriguing people become the beautiful people. There’s always a story in that.

The Joy of Writing Neurotica

I’m biting my fingernails. I don’t know if I should tell you this or not. I don’t know what you’ll think of me if I do. I’ve racked my brain for hours, and I’ve lost sleep over trying to decide if I should share my secret. But then I wonder if you already know. Some of my close friends know because I confided in them, though they might possibly have already figured it out. Most of them are okay with it. Really. At least I think so …Most of them understand and are even empathetic. At least I hope so …

Okay, I’m just going to take a deep breath and tell you! Here goes!

I’m very, very neurotic. There. I said it. It’s the truth. I’m neurotic and most writers are! No wait, that’s such a blanket statement. Please, if you’re a writer who isn’t neurotic, please don’t take it personally. I really didn’t mean to insult you or anything, and I hope you’ll forgive me and like me anyway.

My neuroses are many, but I have two biggies. The first is guilt. I feel guilty for watching three episodes of The Tudors on an evening when the Work in Progress is waiting untouched on the computer. Just because I wrote all day long doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have written a few more hours. Being a member of the international guild of neurotic writers means I always feel guilty, and if I don’t, then I feel guilty for not feeling guilty. I feel guilty for not writing enough. I feel guilty for writing too much and not keeping up with the housework. I feel guilty for needing too much sleep when I’m sure I should be writing. I feel guilty for not being able to sleep when I do go to bed. And since I can’t sleep shouldn’t I be up writing? Or cleaning house?

My other biggie is that I worry. I worry all the time. I feel guilty if I’m not worrying because surely I’ve missed something important or I’d be worrying. I worry that someone won’t like what I’ve written, and if they don’t like my baby, I worry that maybe they’re right not to like my baby and maybe my baby really is ugly and I just can’t see it. And if they don’t like my baby, maybe they don’t like me either. I worry about sales, I worry about promos. I worry about deadlines, I worry about rewrites. I worry about what will happen if I wake up in the morning and can’t think of a single word to write. I worry if my tomato plants will get blight this year, and I worry about the strange noise that comes out of our water heater periodically. My husband says I worry over just about everything. Still, I worry that I’ve missed something.

Guilt and worry. Those are the biggies. There are others. Lots of others. I’m afraid of loud noises too, and I don’t like rubber bands, but those are fairly innocuous compared to guilt and worry.

So now that you’ve heard my confession, here’s the part where when life gives me lemons I make lemonade. I write neurotica! That’s it. You heard me right. I write neurotica. It’s sort of a ‘physician heal thyself ‘tactic, really. It’s a case of me projecting all my lovely neuroses onto my characters and watching the crazy, twitchy, unbalanced fun unfold. Come on now, I can’t be the only writer who does this, am I? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing anyone. Really! I believe you if you say you don’t do that. I even believe you if you say you don’t have any neuroses to project onto your characters. However, if you are neurotic and you’re not really using your neuroses on your characters at the moment, can I borrow them? I’ve got this new story in mind …

It’s true though, I can create the most realistic, multi-layered guilt complexes in my characters. And angst, oh how I can write angst! And every time one of my characters wrings her hands and walks the floor in the middle of a sleepless night. I nail it. And every time my character feels guilty for not being open and honest and carefree and at home in her own skin, boy, do I nail it. My characters are my therapy, poor things, and in some strange way they make me feel better about myself. They make me feel a little less neurotic. They exist in my head, and yet they often give me insights into my own unpristine psyche that I would otherwise miss. How do they do that? Is it only because of my projection? I feel sort of guilty for being so mean to them sometimes. But then I worry that maybe I’m just being too soft and sentimental about the whole thing.