Over the past two days, I've revised Chapter 5 and 6, and man, has it been an up and down battle. Chapter 5 was simply a disaster. I rewrote the first few pages completely, and I'll have to revisit it again because I went through a similar process that I did when first writing many of these sections. Namely, I just kept chanting "Okay, okay, okay, just fill in the gaps. It will all work out."
Chapter 6? The front of it seemed to be a bad carry over from 5. I actually started on it right after 5 hoping that it would help me break on a good note, but instead I went back to sleep. After awaking the next day and working on some other work related stuff, I came back to the chapter, and I'm glad I did - it got really good later on.
Chapter 6 has what I hope are some great humor scenes and is also really the first of what will probably be many sex scenes in my books - unless I stop writing. Every time I start to do a revision of this chapter, I sort of cringe because while I'm revising other chapters I tell myself that one day I'll probably have to go back to Chapter 6 and completely remove the sex scenes.
Thankfully, I don't feel that way after reading the chapter again. Maybe some of the people reading the book will feel differently, though. You guys and gals will have to be the judge. Anyway, I have no plans of writing romance books or putting an image of my six pack on one of my books (ROFLCOPTER - this is very much sarcasm), but I hope that I can continue to write these short scenes into books and not throw readers off the books completely.
Has a sex scene ever gotten you to stop reading or writing a book? If so, what really set you off about it?
Sure, sex scenes will lose some readers. It's a fact of life. Some people live in a world in which fornication is wicked and you're a bad, bad person for including it in your books. Others will see sex as something that people do, and won't object to a little contextually appropriate sex if it aids character development and story progression. Then, there will be those who are disappointed that it wasn't a full on orgy with a were-gerbil or two thrown in for good measure. In short, no matter what you choose to do, there will be someone who thinks the amount of sex you've included is wrong.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment, the book is about a bad guy - according to a certain book or two, he is actually the worst guy. So, I'm hoping that anyone who would want to read more about him would be expecting a story that feels a little wicked, and that I might be able to push a few genre boundaries. I'm hoping it all just works.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Mark! I'll just have to hope readers feel that it does add another wanted dimension to the story.
P.S. Were-gerbils... man... I better get started on my next book "Oiling Richard's Gear"... Oh... wow... that was bad. Seriously though, thanks for the fun comment!
Ah... that bad guy, as in "Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste"? Well, then... the worms are well and truly out of the can anyway. Do what's right by the story, because anyone who would be offended by the sex will probably find your protagonist too diabolically horrible to enjoy even a PG-13 treatment.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I hear a book-burning or three can be great for sales...
A book burning, eh? That totally slipped my mind. Please tell me that you know a guy who knows a guy that can set one of these up!
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't know anyone who could set one of those up, sorry. Even if I did, I'm on the wrong continent.
ReplyDeleteI understand it's considered good form to show up at a book burning to sell autographed copies, in a Johnny Knoxville kind of way.
Well, if we are going to use the Johnny Knoxville model of book marketing, I'm going to at least need a midget, a cartload of idiots, and an ape-suit. The problem is they are out of ape-suits in my size.
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