Sex Scenes and Immersion

I did NOT believe I would be back so soon with another write-in, yet here we are! Thanks so much for your questions.

Today’s question comes from Mr. Cheese Deluxe Extravaganza (lmao I’m not lying) and they ask:

Hello Robyn! Hope you're warm and snuggly with a nice cup of hot cocoa and cuddles from your pet! I have 2 questions for ya! :

1. How do you write smut scenes? (Plus highlight stuff you love writing about! ) Any inspo you look at that inspire your work? (Manga,anime,movies etc)

2.How do you get your audience to be immersed in your stories? I love that about your work cuz I get really sucked into your characters and their world.

Thank you!

I AM warm and snuggly, but with coffee. Close enough to hot cocoa! My pet is also nearby, nosing around for snacks.

I think it might surprise you to know that with sex scenes in general, I’m more inspired by music than anything visual. (Although, yes, I’m a big fan of anime and manga.) Since writing these scenes, for me at least, relies on simplicity of emotions, I find that best replicated in music. There’s always a certain tempo for sex and it varies based on the couple and where they’re at in the relationship and how they feel about each other. So a hate sex scene is going to have a different sound to it than, say, a ~*romantic*~ sex scene.

The key to this is that I always have a relative idea of what music/genre/band relates to the story. I use music a lot not just in the sex scenes but it impacts the world of the story itself. My characters usually do have a genre of music they’re into or there is a theme of some music throughout. You can find this to be true in all recent examples: Come, Thou Almighty! had hymns; Little Animals had Riots in Africa; Prothalamion had R&B and rap influences. So these carry over into sex scenes.

Personally, I enjoy the differences in all the sex scenes because their characters and their situations are varied. They don’t always like each other and they don’t always get along. They don’t come from the same places or have the same friends. That’s why all the sex chapters come out so wildly different. If it was just the same two identical people going at it in the same way again and again and again… well, not only does that become predictable, but it’s not impressive.

THIS BRINGS ME TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION.

Immersion happens when the world of the story is a complete bubble — I touched on this briefly yesterday when I talked about time period, setting, but this also includes what I just mentioned about music. Your world has to exist on its own, have its own rules. This has nothing to do with realism — same thing could easily be accomplished in a wild and wacky fantasy, of course, but the key is to make even that world adhere to its own rules.

A lot of readers can get pulled out of the zone with something like wonky dialogue or repetitive and boring prose. Editing is its own savior here because no one is immune from the odd bad line — just edit it out before people see it.

Another thing I would say here is that it’s about command of the language. Readers respond to a storyteller with a firm grasp on what they’re saying, what they know to be true about the story in motion. If you have iffy/waffling language or use only a light touch when handling a bigger story, that’s an innate turn off and the reader may not even know THAT’S why but it is. Confidence is something that comes from doing this a lot and often. My confidence has been built up over years! It certainly wasn’t always this way.

Thanks again so much for writing in and if you would like to ask a question, hit that Contact button.

Top 5 Things I Learned From My MFA

… Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, hi!

Yes, for all the morbidly-minded, I AM still alive. And I’m still answering your questions! My form is still open, so you can always send me any questions or ideas for blogs! I’ve just lately been so busy with my other writing that I have been scarce on this side of the internet.

Let’s get on to a prompt sent in by Kelly. Kelly writes:

Hi Robyn! I was wondering what were the top five valuable lessons you learned from your MFA program days? Lessons that helped shape you into the writer you are now. Thank you in advance!

Thank you for writing in and I hope these five top tips are in the ballpark of what you’re looking for!

1. You don’t have to take editing advice from everyone. As a matter of fact, that’s deadly. I would never take editing advice from someone whose writing I didn’t respect. You know, it’s weird; when you’re first tossed into critique groups, your mindset is usually (with the aid of the teacher) to accept everyone’s input. You should do that OUTWARDLY. No one’s saying be a dick. But when you’re at home, looking at everyone’s line edits and notes, toss away the notes of the people you know aren’t who or what you aspire to be like. Really.

2. You don’t have to read ten doorstoppers a month to be a good writer. People will posture and list off all the Pulitzer nominees they’ve read but is that doing them any good? Maybe, maybe not. Writing is about the world, it’s not just about other writing. If you’re ingesting media in general and going out and listening to humans talk and noticing the leaves changing, you’re doing the work.

3. That being said, write a lot. Write all the time. Write when it’s sucky and write when it’s hard. Write when you don’t feel like it, even a paragraph a day, even if it’s just to describe your favorite TV show to a friend who really doesn’t wanna hear it. Write anyway.

4. Publishing your short stories in physical journals and magazines is nice and it impresses people in your program but when you get OUT in the real world, nobody reads those things except your family, so find other ways to get your writing into the world.

5. You need to learn the rules before you can gracefully break them. It’s an old adage but true. Studying older literature is good to learn how to twist it and how to build on it. Nothing exists in a void and everything you do will be considered referential anyway, so you might as well know what you’re doing.

Well, I hoped this helped! These five things are not only things I learned while IN the school but things I’ve realized since leaving. They’re what I realized when I looked around myself to see how far I’ve come.

Hindsight is 20/20.

If you’d like to ask a question, just hit the Contact button here on my site and send one in!

One Scene at a Time

I’m in the mighty grip of my revision month. My back constantly hurts from hunching over the computer, my eyes have gone wonky, I’m tired and irritated and having one long rolling existential crisis.

But everything’s okay, because I’ve got my workflow!

A workflow is a pattern, a rhythm, something to be adhered to even in the face of terrible, seemingly unconquerable monsters/manuscripts. If you hang on to your workflow and apply it to every kink you encounter, surely you will prevail.

(Someone from the audience: “Don’t call me Shirley.”)

Okay, guys, let’s look at the facts. Every writer I’ve ever met has a book, right? Like, a notebook of some sort where they jot down ideas, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes with purpose. Of course I have one too, it changes every year or so once I fill it up. Here’s a gander at this year’s model. It’s got my first draft notes and now my revision notes as I go along!

Yes, yes, Mario stickers. Customization!

Anyway, the way I attack my revising is, after I’ve gone through all my agent’s notes and such, to look at each old chapter and make notes inside my book of what needs to change. Obviously, since I’m now revising chapter 14/15, a lot has been added/taken away and the changes are getting bigger and bigger. How to keep up with all that mishmash? How not to get wildly confused in the tangle?

Sticky notes and willpower! Observe:

I take each chapter, make notes of what I want to change and what I want to keep, this way. The sticky notes are things to keep in mind that have already changed and what I can do to build upon them.

As for the writing you see, I head the chapter notes, and make personal notes about the scenes. I have a shorthand so this won’t take forever. BEHOLD:

Yes, that disheveled young woman in the corner is none other than yours truly.

So I can add these in and not lose my mind too much! The great thing about your own notes is they’re YOUR OWN and no one will judge you for the awful things you put in there! For example, one of my character notes just says for him: ‘gay and likes Melissa Etheridge.’ And for this character’s revision, his notes just changed to ‘VERY gay and likes Melissa Etheridge.’

Every day, I start the workflow over again. I look at the old chapter, make these very colorful notes, and then realign myself with the current revision through my past very colorful notes. I’m always going back into the notes proper to make sure I haven’t overlooked anything huge. This also saves time because I don’t have to inch through the original doc in search of miniscule shit.

My process works for me! What works for you?

New Story Alert

Hello, hello! We are due to get back on schedule here in a minute. Upcoming, the next in the Hintlord series will be on characters who are not you, and how to craft them! A request from a regular reader! So look forward to that. But before that:

Click here to read my new story over at Crack the Spine.

Impossibly Tender by yours truly is about a man who negotiates fatherhood in the worst possible way. :)

A Female Deer

So I did have a request to talk about my latest (definitely) and greatest (hopefully) project.

For obvious reasons I cannot post a snippet, but I can post an elongated blurb that allows me to do three things at once: 1. procrastinate; 2. explore my feelings on it; 3. post the moodboard.

Here we go!

Picture it, kids: The lowlands of Tennessee. An autumn. A darkness more felt than seen. Mid-to-late-’90s when Walkmans were clipped to everybody’s hip and the cool kids listened to AFI. And nine high school boys all arrive by caravan to the mouth of the wildlife management area to begin the Doe Hunt of their generation.

The story follows Farley West, a 15-year-old long dismissed and regarded as less masculine than his peers. He’s ready to prove himself a real Young Buck to his friends, his dad, and, above all, his uncle who has been there for him since childhood. But when the Doe Hunt starts, his friends immediately turn on him and from the way they salivate and call him, "Doe," with those sugar-choked voices, Farley has a feeling that they aren't exactly looking to shoot him.

Here’s my glorious moodboard for it; it’s really hot so bring a cold Gatorade.

I have a lot of love for feminized boys/men; how their society tells them what they are because they seem to fit into a certain category by either personality or body type (twinks, for example), and how the guy himself responds to that. Is it easy to wear other people’s expectations when you’re conventionally attractive and you’re rewarded for fitting into the box? Is it heavy? Is it both at once and what does that mean for him? And does he ever resent being placed on a pedestal? How much is he thankful to the pedestal when he sees others struggling in the mud down below?

Because of all those things buzzing through me when I wrote this, they’re pretty prevalent themes in the manuscript. The amount of violence in this isn’t new or special for me, because I’ve done a lot of it before, but I think the speed at which it happens is rather novel for me specifically. The events in the main storyline happen over a weekend, and there’s a second stream that takes place throughout Farley’s life growing up in Red Creek.

My first novel took place in White Hill, which is the sister town of Red Creek, both separated by about fifteen miles of turnpike. If anyone starts a rumor that I want to build a world around these two towns a la Derry and Castle Rock, you let them know THEY’RE RIGHT.

I like familiarity, I like to have already been oriented in a story when I start writing it, and this is the best way for me. One of the main characters in this novel is also a satellite character in the first novel, which is nothing if not fun. I just want to get back to enjoying my goddamn writing life for once.

If I ever had a class of kids who asked me if I would recommend becoming a writer, I’d tell them fuck no. It’s awful and lonely and sad and you lose your innocent love for it. You gain a forced love for it, like a marriage you know you can’t exit, like one from the old days before women could divorce. You stew in it and have to live with it because if you don’t, people will say, “Well, what was it all for?”

So then you look around the room of your own and you see a little love. Something you can hold in your hand. You cup it carefully to try and keep the wind from blowing it out. It warms your face. And you remember the roaring firestorm of your youth and think, This will do. For now.

That’s this novel.