Squawk Radio
Sunday, April 16, 2006
ELOISA SQUAWKS ABOUT SEX! (got your attention, didn't I?) Originally published June 1st
No, I am not going into those arcane rituals that my husband and I learned on that remote Fijian island back in... Christina! Hush in the peanut gallery!
The thing is: I finished a book today. HURRAH! I can't turn it in yet, due to some serious plot problems, but I have a complete draft. I don't know about other squawkers and writers out there, but I'm dazed after I finally finish a manuscript. I can't remember what the book was about. Did it have deep themes, meaning, emotion? Tone, metaphor, crisis? Jenny Crusie said in a workshop that every scene must have a protagonist and an antagonist. I can't even remember what happened in the middle of the book, but since there weren't any bad guys, I probably missed out on the antagonist thing.
geez. The only thing I can remember about my own book is that it has a lot of sex in it. So I decided to count the longest sex scene (generally the first although, thank goodness, in this book my heroine isn't a virgin, which always adds a page or two for pain and suffering).
OK, from the moment that the hero walks into the room to find a naked woman on the bed (a nice moment, from the male pov), 16 pages. In Times New Roman, 12 point. Then I looked back at my very first novel, Potent Pleasures. In PP, from the moment the hero walks into the inn room and finds his wife in her bathrobe, there are 9 pages.
What about the rest of the squawkers? Are you writing longer sex scenes, or am I the only one going the way of Ellora's Cave? And what about readers--do you like the new, longer sex scenes, or do you skip over them?
No, I am not going into those arcane rituals that my husband and I learned on that remote Fijian island back in... Christina! Hush in the peanut gallery!
The thing is: I finished a book today. HURRAH! I can't turn it in yet, due to some serious plot problems, but I have a complete draft. I don't know about other squawkers and writers out there, but I'm dazed after I finally finish a manuscript. I can't remember what the book was about. Did it have deep themes, meaning, emotion? Tone, metaphor, crisis? Jenny Crusie said in a workshop that every scene must have a protagonist and an antagonist. I can't even remember what happened in the middle of the book, but since there weren't any bad guys, I probably missed out on the antagonist thing.
geez. The only thing I can remember about my own book is that it has a lot of sex in it. So I decided to count the longest sex scene (generally the first although, thank goodness, in this book my heroine isn't a virgin, which always adds a page or two for pain and suffering).
OK, from the moment that the hero walks into the room to find a naked woman on the bed (a nice moment, from the male pov), 16 pages. In Times New Roman, 12 point. Then I looked back at my very first novel, Potent Pleasures. In PP, from the moment the hero walks into the inn room and finds his wife in her bathrobe, there are 9 pages.
What about the rest of the squawkers? Are you writing longer sex scenes, or am I the only one going the way of Ellora's Cave? And what about readers--do you like the new, longer sex scenes, or do you skip over them?
Eloisa James, 4:30 PM
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