the hardest part

[dragonlady7]

The hardest thing about slash-- stop giggling, children-- is the pronouns. No really.
I've discovered in my writing that when writing het scenes, I'll often just use pronouns for pages on end. I don't need to say the name in a he said, she said situation, as there's only one he and one she. This jives with my speaking persona: I tend not to address friends by their names, and indeed can probably count the number of times I've called Dave by name. (Similarly, it's odd to me to hear him say my name. He almost never does unless I'm not paying attention to something urgent.)
So, it is strange to me to have to say the characters' names every ten seconds. But it's either that or I fall into what Turkey City Lexicon calls "The Burly Detective Syndrome" where characters are never referred to by their names, but by a series of increasingly either monotonous or ludicrous descriptives. I don't want to start referring by descriptives. I'm very much of the 'don't embroider if it doesn't really add anything' school of thought-- dialogue is given in tags of 'said' unless the character actually sighed or exclaimed or cried or something descriptive that actually helps advance the description. I just don't have time for more elaborate stuff. And so, characters are referred to by pronouns or their names. But I'm a bit worried the names are getting excessive. If someone's got to be named three times in a sentence...

Although, from a search engine optimization standpoint, that story should rank pretty well in searches on that character if only I can get a couple incoming links to it. (Er, old habits die hard. I once seriously considered leaving a review of a fanfic story someone had written in which a popular character is throughout referred to by a non-canon nickname telling her she was killing her search traffic, but decided against it.)

Anyhow. Yeah. (A thought: Any of you with websites interested in getting better search traffic to them (if you have ads or something that really does help), I should re-post my intro to SEO stuff that I took down off my old blog...)


But, in short, I do not recommend writing your stories solely to rank well in search engines. But if you do, spell the names right for the love of Eru.

(Speaking of Eru, this made me laugh so hard and yet read it like four times and go "aww" at the part that was more gooshy than funny-- am I allowed to rec Tehta's Ecthelion/Glorfindel fics in every post, or is there some sort of rule against it? But they're funny except it's not just the kind where you roll around and try to explain in vain to your non-fan boyfriend what's so funny about Glorfindel seeing stars and saying "Ai Elbereth!" in a particularly dirty moment (Stars, get it? Elbereth? Stars? I give up, Dave), it's also the kind where you're both "OMG so hawt!!one!!" and you also do that sort of angst-worship-swoon over the Nobly Suffering Lovable Bastard character because he's drawn so well and yet is so hawt and Nobly Suffering and, well, a bastard, which chicks seem to dig... But I digress, don't I. What was I talking about? I am such a dork.)

Mm, I had something to talk about besides pronouns.

Ah, Valentine's porn. I am still doing that. In fact, I am doing a story arc. I am calling this project Porn with Plot, as there's various bits of plot underlying much of it. It turns out that mostly the vignettes are salvaged from the ever-unfinished E/L story languishing in fragmentary beta on HASA. So yes, you fanficcers, you won the poll, and there will be special bonus stuff. I had intended just a short PWP bit, but it's much more than that. I even made a mini-website of it. I was going to post it on OSA or someplace public, but it was easier to just put it up on my site. It is taking immense self-discipline for me not to post the link yet, by the way. It's 3/4 or more finished, and parts of it are ready, but I'm not putting anything up until Monday.
Unless, well, I decide to put it up over the weekend, since that might be better for those of you who actually have weekends off.

Anyhow. Yes. I like the thought of Porn With Plot. Although a good totally pointless one that has the barest scrap of plot only for pretext is always amusing, I'm fussier than that. With the result that my "short" fics are clocking in at 6k words. ... Yeah, maybe I ought to put the Valentine's porn up over the weekend...

Oh yes, I remembered one more thing. A poll. About porn. Which I'll put behind a cut.


So. A man is in a sexual situation. There is something involved, which probably will need to be mentioned. How is it best mentioned? Do I give it a scientific name to be respectful, and cool the scene down? Do I give it the least-obtrusive name I can think of so as not to interrupt the flow of the scene? Do I give it an obscene name to make the scene hotter, and risk tripping up readers that offends?

[Poll #435334]

Just curious. I've already written a lot of it and have had some good comments on what I've posted, but I thought I'd take a survey, since surveys are such fun.

Part of this is me ramping up to the first R-or-greater scene in Vikings Novel, which is coming up in two weeks. (Two? Yeah, I think two.) And needs some rewriting, oh yiss, it does.

Comments

[tehta.livejournal.com]

First of all,thanks for reccing me again. I am still embarrassed. Fortunately, you're pretty much done with my E/G fics now.

More importantly: yes, the pronoun problem is a bit of a problem, but I think names are often less visible than the writer thinks. (Although some of those four-name sentences can require creative rewriting, or even creative replotting of who is doing what to whom.) My least favourite thing is when people use descriptives like "the shorter/younger man," especially when I am not entirely sure who is shorter or younger.

And as for Teh Language of Porn, I checked off several of the male descriptions because I think different things work in different fics, depending on the style and the personality (and experience level) of the POV character. As in, does the character tend to think in terms of penises, cocks, or whatever? And I would say the same goes for the female. (I would also say that I am not interested in reading much about characters who think in terms of "throbbing chunks of man-meat" and "pearls of pleasure, glistening upon the sweet oyster of her sex" or whatnot.)

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>Fortunately, you're pretty much done with my E/G fics now.

That's not fortunate. Are you nuts? I love those things. They're freaking addictive.
I actually read Ai Elbereth two days ago or so, and was sitting staring at the computer screen and suddenly needed to read the bit where Glorfindel is like, "Ah Eru indeed". You know how sometimes a moment is just... poignant? I have to admit they're not characters I cared about before (not owning a copy of Lost Tales), and you're throwing my categories-and-genres theory all to hell. Bah.

I read the one about the eagle too, and thought it was amusing and yet somehow moving.
I find myself mad with desire to see one that deals with E/G and their inevitable parting in death. And yet, that's a kind of pain I don't really want to see. Am I that addicted to the Romance Novel Happy Ending?

>Teh Language of Porn
Yeah, I made the male one a checkbox instead of radio buttons because I figured several were acceptable.
I've written a lot of het. For Vikings Novel I found myself using either "erection" or no noun at all (he touched her, she touched him) and found it was all right, but one beta reader found that overly squeamish and thought I was chickening out.

I am, I know, historically bad with voice. i am not necessarily any good at all at making a POV fic strongly from that character's POV: I always want to stick in omniscient bits. Even 1st-per POV, I usually end up throwing some retrospective-omniscient crap in there. And the voices are never true. Never, never, never. People enjoy my dialogue because it flows, but if you really read it, it sounds like me talking to myself. Because it is. I've been talking to myself for twenty years and writing it down for ten and I call it fiction. (You can fool some of the people all of the time, and...)

So it's really hard for me to judge what a character would think his, er, member was called. I just finished my first m/m slash scene and I used 'cock' more often because that sounds like a more masculine thing to call it (i mean, if i had one, that's what i'd call it), but I really don't know.

...

But yeah, I sorta already knew not to use 'man-meat' or ... "the sweet oyster of her sex"? wtf? Oysters ain't sweet, baby. neither is sexes.
I just figured I'd ask, just to present all the cases I'm aware of. :)

[tehta.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, E and G get reborn and meet up and live happily ever after, so it's all good. And anyway they're both quite pleased with the manner of their deaths; they love the heroic ideal.

[Oysters:]

I feel like "the salty oyster of her sex" would sound even worse, somehow. But there is this definite tendency in bad porn to have women taste of things like honey. Which sounds like a yeast infection waiting to happen, really.

[Cocks:]

I do like no noun at all, as long as it's still clear where the people are touching. And "cock" seems all right in most contexts, too, unless you're writing High Tolkienian or something. But I feel like "erection" and "penis" are a little posher/more clinical, and unlikely to be used by illiterate peasants.

And I am fairly confused about voice myself; I don't have that much control over it. I do have control over the POV, but mostly because I love the tricks one can play with unreliable narration.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

>I am not interested in reading much about characters who think in terms of

A thought: Now that would be a challenge, to write a character that was that obnoxious and yet, POV-follow-able.


Hm. Perhaps not an enjoyable one, unless you didn't have to follow that characters POV for long.

[spacellama.livejournal.com]

This is all very enlightening. (DVD extras! woot!) Generally, I think terms for genitalia depend on who your point-of-view character is. It's perfectly appropriate, when I'm writing from a modern guy's pov for him to use the words "cock" ancd "cunt." Elrond, however, probably wouldn't descend. He might use sea or forest metaphors or something equally drippy (no, it's not really possible to talk about this without summoning weird visuals, is it?). I think the main thing is to decide who your pov character is, how they speak, and then use whatever is comfortable for *them*. Then the audience won't feel jarred out of the rhythm of the piece. Er, I mean story.