The Cheater's Guide to Writing Erotic Romance

By Morgan Hawke

With step-by-step how-to instructions on:

Building Characters
Building a Plot
Writing Action Scenes
Writing Sex Scenes

The difference between Fiction and Reality?

Fiction has to make sense.

There are lots of Creative Writing books out there. This isn’t one of them. There is very little that is actually creative about writing for profit.

The trick to NOT getting burned-out writing professionally--figure out what the market is asking for, then Bend the Rules to make YOUR vision come through anyway!

And that’s what this little volume is all about--bending the rules to suit yourself, while satisfying your bank account.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mojocastle Press
• Release date: Jul 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781601801753

Book preview

Acknowledgements

The difference between —

Fiction and Reality?

Fiction has to make Sense.

There are lots of Creative Writing books out there. This isn’t one of them. There is very little that is actually creative about writing for profit.

The trick to NOT getting burned-out writing professionally—figure out what the market is asking for, then Bend the Rules to make YOUR vision come through anyway!

And that’s what this little volume is all about—bending the rules to suit yourself, while satisfying your bank account.

Morgan Hawke

0

Introducing ~

Erotic Romance

Sex and Romance. Sounds simple, even easy, doesn’t it? Well, there’s just one little hitch…

Erotic Romance

Is NOT True Romance

Nor True Erotica

Adding Sex to a Romance or Romance to an Erotica tale will not make an Erotic Romance. Sex with Romance is not what these stories are about, though Erotic Romance contains both elements. Erotic Romance is a whole different story—literally.

To create any story, you need interesting characters, things that Happen to those characters and a logical conclusion. Erotic Romance is no different. However, Erotic Romance has some very special needs, such as graphically detailed and action-packed Sex, a strong ‘happily ever after’ Romance, and last but not least ~ a strong Adventure plot.

Yes, I said ADVENTURE.

Erotic Romances are honest and for true, Action-Adventure stories!

And so Women’s Adult Adventure Fiction was born—cleverly disguised as Erotic Romance.

The Main Ingredients

The Characters

The Heroine must be able to stand toe to toe with the Hero, and the Hero must be written in such a way as to have the readers fall in love with him. The Villain must actually be Villainous. A weak Villain makes for a weak plot.

Realistic behavior and dialogue are the keys to strong characters.

Sex

Love Scenes have to be as descriptively detailed and well-choreographed as a swordfight in an Adventure, as emotionally powerful as a stolen kiss in a Romance and as much part of the plot as the murder weapon in a Mystery!

The Plot

Something happens to fling the Hero and Heroine together. While dealing with the unusual circumstances, they fall violently in lust. Shortly before the main climax, they both realize that it’s not just lust, it’s love. During a life or death climactic scene, they admit their love. They finish out the story by straightening out all the rest of the story’s loose ends and close the book with an all-or-nothing final sex scene that cements their relationship.

Happily Ever After

To make a Happily Ever After, the Hero and the Heroine end up In Love and Together ~ preferably in bed!

Shall we begin?

Part One:

Making Characters HAPPEN

1

The Beginning Writer’s Pitfall

MARY SUE

A writer’s memories allow them to write what their characters are experiencing in a convincing manner, but a character that is so perfect in every way that everyone loves them and/or wants to sleep with them makes a story fall flat on its face.

Perfection is the ENEMY of Good Fiction.

A character without realistic human flaws is a character no reader can identify with, because no one is perfect. These characters also tend to be boring, because the authors simply cannot bring themselves to put them through real emotional trauma, nor do them real harm. Glorious Death Scenes don’t count as harm, as the Glorious Death immortalizes the character—at least in the author’s mind.

The Real Culprit:

AUTHOR WISH FULFILLMENT.

Characters based on who the author wants to be, having adventures the author wants to have, are known as Mary Sues and Harry Stus.

Think of all the times as a child you pretended to be a character in your favorite cartoon; you know, the one where you saved the day? That was a Mary Sue/Harry Stu adventure. For most, the Mary Sue adventure is a writer’s first experiment in figuring out the motivations, goal and drives of the cartoon characters they are Making Pretend with. So why does the vampire want to get me, anyway?

Mary Sue is a good way to practice—but a bad way to get published.

Nowhere is the Mary Sue character more prevalent than in Fan-Fiction and Erotic Fiction.

Fan-Fiction and Erotica are more often than not a writer’s first attempt at actually writing a story.

Fan-Fiction is inspired by a TV series or a movie. The author invents a character to represent them, and inserts the character into the story. The original ‘Mary Sue’ was Lieutenant Mary Sue (the youngest Lieutenant in the fleet—only fifteen and a half years old) a character in Paula Smith’s A Trekkie’s Tale.

Ever hear that a Romance author is in love with their hero? When more than half of a story is told from the Hero’s perspective (POV), it’s a sure sign that author is in love with her Hero. Unfortunately, a story written with the focus on the beloved Hero tends to make for a weak Heroine, a Heroine that is TSTL (Too Stupid To Live) and a weaker Villain—if there is a Villain at all!

Mary Sue happens when the author wants to have a romantic fling with their perfect Hero. Alas, perfection is the ENEMY of Good Fiction.

This becomes a real problem when an editor starts asking the author to cut back on the hero’s involvement and strengthen the other characters participation in the plot—if there is a plot.

Changing one character’s involvement in a plot is a LOT of work. Changing all three main characters—Hero, Heroine and Villain—is a monumental task. In many cases, the entire story has to be reworked from beginning to end.

Additionally, Mary Sue authors are often extremely resistant to making ANY changes to their Beloved Heroes.

When a Mary Sue story is involved, many editors will refuse the manuscript rather than battle the author over necessary changes.

Mary Sue is NOT always bad!

A good Mary Sue idea can become a fabulous story! As long as the author remembers to keep their Leading Heroine in the lead, the Villain actually villainous and their Hero less than perfect.

2

The Semi-Pro Writer’s Pitfall

Too Many CHARACTERS

The key to writing a novella-length story or a short story is a SMALL CAST. When you have the essential characters whittled down to three, or possibly four, you don’t have subplots creeping in and your word-count stays manageable!

Think SLACKER—and your writing life will go so much easier.

Every Subplot must CONCLUDE to fulfill a Story’s Resolution.

Each main character, HERO, ALLY (or Heroine) and VILLAIN, has a personal Character Arc—an individual Subplot—in addition to the main plot arc. Each main character must COMPLETE their individual Character Arc to conclude a story.

The readers see an unfinished Character Arc as an Unfinished Story, a dangling Plot Thread. The readers will let you have it with a mailbox full of ‘But what happened with…?’ if you don’t wrap them up. Guess how I found out?

Viewpoint Characters:

The Larger the Cast—the Longer the Story

Every viewpoint character chosen, in addition to your three main characters, becomes the Lead of their individual story with their own character arc—their own SUBPLOT.

By presenting a character that is NOT one of the main three: HERO, ALLY (or Heroine) and VILLAIN, a point of view, you have, in effect, made them Major Characters. Their character arcs (subplots) must ALSO conclude to fulfill a story’s resolution—in addition to your three main characters.

What about Secondary Characters?

—Characters that you are setting up for a book of their own later in the series?

Popping secondary characters into a book for the express purpose of luring readers into the next book is a cheap marketing trick. Unfortunately, it’s also a popular marketing trick in the Romance genre.

But it’s still a TRICK.

A strong secondary character takes time away from the primary characters and diverts the plot away from them by offering an interesting subplot—without delivering. The reader has to get the next book to finish that character’s story—only to be teased with yet another character, and their subplot.

As a marketing trick, it works, but only in the short term. Sooner or later, the reader will realize that they are being cheated, in story after story.

"But isn’t that how a Series is done?"

No.

A Series is a group of stand-alone stories taking place in a common universe.

A Series may have overlapping characters—but the key to a Series is that each story Stands Alone.

Forbidden Realms is a series of novels.

You don’t need to read the previous stories to understand the motives and drives of ALL the characters in any of the books, and you don’t need to read more books for the main plotline’s conclusion. A true Series book delivers—and concludes—the ENTIRE story.

A Series does NOT tease the reader with glimpses of an interesting character with an unfinished subplot, a half-told story, to be featured in a future story.

A true Series book delivers on ALL their subplots.

A collection of stories featuring unfinished subplots—is a Serial.

A true Serial is one huge story that takes an entire collection of books—anywhere from three to thirty—to conclude.

Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time is a Serial of novels. He uses the same characters throughout his entire set of books, with one enormous plotline stretching across them all.

Serial novels are very popular with publishing houses, because they are guaranteed sales. To keep track of all the different characters’ plotlines, the reader is forced to read the previous book to understand what is happening. Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Merry Gentry books and Charlaine Harris’s Dead in Dixie books are all Serials. Many of the better crafted Romances labeled as Series books are in fact Serials.

Serials, however, are far more involved than one overlapping (teasing) character with an unfinished subplot.

Note: To write an actual Serial, read Chapter 21, Writing Serialized Fiction.

Picking the POV Character

In a novel you have room for several viewpoints—in a Novella, you DON’T. You do not have room for more than Two—the Hero and the Heroine. POV should be either even between the H/H, or Heroine three-fourths and Hero one-fourth.

Why heavier on the Heroine’s side?

Because the Erotic Romance reader is FEMALE. The reader will never emotionally connect with your Heroine if you don’t weight your story in the Heroine’s direction. Without an emotional connection, the reader will not see the Heroine as a proxy for herself—a costume that she gets to wear for the story. Instead, the reader sees the Heroine as competition for the Hero’s affections: interference.

I use only one POV: the Heroine.

Technical Note: Chapter or Section breaks are the ONLY places you should switch POV. Switching from Viewpoint to Viewpoint can get very frustrating to the reader who has to keep track of each of those different story threads.

And then there’s the Fatal Flaw of Head-Hopping. This happens when the POV switches from character to character every few paragraphs or so, or worse, every other paragraph.

3

Quick Character Creation

The Cheat Technique

Active Versus Passive

Active characters live and breathe as they walk and talk on the page. They interact with the other characters, and their environment. They make the story happen.

Passive characters occupy page-space with a ton and a half of internal narration while occasionally donating dialogue. And that’s about it.

Guess which kind of character you need for an adventure-filled Erotic Romance?

To build an Active character that doesn’t occupy page-space with inactivity, PICTURE your character as they move through your stories. VISUALIZATION is ESSENTIAL for Active characterization. Do they sneer? Sigh? Roll their eyes? Pout? Curl their lip? When they walk, HOW do they walk? Do they use gestures and talk with their hands? Too many books leave out these visual cues to a character’s personality.

But where do you find ideas for these visual cues?

You STEAL them.

The easiest way to build an active character is by ‘borrowing’ a successful character from somewhere else, preferably the movies.

By modeling a character from a movie, you can SEE body language and expressions that needs to go into your fiction.

From your favorite movies and stories…

Take every heroine that kicked butt and took names, and there’s your girl.

Take any hero you ever wanted to spend ‘quality time’ with, and there you go.

Take any villain you ever loved to hate…

– Voila! Instant Story!

Just for the record: I am NOT saying that you should steal Copyrighted Characters! I am saying you should model your Original characters on the characteristics that make these characters so popular.

The trick is to change their names and appearance enough to disguise them while leaving their base character—and dialogue—intact!

Popular character types:

—Trinity from The Matrix

—Keifer Sutherland as David from The Lost Boys

—Robert Carlyle from both Ravenous and Plunkett & McLean

—Wolverine from The X-Men

—Sandra Bullock from Miss Congeniality

Examples of Common Characters:

Logan or Wolverine from The X-Men is a typical alpha male, and an easy character to write. He’s short-tempered and sarcastic, so you know whatever he’s going to say will be snide and aggressive. However, he’s a pudding when it comes to his emotions, because he’s repressed them so tightly. His emotional dialogue only comes out under stress, and then he is understanding and self-effacing, if gruff. In addition, he immediately covers all his emotional outbursts with a thick coating of more sarcasm.

Anita Blake, in Laurell K. Hamilton’s vampire executioner books, is this type of character—but female.

Bruce Willis typically plays an action hero. He’s way easy to write because his says very little. In ninety percent of his movies, he uses his facial expressions to