Anthony Pacheco: Rehabilitated Hack Writer

Enough about taxes. Let’s talk about sex! Again!

At one point, it was my singular goal in life to figure out how to interject sex into a novel and not have it become A) porn, nor B) boring. I didn’t want to close the door on the reader, but I didn’t want to invade the mind and replace the reader’s internal description of hot sex with my own.

That, by the way, was really really hard. Pun unintended.

Sex, like music, has tension. Sex, like music, is satisfying when it resolves. Conflict and counter-points swirl around desire and passion, and makes for good subplots (or plots, if a book is about that).

It is my observation, shared with many, sex is boofed in novels (and boofed is a technical term). The number one problem is a passionate encounter comes across as stilted. Science Fiction and Fantasy, even from “the greats” is a good example of this. Even as a pre-teen, reading some awesome SF book, I could recognize this problem. The only thing worse than porn when you don’t want it is stilted sex. Right when you’ve spent 100 pages getting into someone’s mind. 100 pages and BAM! Tell instead of show.

Subjective reader choices rule the world. Some feel they don’t need to read about sex, because, they got sex—no need to read about the intimately familiar (or, in some cases, the uncomfortable). On the other end are the readers who want a description of life, as it is—which includes sex—mixed with people who want to be titillated. And all the people in between.

It’s enough to drive a writer batty. BATTY I SAY.

I count myself as a lucky writer, however. The voice of sex is not something easily recognized, but I sure found mine by the fine tradition of torturing my beta readers.

My novel Bunny Trouble examines the theme of [redacted]. So I put sex in it. You can’t have a trilogy about [redacted] if you ignore sex. I turned the Uncle Pervy switch on and went to town. Half my beta readers came back with “that was too much” and the other half came back with “that’s hot”.

Well what do I do with that, other than smack my head against the keyboard repeatedly?

Luckily, one of my readers nailed it. He told me, “That’s a lot of sex, which was good, but make sure you understand how this will cause some people to tune out and that you understand your market.”

Whoa. Best writing advice about sex, EVER.

Right then, the intimate relationship between voicing and plotting burst in my mind like a, well, never mind. With the mighty delete key, I deleted huge parts of the book. We’re talking 30k. Now that wasn’t 30k of sex, but rather 30k of tension, the consequences, setting, the sex, what have you. What I left was intense. Focused. Tension.

I haven’t shown this new version to anybody yet, but damn it all, if it isn’t more hot, while at the same time less pornographic. How did I do that?

You’ll have to tune in tomorrow to find out!

(heuh heuh heuh I am such a little shit heuh heuh heuh, but there is a big hint in the text above)