Ariana_Pearce

I'm most entertained by the people who go ad hominem, tear my heart out, rip me a new butt hole and top it off by kindly advising me not to quit my day job. At least I have gotten their attention. Masochistic? I don't think so. It's more that when I am reading a review of someone else's work, I can't stand the obvious falsity of that unctuous kid-gloves treatment with which some reviewers so delicately tip-toe around the hard cold fact that the writing made them puke. Scathing reviews are more fun to read. Moreover, when I say that critical review and discussion works better in a classroom, I am not suggesting that the critics are more likely to think twice with their words before getting punched in the teeth. What I mean is that the writers are there to face the abuse. They grow thick skin by taking it. They learn by taking it. No one ever learns anything of value from praise.

Posted another chapter. Discussion is valuable, but it can become dicey. It works best in classrooms, where participants are motivated by proximity and courtesy to measure their thoughts and remarks. Remote discussions of this kind can get out of hand. I always get a chuckle out of the "anti-flame" and "anti-troll" threads that I find in forums of this kind. One unfailingly finds threads in which writers lament the paucity of quality reviews and the apparently gratuitous down-voting of stories. They make impassioned and apparently sincere appeals for constructive criticism. Yet all too often, when they receive exactly that, they go into conniptions and lash out in response, having forgotten the old adage, "Watch out what you wish for!"

I have formal training in English grammar, poetry, literary criticism, theater, and the novel form. The written word is my first love. However I write fiction primarily for myself. An outlet and avocation. Professionally, I am in the fields of software architecture and computational neuroscience. My English background, oddly enough, provides a strong formative background for those fields (particularly my training in structural and transformational grammars). Incidentally I do make a good living through writing as well, but the production is entirely expository. Although I have a formal education in Letters, I do not place too much credence in it. I am of the opinion that the most effective way to learn to write is to read.

The lines between erotica and pornography have become so blurred, with the ubiquity of amateur authors and the ease of self-publishing online, that erotica is no longer permissible on mainstream e-book venues like Goodreads and the large commercial publishers such as Amazon. In both cases, contemporary fiction can contain explicit sex, but it cannot be classified by the author and/or publisher as erotica. By this I am referring to the "official" ISBN/ASIN classification. Exceptions are made in most venues for classics, which must in the least be public domain. Erotica and pornography are differentiated insofar as the relative degrees of artistic/literary merit. I would argue that Chatterley and Lolita have literary merit and are erotica. But those are also classics. New, contemporary work is harder to classify, because the demarcations between the two to a large extent are in the eye of the beholder. I do not think that reader titillation (or lack thereof) is a reliable guide. The sex scenes in my books sure as hell titillate! But they are not gratuitous. They are cohesive to the plot. The plot is not merely a contrivance that propels characters into coitus. Nor is nomenclature reliable. I rarely use invective. I am writing mainstream contemporary books. Fuck, cunt, pussy, cock, cum... yes, those words do occur. But they tend to appear in dialogue, and they tend to fit the context. I do not use them in narrative. The characters use them, when appropriate. I use them only when they are necessary, and as such they simply do not appear all that much. Nevertheless, as an author I am always striving to bring my readers to tears, or put them on their backs with laughter, or render them in dire need of a cold shower, as the situation warrants. Literature-- or in the case or my writing, trash that wishes it were literature-- is particularly challenged by its inherent constraints to induce tears, joy, laughter, and especially titillation.

Yes! And I do stand corrected. After I made my last post, I opened this page in Firebug and looked for IFrames in the editor and ad rotator, and I couldn't find any. Most impressive. In my defense I am a bit confused, because every time I come to this page in Firefox, the thing squawks at me and asks me if I want to install Adobe Flash. It can't be the text editor that is barking at me, because I'm in the text editor now, and it works. So something is asking for it. That's why I wrongly assumed IFrames were hosting embedded content somewhere.

A justice of the U.S. Supreme Court is famous to have said, "I can't define porn, but I know it when I see it." Similarly, erotica is a term fraught with confusion, though we all know what it is. The dictionary definitions that you've given do not help much, do they? Here is how I classify erotica. First, let us set aside the matter or scholarly works or explanatory texts pertaining to sex, sexual love, sexual desire. The quintessential example would be the Kama Sutra. We understand that under a strict denotation such works are classified as erotica, but that is not the focus of debate. The real question at hand is, what constitutes erotica in the realm of fiction itself? Or, to put it another way, what makes a story erotica? Take a story. Any story. Consider its theme. If its main thematical context or motif is to propel characters through a series of sexually situations and encounters for the express purpose of titillating the reader, then the work is erotica. We can all easily raise examples of such works in classical literature. The Story of O (Reage) is a work of erotica whose primary purpose is to depict the sexual submission of a character to dominant personalities in a progression of sexual encounters that culminate in her acquiescence to her own human sacrifice for the titillation of her master. Juliette (de Sade) is a fantastically carnal chronicle of the adventures of a French libertine in which progressively more ribald atrocities are piled one on top of another, culminating in the protagonist's slaughter of her own daughter to the accompaniment of her own orgasmic release and that of her savage lover. The work on one level is a lampoon of French aristocratic sensibilities and an expose of class hypocrisy, but it is foremost designed to titillate the reader. There are also examples to be found in Victorian and post-Victorian erotica (Birch in the Boudoir and so on), which take the reader through a dizzying and predictable rounding of the bases, from frottage to oral to vaginal to anal, with spankings and requisite molestation all along the way. In all of these examples, the prime motif is the progression of sex from one act through to the next. If the works have a raison d'etre, it is this progression. They might have else to say, but whatever else they convey is a secondary consideration, a situational transport device that services to advance the progression. Compare this, now, with works that have some other primary thematic motif, yet which contain explicit sex in the course of their action. Examples do not have to be high literature. A good popular example might be Jaws (Peter Benchley). That book contains some hot sex. But it is not a book about sex! It is a book about sharks, and killing sharks! It is a respinning of Moby Dick and the archetypal battle of wills between feeble impassioned man and cruelly efficient, dispassionate Nature. There are endless other examples. Madame Bovary, for example, since I'm on Flaubert, was once condemned for its licentiousness. Lady Chatterley's Lover. On one level it is a fetishist's dream. The aristocrat screwing with the grounds crew. But is that really what the book is about? Certainly not! Let's see.... Steinbeck, East of Eden. And of course, since Gabriel Garcia Marquez is my favorite novelist, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Innocent Erendira, which on its most base superficial level would be burned as child pornography, yet on a deeper level is a virtuoso work of modern surrealist short fiction. In short, erotica is all about the sex, and the plot (such as it is) puts the characters together. Literature merely contains sex (or doesn't).

In the other thread I did not want to harp on my own writing since it is self-aggrandizing. But this thread is in the "Promote a Story" forum, and this is my thread, so I guess it's okay to say a few things. First of all, there is a lot of hotness in the books that I am beginning to post. Chapter-long sex scenes! And I'm told they don't suck. But that said, I am posting novels. Big novels. With lots of foregrounding and fully developed plots. So the narrative builds slowly. Truth in Advertising: The summary is accurate. Nanotech and political intrigue are major themes in the books, but those motifs develop slowly, too. The books are actually classified in ISBN as a cross between contemporary romance and contemporary drama/near science fiction. (Think Crichton-- God rest his soul-- with sexually explicit romantic subthemes.) A word about the pace: the first few chapters set the pace, and I try very hard to maintain narrative consistency. That is why the books are big. Not a single scene is rushed. My books do have explicit sex, and when you hit them, you'll read them twice, but I want you to give a damn about the characters before you see them in the bedroom. The books do contain sex, but they are not erotica. They are dramatic pieces foremost. Are they literature? Not for me to decide, but I try to emulate the books that I like to read, because I am writing primarily for myself. I like big books of the classic/contemporary mode. Faulkner. Marquez. Currently I am reading Gustav Flaubert. (No, not Bovary, but one of his less known works, A Sentimental Education.) One of the most striking aspects of Flaubert's style-- and he wrote in the mid-1800's, when the novel form was still new and fresh-- is his meticulous attention to the setting; not only the focus, but also the periphery. Flaubert painted the entire scene, including the background sights and sounds. This was before motion pictures of course. His work was colloquial and remarkably readable, because he wrote by and for the vernacular, as opposed to the Victorian/ aristocratic airs of others roughly in the same period, such as Austen. By contemporary standards not much happens in Sentimental Education, for a book that is roughly 400,000 words long, and the reason for the dearth of action is that so much attention is given to the depiction of the scene. My own work has been described as lush, and I do confess that I employ a ponderous, sprawling narrative style. The reason for this is that I am striving for a balance. I want lots of action, as compared to a Flaubert or even a Faulkner, and I want rich settings. But unlike the classicists of the novel form, I live in a contemporary/post-modern age in which it is permissible to leave more to the imagination. I paint the focus and I give especially thoughtful attention to the subjectivity of the principals, but by and large I am content to let the reader fill in the periphery. I also try to impart a fresh perspective, and I am always looking for an innovative turn of phrase. Somewhere in the first few paragraphs of the book I find a shocking way to give color to a dry topic: math, and prime numbers: Atoms... were comprised of only one hundred six elements, counting the esoteric specimens that popped into existence in mushroom clouds and fizzled a zillionth of a second later, mixed with gaseous viscera. The elements that made numbers— the primes— went up and up forever and lasted for eternity. The books contain a lot of this sort of thing. It keeps one awake and makes for a fun read, but it also makes a longgggg book! Hopefully you'll stick with it long enough to reach the hotness. It's worth the wait. Okay. Is that enough self-promotion? That's enough from me. To all those of you who were there when the plug was pulled on the other thread, come on back and tell me about what you're writing. I'll check in here every few days-- or more often, if this thread becomes hawt.

Last we talked, I had remarked that your rewrite (samples given, before and after) had been much more effective-- not only by dint of the enhanced attention to setting, but also in terms of syntactical structure and diction (word choice), verbs especially. We can continue that discussion here if you would like, though I am still a bit hesitant about giving critique since I am so new here. And no, the red text in the other thread did not mean I was offended. I merely wanted to emphasize that critique was coming, to warn off readers who don't want writing advice from a complete stranger. I would have used a <SPOILER> tag if this forum had one, but alas it does not.

Fifth chapter posted. This novel is big and slow, but now it begins to heat up. In recognition of advice from member and writer Joe Long, I have modified the posted Story Summary by adding the words, big and slow. These are novels, not short stories. Yes, there is hotness; yes, there is action, but the story takes time to develop. It is not intended for one sitting. I would also like to acknowledge the many contributors to a lively and robust debate on writing style and craft, which recently took place on this forum's Suggestions subforum: Joe Long, Perv Otaku, Deseridious, Dirty Angel, George Glass, and others. Regrettably that debate was cut short by a moderator, who split it up and essentially killed the thread. The remnants of that debate have been moved to a thread in the Writer's Corner subforum. Since I don't own that thread, I won't be checking it. Anyone who so desires can feel free to revive the debate here. If that happens, I will participate.

Basic line of defense. Don't take it personally. I even avoid using Javascript on most commercial news sites. This makes some of them non-functional, of course, to which I say good riddance. The fundamental problem is that inevitably sites of this kind are running content in IFRAMEs, and the site sometimes loses direct control over what appears in them. I also disable META-REFRESH for this reason. (Doing so can also break commercial sites.) At the moment I am in Firefox, with Javascript on.

The T.O.C. could work with Javascript off. Typically the chapter entries are just a list of hyperlinks. Click and you go, because it is pure HTML. Just like the story links that exist now, on the Member profiles. For that matter, the dropdown can be made to work with Javascript off. There can be a link button beside it that says something like "Go" or "refresh," and the "button" really executes a form submit. This causes the page to refresh, the form sends the state of the dropdown. So if Chapter 45 is selected, the server refreshes the page on Chapter 45. (This is the same thing the dropdown itself does, but the dropdown fires on the "onchange" event, and that is why Javascript is required.) All of the above is work (time and money), so I'm not really suggesting it.

Hi again! Hi again! Back on topic, so you've returned. Thanks for your response. Makes sense. You know I missed the dropdown as an option. Probably because it doesn't work for me. When I'm in the Archive I usually have Javascript disabled, so the dropdown doesn't trigger. (Like many people, I usually lockdown my browser when I'm in adult-only sites.) As for a self-built table of contents... the possibility came to me, because chapters are editable here without a time limit. So I thought it might be a nice idea, since I could maintain it myself as I add chapters. But if it's not allowed, I won't do it. I've been here less than a month and I've already caused too much trouble.

Back to the topic with a suggestion for the AFF Archive. Are there any plans, with the coming upgrade, to provide an automated Table of Contents feature? It would be great if, when a reader clicks on a multi-chapter story, she first sees a list of chapters titles with links. That way, one could easily to the middle of a big story without having to click Next a few dozen times. My novel thread only has four chapters thus far, but I am planning many more. I am thinking about editing the first chapter to add front-matter, including a T.o.C. But I will not do that, if any plans for an automated T.o.C. are in the works.

Okay... ladies and gents: I'm still feeling my way around here, and I don't think any of you have read my story posts (maybe I'm wrong), so do you really think I'm qualified to be critiquing your writing samples? Ughh..... I know I'm going to regret this....... If you want critique, read on... if not, stop right here, please!!!! Joe, good rewrite. Superior description paints a more effective scene. Whether you realize it or not, your very first sentence is stronger, for a reason that perhaps you do not realize. In the rewrite, you've cut the word, had. By removing that word, you've imparted a double benefit on the sentence. You've eliminated two weak verbs: a conjugation of to have, and a conjugation of to be. (Notice that the word was is gone from your rewritten sentence as well.) The verbs to have and to be are lazy verbs. When the writer lapses into using them, he/she loses opportunities to use stronger, more effective action verbs. Weak: Tommy had a cold. Better: Tommy coughed spittle into a wet rag. Weak: Jane was in a hurry to get to the bus and almost missed her interview. Better: Jane sprinted for the only opportunity to make her interview and caught the bus doors before they closed. I play a game when I write: I look for ways to impart action in my narrative by looking for fresh action verbs. I try to write for as long as I can without using conjugations of to be ("is," "was,") and to have ("have," "had"). Like any such rule or guideline, it can be taken too far, but for beginning writers the exercise if done diligently necessarily leads to stronger narrative.

It is easy, in a sex story, to lapse into telling. Much easier to rattle off age, bodily dimensions and endowments, than it is to reveal the characters through action and interaction. Easier to tell us that Buck has a ten inch dick than to show us his sweetheart's trepidation. Showing takes time and effort. If I go on, I'll start talking about my own books. I don't want to do that. One thing, though: when showing the action, it is also essential to show the reader what the character is thinking about the events that are occurring. Beginning writers often take the easy route by using first person narration from the point of view of the main character. When done badly, first person narration locks the perspective to one point of view, and all of the other characters begin to resemble cardboard props on a stage. First person mode developed into a fad with the popularity of the Twilight series, and now it is prevalent. Trouble is, it is done badly. Stephenie Meyer was competent at first person narration, but even she had to break out of its constraints in order to finish Twilight. (That is why the last book is broken into parts, one of which is narrated by Jacob.) Third person omniscient is a much easier route to putting the reader into the heads of the cast, because there is no constraint as to perspective. That said, a skilled author can narrate effectively and empathetically in any mode. Perspective is just one means of achieving it. Lexicon also matters. Choose words that your characters are likely to use. Not only in dialogue, but also when you are describing their actions. Same for sentence structure. Modulate sentence complexity and sentence length from character to character. Avoid dialogue asides. This means using characters' dialogue to explain something to the reader, which the characters in the story would already know. Two ninjas in the middle of a battle to the death should not be explaining the benefits of cold-rolled steel! (This is done blatantly and badly in major bestsellers, so it is a pet peeve.) Ugh. I feel like I'm preaching. Time to stop.