Ginevra

No worries, I did invite folks to pick it apart, didn't I? Nice to hear from a genuine Cajun. You have no idea how much effort I have put into trying to research dialects and languages for my stories. Everyone I asked seemed to know less about it than I, myself, did. I've also had to tack on a few bits of proper French, German, and Russian for one story or another. For the German, I've actually got a few watch-dog readers that will correct me if I wander too far off the mark. Most of my compatriots tend to go too heavily into the text-book French when doing Cajun dialect, in my opinion. Oh! And thanks for clearing up the spelling of "cher." I've been going with what Marvel Comics used, since all my other sources seemed to conflict. Luckily it was right! Thanks for offering your help.

I write mostly XMen and one of my favorite characters to play with is Gambit. So far, I've gotten few complaints or criticisms about my Cajun dialogue. There are two voice sources I have in memory. The first is Justin Wilson who used to do a lot of cooking shows for PBS. The fella told wonderful stories while he cooked, looking and acting like the granddad you wished you had fixing dinner. The second was the old XMen animated series where Gambit often spoke of himself in third person -- I don't think that's a genuine part of the dialect, just a quirk the comic book writers gave the character, though I find myself using it anyway. When I'm writing the dialogue, I play the words through my head, listening for the distinctive cadence that I recall from the voice sources. I've lived thirty two of my thirty five years in the South, so the dialect I write is based a great deal on the southern drawl I've grown up with spiced up with some bits of French here and there. One of my favorite resources for researching anything having to do with my pet Cajun is http://www.gambitguild.com/ . I think there's actually a thread in the forum intended to help folks with their French. I think you've gone more classic French than Cajun with your dialogue, myself. I'll take a shot at putting it the way I'd have done it and ya'll are welcome to nitpick. It's always a learning process: "Welcome to Louisiana, Mr. Shore," she said in a thick Cajun accent. "Did you have a good trip?" "Welcome to Louisiana, Mr. Shore," she said, her words thick with the accent peculiar to the region. "How your trip go? Bon?" The first line sounds like a relatively formal greeting taken without context, so I'd think the character would try a little harder to speak text-book English than usual. In the second, it sounds like the characters have had a little more time to get acquainted and it could be taken as flirtatious or at least friendly, and so less "correct" English. “Looks like we're 'ere, monsieur,” she said, opening the door. “I know we have a hard day ahead of us, but maybe you’d like to have a little fun before you rest up, chare?” "Look like we here, monsieur," she said, opening the door. "We got a hard day ahead of us, but dere no reason you can't have a little fun before you rest. What you say, cher?" In general, I try to hit a certain rhythm, dropping a lot of plural endings and often substituting a "d" sound for "th". I also choose the words I use to showcase the dialect, avoiding the ones that are harder to make conform. Hope that helps some.

I think first hand experience is best, but it's not always practical, or even possible. If I'm writing about something I've never done or experienced, I research it. I ask questions (I'm the chick that posted the question about what it's like for a man to receive a blow job.) Of course some things are only possible in a fictional setting, but even there, I would seek out descriptions of the closest real world equivalents. I do cringe when I come across stories where the author obviously has never experienced what they are trying to describe. I've read sex scenes that were anatomically impossible. Scenes where characters reactions to events were just preposterous. Scenes that just jarred me right out of the story, scratching my head and going "Are you kidding me?" Experience shows more often than not, I think. I'm thirty five years old. I've experienced quite a few things and researched quite a bit more. I put real work and thought into my stories and I'd like to think others do the same. Sadly, that's not always true. Thank the gods for the back button.

Hmm... I read the poll question as asking if there is a line that I draw for myself as a writer. And the answer is, of course. I don't write smut that involves pre-adolescent children. I may deal with it as character background, but not as smut. So far, I haven't touched bestiality or true incest, either. I don't do snuff. And I avoid writing about sexual activities and kinks that happen to squick me. Like scat play. But, I don't try to impose the line on anyone else. I just read the story summaries and author's notes and try to avoid the content I don't want to read.

Yeah. If things are going well, I'm not capable of saying much more than a two word phrase. In the U.S., "cunt" is one of the ugliest things you can call a woman. I don't know how the word got that kind of baggage, but it is ugly enough to end relationships over. Were I dating a man and he whipped that out in an argument, I'd probably dump him. If he weren't already in the process of dumping me. It's worse than calling a woman a slut, whore, bitch, or nearly any other single word I can think of at the moment. "Pussy" can be used playfully and is often used to refer to a man as being wimpy. "Twat" isn't something commonly used in my experience, I think it's more of a European term, though most Americans would understand what you mean. For reference. I live in the Southeastern U.S. Regional usage might vary a little.

While I typically don't do a whole lot of talking during the act...Um...The things I actually do say are usually my husband's name, "Oh God" or "Fuck me." So I tend to use those words when I write dialogue during sex scenes. You write what you know, I suppose. It may well be a cultural thing, I haven't the breadth of experience to judge as all my lovers have been American. I do find it kind of funny and silly when there is tons of dialogue during sex. Sometimes you make an effort to "talk dirty" to your partner. But how many folks actually hold full conversations?

Personally, I don't care to read or write about: Scat, Watersports, Snuff, Canon characters being permanently maimed Things that may or may not squick me depending how they are treated: Rimming, Sex between adults and pre-adolescents-If it is character background or part of the plot and treated as abuse, fine. If it is written in such a way that it is intended to be sexually stimulating, no thanks. Between adults and underage adolescents -- more on a case by case basis, but the greater the age difference and younger the child, the more suspect it is. Bestiality -- Anthropomorphic characters don't bug me. A dude killing a chicken or a dog by having sex with it -- ick. There are probably other things that I simply haven't run across. I'm into D/s, Light to moderate S&M, that sort of thing. I've got little problem with sex between underage characters who are old enough to want to have sex with one another. Age varies. Incest doesn't bother me, but I don't go looking either. Got no problem with M/M, F/F, or group sex scenarios. I do like dubious and non-consent stuff that doesn't fall under the above squicks. Probably more things I've forgotten, but I think this post is long enough already. Don't you?

I can't recall being turned of on a fic because of a single word or phrase...But I do hate overly florid euphemisms like "purple headed warrior," "love pudding," or "throbbing manhood." Blech! I actually prefer the terms "cock" and "cum" if I'm reading or writing something graphic. I have an aversion to the word "cunt" but it would take more than one instance to make me drop a fic on that basis alone. "Pussy" I can deal with in moderation, it doesn't have the same negative impact. "Dick" is all right in moderation too, though it strikes me as a little wimpy compared to cock. If it's hardcore sex, I like to see or use the hardcore terms. Clinical terms are OK in moderation. For tender love scenes, I prefer avoidance or milder terms. More words I don't care for: Jizm, spunk, love juice, and many other rather disgusting or cheesy terms for semen that I just can't remember right now. But as I've written a fair bit of smut now, I do see and understand how difficult it can be to come up with new ways to describe these things. I do try to vary my language when I write and prefer to see others do the same.

I'd probably like it two to three times a week. But I have two young kids and not as much privacy as I would like. Hubby and I manage about once a week together. I'm pretty sure he masturbates about close to daily. Me, rarely, mostly from lack of privacy again. I think about sex all the freakin' time, though. It is pretty common to be a little out of sync with your partner. Anything from several times a day to once every week or two for a couple who live together is considered normal, I believe.

When I started this topic, I used the term "sin" figuratively. As a pagan and practicing witch, I believe neither in demons nor in "sin" in the biblical sense. And truthfully, I am much more concerned with the theology and connection to the Greater All of the universe than I am in spells and charms and such. But I have taken the time to learn the theory and practice of magic. Actually, within my own religious creed, had I wished to seek retribution on him, I would have been fully justified. I don't care to discuss some of the things he did to me, which were not solely confined to lying and adultery. But we had a young child and he had a family. So I did nothing. I even footed the bill for the "amicable" divorce, made sure all the bills were paid when I left, coordinated my leaving with him moving in roommates to help pay for the apartment, and demanded a ridiculously small child support payment. I was far kinder than he deserved. I turned a lot more cheeks than most Christian folks I know have would have done. My opinion is that it was his own karma coming home to roost. He needed no help from me in that respect. Or if you want to go with the Christian interpretation...He was "saved" and God called him "home."

Actually, for the time being, I've decided to leave off on restructuring older stories. I have settled on a general chapter length for most of my stories. For me, that is generally around 3500 words, give or take about five hundred words. I've settled on this for a couple of reasons: First, I do tend to write in chunks this size without meaning to, for some reason. Second, I find that this length works for pretty much any venue I decide to use for my posting, including Live Journal. It's long enough to do about three good scenes and to make some real plot progress. Much shorter, and I feel I'm rushing. Much longer and either I feel I've gotten too wordy, or I've gone off on a tangent. If it's too long, and I may have trouble posting it in all the places I use for my stories, especially Live Journal. I would prefer to run longer rather than shorter if there is a choice. I only grip over it if I really have to worry about the chapter being too big to post as a unit. I hate having to divide up a chapter I've just written because it is too long to post somewhere. It took me a while to realize I could get away with larger posts if I saved my stories as Rich Text Files instead of regular MS Word files. Silly me -- I'm learning this stuff as I go along.

I don't grip over not receiving reviews. If I get say a hundred hits and/or one review per chapter of a multi chaptered fic, I consider that a success. My chosen fandom isn't the most active and some of the stuff I write is definitely for a niche audience. I do have a small, loyal following for my Nightcrawler-centric works. Those tend to get pretty dark. Were I writing one of the really popular fandoms, like Harry Potter, I might be disappointed. If you really love feedback, Live Journal has so far been really good to me. My buddies there never fail to comment when I post. But it is a much smaller audience.

Is it work? I suppose so, but it is necessary. Minor editing and tweaking isn't much of a hassle. I tend to do it as I go along. I get interrupted often when writing and frequently have to reread whatever chapter I'm in to get back into the flow. I tend to edit and tweak as I go along. Then I do a full read through for to check for errors and to tweak the chapter before using MS Word's grammar/spellcheck tool. If it's one of the stories my Beta has agreed to look at, I send it off. If it isn't, then it gets posted. I'm not sending everything to my Beta because I've been churning it out at such a rate it isn't fair to keep her from working on her own stories. Though I think working with her has improved my abilities to edit and tweak my own work. I really don't find it a big chore at all. If I needed to do major editing where the structure of the story itself were to be changed, then I would find it a chore. I don't do that very often.

My original characters usually name themselves with little need for thought on my part. Though I do keep a baby name book handy, mostly for naming babies born into my Sims 2 game. I will sometimes search the Internet if I'm looking for something specifically ethnic. For example, I wished to name a character "Eurydice" from the Greek myth. I needed a Greek surname to go with it, so I looked up Greek surnames and famous Greek persons and came up with "Savros." I do like names to have meanings. Especially if I'm writing in the X Men comic-verse, where character names are often descriptive or have a meaning that is supposed to clue you into the nature of the character. Examples: Reynard (french derived, meaning "fox") Wylde, his daughter "Kit" Wylde a.k.a Winter Fox Wylde, and her mother Winter Moon -- a family of mutants resembling were-foxes. If I'm really stuck, I do prefer the book I have to the name generators I've seen online. It's 20,001 Names for Baby. It actually has my name in it, which is rare, or at least it was before the HP craze. That's why I bought it so many years ago. It's older than my first born by several years I think.