aroslav: Blog

This is number nineteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

In 1971, a British farce premiered in London’s West End titled No Sex Please, We’re British. In 2014, the play was named the longest-running comedy in British stage history. It was not so well received in America and lasted only 16 performances. The movie version in 1973 also received a lukewarm welcome and is rated 5.3 stars out of 10 on IMDB. While there are many double and triple entendre, and a couple of call girls running around in their underwear, there’s no sex in the show.

The reception, though, shows a vast difference in audience appeal, and there is just as vast a difference in the appeal of sex—even in erotica.

If you are familiar with my erotic works, you know that I tend to like a slow burn in my writing. It’s often two thirds of the way through the first book in a series—or even later—that there is actual intercourse. I think building the tension and expectation is especially savory.

Not all readers feel the same. I’ve had several readers in the past respond with comments like:
“This would be a lot better if there was some sex in the story.”
“Twenty chapters and no real sex!”
“This kid needs to get laid sometime soon.”

Of course, I receive just as many emails and comments that say:
“This would be a great story without the sex.”
“I just skim over the sex scenes. You don’t need so many.”
“I know this is a sex story site, but do we have to have so much?”

What’s an author to do?

In my currently running “Photo Finish” series, it wasn’t until chapter 29 of 36 in Full Frame that the principal character had intercourse. But every step of the way had a new experience: first girlfriend, first kiss, first touch of a breast, first bare skin fondling. There are so many firsts to be enjoyed along the way, and I took my time describing and enjoying each one. To hear some readers talk, the pressure, so to speak, was building intolerably.

But there is a cycle in fictional sexual relations, just as there is in real life. It may be better described as a bell curve. It starts out slow and gradually builds. When you reach the tipping point, the curve accelerates and it seems like there is always a drive toward more sex. Then life starts to interfere with the sex. There are no longer as many partners to be had. There is a job to go to every day and get home feeling too tired to do more than mow the grass that seems to be growing at the rate sex did at first. There are kids. There’s travel. There are disagreements. You suddenly find that you’ve been on the downslope of the curve and didn’t even realize when it had changed.

I’m on very good terms with my ex-wife. Love her to bits. We just couldn’t stay married. But I keep uncovering bits and pieces of our past (as does she) and we share them back and forth. Old photos, old journals, trip diaries, etc. In twenty-five years of marriage, we accumulated a lot of stuff. Last year, I came across the trip diary from a wonderful three weeks we spent taking Eurail from place to place and riding horses. I transcribed the journal, as written, and sent it to her and to our daughter.

“My God! We had a lot of sex!” Treasure said.

I didn’t remember it as being too much, but agreed it was a lot more than at any time after that trip. There were jobs and houses and a baby. Taxes to pay, meals to cook, cars to maintain. Another college degree, a new business, travel. I didn’t write any new books for nearly twenty of those twenty-five years, so sex wasn’t the only thing to decline.

When I got married the first time, I was told (warned?) that if I put a toothpick in a jar every time we made love in the first year of marriage, and took a toothpick out of the jar every time we made love thereafter, I would never run out of toothpicks!

The point is that characters (and fictional works about their lives) go through much the same kind of bell curve. We ultimately find ourselves on the long tail of the curve remembering what it was like back when.

In the “Photo Finish” series, six/sevenths of the first book is gone before intercourse. Then they make love as often as they can. And over the pages of Shutter Speed (book 2), new lovers are added and many many models come to have their inner being exposed in Nate’s photos. “Inner being” is somehow linked to their nudity and seduction. In Exposure (book 3), we find the independence of going off to college with its attendant opportunities and discovery of a new patron to drive a continuing batch of new experiences, but the increase is slowing to a peak.

In F/Stop (book 4), we find ourselves at the apex of the curve. There are still some new partners and new models, but the episodes are briefer. We’ve settled down with the family we want to stay with. Nate begins to question his lifestyle and why he would want anyone other than the women in his household. In Over Exposure (book 5), a lot of pressure builds to maintain his household, to get out of college, to deal with the draft board, and get the perfect picture. Finally, in Follow Focus (book 6), sex is almost an afterthought. It is focused on his immediate family as he has to go to work full time in a position that requires as much as 80% travel. And when another partner is introduced, it nearly tears the family apart.

There, I’ve given you spoilers for the next three books in the series as only books 1, 2, and 3 have been released so far.

Too much sex? Not enough sex? It will depend entirely on your taste and what part of the story you are in.
I believe the right amount of sex is what contributes to the storyline or the character development. I don’t—normally—write stories that are simply about the sex. I write stories in which sex is a contributing factor to the story or character.

SOL has five ratings for sex content: No sex, Little sex, Some sex, Much sex, Stroke. With any of my stories, my ex-wife would rate them “Too much sex.” That wouldn’t be equivalent to “Stroke” because it wouldn’t turn her on. I consider the stories to have “Some sex.” It’s there. You might be able to skip the sex scenes and still gather the impact from what happens after, but there is purpose to all the scenes. You can see the cycle of character development described in a previous post, “Character Arc.” By the end of the cycle, you will see what kind of man Nate has become, and what kind of family he holds together.

The Photo Finish series will continue public posting through approximately the end of April, 2024. The first three books have been released. Book 4 will release on July 27, 2023. Book 5 will release on October 15, 2023. Book 6 will release on February 22, 2024.

Mentioning the Photo Finish Series, which is still running, made me think of the whole topic of writing historical fiction. There are a lot of traps here, but I’m going to tackle “Naming Names.”

Enjoy!

This is number eighteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

One of the things that I struggle with in creating characters is finding that character’s voice. What does he or she sound like, and how do I get that across in my writing? In reading the works of other writers of erotica, I find the problem is prevalent, even if not recognized or admitted.

My editor, Pixel the Cat, drew my attention to this when I was writing the post, ‘Talk Dirty to Me.’ He said,

"Something you kinda-sorta addressed, and I don’t know that I’ve seen it in any of these: personalizing characters’ functional vocabulary. Like Bob always describes how he feels using a certain set of words, while his GF Judy Lee has some overlap, but her own way of saying ‘good morning’ while her sister Jolene again has some overlap, but her speech is flavored by her time at college in Maine. That sort of thing. For a lot of writers, if one reads only the words they say, all dialog could be the same person."

As the popular Facebook meme says, “I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.”

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time working on this, ever since a reader Down Under got so enthused about the Living Next Door to Heaven series that he had his sixteen-year-old daughter read The Agreement. She read it and responded, “Yeah. It’s okay but Brian talks like an old man.”

Ouch.

I thought I had done such a good job of capturing the progression from little boy to teen. But both the content and the vocabulary gave me away.

In the entire series of “Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventures,” I struggled to make sure the accent, vocabulary, and tone were distinct between the contemporary character and his or her time-traveling self in the 1800s. I had pages filled with Victorian slang and Old West slang. I read books written in that era for language use. I itemized the differences between a character’s speech in the contemporary world and his or her speech in the 1890s or even the use of Cheyenne words by two of the characters who traveled back as members of that Nation.

And then, making sure other characters around them in either era weren’t mimicking the same speech patterns.

Finding the voice for a character is more important than having a physical description. I might have one character who is a tall strong male and another who is a short buxom female, but if they sound the same then the reader is constantly depending on ‘he said’ and ‘she said’ to follow the dialog.

So, how do you make distinctions?

Many authors choose to spell out dialects. This can work to a certain extent, but you will find readers quickly get tired of it. And when a writer uses spelled out dialect, she needs to be careful that she isn’t spelling out words with a different meaning.

I edited a book about the Pony Express for a friend who confided that there were lines that really gave him fits. At one point, a youngster stubbornly refused to accompany a parent by saying “I ain’t goin’ to come.” The author’s father had read it and wanted it put in a more dialectic language as “I ain’ta gonna cum.” The author had to explain to his father that in much of the world, that phrasing could mean something very different than refusing to accompany the adult.

I prefer to use vocabulary and sentence structure to make distinctions. For example, the kids in Blackfeather (available on Bookapy) are ranchers in the 2010s. They use a lot of slang and contractions, and a little cursing. Their counterparts in the 19th century use almost no contractions and the slang is period slang. Miranda indignantly tells Ramie, riding in her head, to “Remove your hand from my privities,” and constantly reprimands her for taking the Lord’s name in vain. It helps to paint the conflict between the two personalities inhabiting the same body.

Perhaps one of the key items to consider in creating voice is to find the difference between the male and the female. And believe me, don’t depend on porn to teach you how women talk about sex. Porn is primarily (not exclusively) written for male entertainment. The language used is language men would use. Most women don’t refer to their pussy or their tits, for example. Those are male terms.

I always think of a scene in Living Next Door to Heaven 4, Deadly Chemistry, in which Brian has been writing sexy stories for Rose. At one point she says, “Orbs? I have orbs?” In that instance it sets up a nice exchange about what she would call them. “Breasts,” is the answer

There is probably no way you can learn to talk like a person of the opposite sex better than reading the writings of a person of that sex. This is one of the reasons I recommend the website OMGYES. It’s where women talk about their own sexuality. The vocabulary is impressive.

When I was writing Nathan Everett’s Municipal Blondes, I started a blog, stating right up front that I was an older man writing a story from the perspective of a twenty-six-year-old woman named Deb Riley, and was using this blog to try to find her voice. I encouraged women of that age group to respond to me and tell me how I was doing. I got a huge following of women in that age group who corrected me, engaged with me so I would have to talk like them, and gave me feedback.

It was so intense that when I started writing the first draft and posting it daily on that blog, my readers engaged with me as if I was indeed that twenty-six-year-old woman. In December, I took a short break around the holidays because it was a very busy time. A few days into the break a follower wrote a panicked note to me. “Deb, I haven’t heard from you since you took off across Belize with that guy. Are you okay? I don’t trust him. Don’t let your guard down. And please let us know you’re okay!”

Now that’s audience engagement! She’d completely forgotten or intentionally ignored that I was a male author writing this piece and it was fiction. To her I was that young woman named Deb Riley and she was worried about me.

Be warned: It can backfire. When I wrote the short story titled “The First Clue is You Can’t Find Your Coffee Cup,” I modeled the narrator’s voice after a person I knew and had worked for. When it was first published, twenty years after it was written, the editor of Line Zero magazine said, “A new and mildly disturbing voice.” Several years later, when I published it on SOL, I got countless emails decrying the bad grammar, telling me I couldn’t write, and that I needed an editor. They were unable to accept it as the voice of the character.

I guess the sum of this message is to find your character’s voice. Make it as distinct as any person you know. In fact, make notes on how other people talk. Jot down their ‘isms.’ Then put them together in your own writing to make genuine living characters who don’t all sound like each other, or like you.

I’m having way too much fun writing this blog. Sometimes I forget that I’m supposed to be writing a story at the same time. I think I’ll have a little fun with the next post. Is there such a thing as ‘Too Much Sex?’

Enjoy!

This is number seventeen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

There is so much to be said about this subject that it is difficult to know where to begin. I’ve decided to zero in on how a character develops from the beginning of a story to the end. In general, I’ll say the story should show the main character (and other principals) growing over the course of the story.
I think one of the biggest faults I’ve seen in erotica is the lack of character development through the course of the book.

In Joseph Campbell’s writings, he talks about the hero’s journey. It is a classical cycle of character development that brings the hero from the beginning of the story—usually in ignorance and innocence—to the end of the story—with understanding and wisdom. One of the problems authors face is developing the character as the ideal they want for their hero from the very first page and not leaving him or her room to grow. He never makes a mistake and never loses a battle.

There are twelve steps in the full hero’s journey and they are divided between those in the normal world in which the hero is nothing special, and the special world where he becomes the hero. Part of the cycle, though, is that the hero must re-enter the normal world after the great adventure is finished.

First, in the normal world:
1. Building the ordinary world
2. Call to Adventure
3. Refusal of the call
4. Meeting the mentor
5. Crossing the threshold.
Second, in the special world:
6. Tests, allies, and enemies
7. Approach
8. The ordeal, death and rebirth
9. Reward, seizing the sword
10. The road back home
Third, back in the normal world:
11. Resurrection
12. Returning with the prize or elixir

These twelve steps are customized to a kind of fantasy but are applicable to the development of just about any character. Even if the character starts out with some special gift—she’s a musician, he’s an acrobat or a painter, they are martial artists—the hero considers it ordinary. This is his life.

Then he is called into some kind of situation in which he must acknowledge his ability or work to achieve it so he can truly become the hero. This often involves reluctance to acknowledge the call. But there is some life-changing event: she gets her first kiss; he stumbles into a fight and must save the child; he falls in love.

There is a famous book on screen writing which has also been adapted for novel writing called Save The Cat! by Blake Snyder. He was a phenomenally successful screen writer who passed away much too early in 2009. I was fortunate enough to hear him speak just a year before that. Blake held that approximately twenty pages into the script of the most successful movies from Hollywood at that time, the hero saved the cat. He did something that showed his character, fearlessness, and ability to be a hero. This marks the point at which the journey into the special world begins.

Nathan Everett’s A Place at the Table (available on Bookapy) is a Bildungsramen, a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. With his grandmother as an example and Meredith by his side, Liam evolves from a self-centered boy of privilege to a man people can trust to lead them.

This means the author—me—had to imagine the kind of person Liam was when he first met Meredith, and then orchestrate his growth to the kind of person he would become at the end. In the first five pages, Liam is faced with the challenge from his grandmother to become the leader he is capable of, even though he doesn’t really know what that means.

In chapter two, he meets his mentor and is doubtful about working with Meredith. In fact, he shortly shows that he is still a bit immature and show-offish as he challenges a guest at the dinner party, for which he is later chastised by his parents. The task for Liam is clear—become a leader and determine what kind of leader he will be. Then, in chapter six, he saves the cat. A little girl reaches toward the grill where he is turning hot dogs at a hospital benefit.

He immediately scoops her up in his arms, saving her from being burned, and talks to her about what food she wants and what her name is. He later leads her around the park as a train, gathering the other children to be taken home by their parents. He comes across as an essentially kind and caring person and the reader can relax into liking him.

Through the course of the story, Liam does grow. He faces a challenge at his father’s business and solves a mystery there. He and Meredith learn to work together and there is an initial spark of potential romance. But he responds immediately when Meredith is threatened by striking workers and offers himself as a hostage in her stead.

During the course of the following chapters to the end of the book, Liam demonstrates a difference in his maturity and ability as he enters a negotiation with the same man he had challenged in the second chapter of the book. This time, the conflict is managed without offense and the two become friends. What’s more, Liam comes to an understanding of the various classes in this society that allows him to relate to all classes rather than just to the upper crust he is a part of.

This is describing more than character development. It is what I refer to as the character arc. There is a beginning state and an ending state. The story is built around the character’s progress from one state to the other. Too often, as authors we create a character—sometimes a truly wonderful character—but she emerges full grown from the head of Zeus, so to speak. At the end of the story, the character is the same as at the beginning. We can’t really identify any growth.

By growth, I mean something beyond losing his or her virginity. When sex is involved in that growth, it needs to facilitate the growth, not be all there is to it. Sex is not a cure for a rotten personality, for depression, or for social status. Sex is a stepping stone to help the character improve. Sometimes, those basic flaws continue to show up in the character long after one would think they have been remedied.

In the “Model Student” series, Tony continues to battle depression and the feeling of being overwhelmed throughout the series, even though he learns to deal with it more effectively. Having his little harem sometimes exacerbates the depression rather than curing it.

So, look at the hero’s journey and Save the Cat! and see how the story you envision fits into it. You might not hit every item in the outline. That’s okay. Neither model is intended to become a formula for writing your story. They are guidelines that will help you develop dynamic characters that smack of reality—even if they are off fighting orcs in Middle Earth.

I mentioned that the concept of character development was one for many blog posts. I’ll continue with another next week: Creating Voice.

Enjoy!
author Devon Layne

This is number sixteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

CRITICISM: Ya gotta love it, right? Without good constructive criticism we are unlikely to grow and improve as authors. Probably even as human beings. In both life and writing, however, it seems few people have remembered the ‘constructive’ part of that phrase.

I consider myself to be pretty open minded. If it lights your fire, go with it. I look at the codes in stories, however, and there are certain keywords that I know indicate things I personally don’t care for. Here are a few examples: Ma/ft, Ma/Ma, mt/mt, Blackmail, Coercion, NonConsensual and Rape (the same thing in my book), Bestiality, Zoophilia, Father/Daughter (or any intergenerational incest), Gang Bang. They are simply things I know I wouldn’t be interested in, because I’ve tried reading some and it just does nothing for me. So, I avoid them. But I don’t read the tags on a story to see if it has a tag I don’t like and immediately go to the end of that story to vote it a 1 of 10.

Much like other people’s sexuality, right to marry, ability to determine their own body choices, or gender, they don’t affect me.

On SOL, there are many tales among authors about the ‘one bomber.’ I have no doubt that this person or people exist. There have been days when I’ve looked at my story scores and have seen a third of the scores (out of 58 stories) drop -0.01. Someone decided they didn’t like what I wrote so intensely that they voted everything I’d written down. It doesn’t really make much difference in the long run. That -0.01 will usually be made up by actual readers within a few days. And the scoring system has some safeguards built into it that mitigate an outlying vote to some extent.

On the other hand, I don’t give a damn what race is involved unless I’m trying to make a point of combating racism. I could rank story types I prefer, but something low on that list wouldn’t cause me to automatically reject it. And I like coming of age stories—if you are familiar with my work, you know I write a lot of that.

So, when I’m talking about constructive criticism, I’m not suggesting ranting about everything you don’t like about a story or an author. I’m suggesting that if a story is in the ballpark of things you usually like, it is just fine to disagree on a subject and express that, and even suggest the author look at a different viewpoint. Especially, if you can tell the author how—in your opinion—he could improve the writing.

It is equally important, as an author, to understand that people will criticize them unfairly. They will judge an author by a standard that is their peculiar squick. They cannot tolerate even fiction that disagrees with or challenges their world view. I have begun putting a disclaimer at the beginning of each of my stories.

ALERT: This book contains content of an adult nature.
This includes explicit sexual content and characters whose beliefs and actions may be contrary to your religious, political, or world view.

Adults, in my opinion, should be just as able to handle characters whose beliefs and actions are contrary to the reader’s religious, political, or world view as they are explicit sexual content. If they can’t, I guarantee that something I write will offend them.

When I began publishing “The Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins” in January of 2019, I saw an immediate uptick in readership and patronage. There were nearly 9,000 active readers of the serial. But near the end of Double Take (chapter 44 of 47), I revealed that one of the characters was transgender. A character people loved was undergoing a sex change! I have never seen such an instant outpouring of vitriol in comments and email in my life. One quarter of my readership left that day. Gone, except for the vile comments they left behind.

Now, there were some constructive criticisms that came out of the event. I did not debate nor encourage the debate as to whether a transgender girl is a girl. I still won’t. The way I revealed it might have had some improvement, though. The slap in the face was definitely something that could have been eliminated and still expressed the absolute devastation of the girl. And Jacob could have been more explicit in expressing this from his eighty-year-old calcified personality—as were so many of the commenters—rather than the fifteen-year-old he was supposed to be in this life.

But throughout the next four volumes—Double Time, Double Tears, Double Twist, and Double Team—I continued to develop the characters and their relationships. Believe me, in a work this length, there were other things that people found to be offended by.

Number One on Lazlo Zalezac’s list of “Facts of Life” (The Millionaire Next Door) is “Life is not fair.”

Nor is all criticism fair. You remember the golden rule? Something about doing to others. I strive not to criticize others in a way I would not want to be criticized. As it happens, most criticism in comments or email on SOL comes way too late to be helpful for the story being criticized. However, I try to make sure I take it into consideration when I’m writing the next story, or the next one.

I write for readers, but obviously not for all readers. You will never please everyone. And, in fact, I often challenge my readers with things I want them to think about. Maybe I’ll write a story that includes a character who is a vegan, just so I’ll be able to expose people to some of the benefits in that diet! Who knows?

I came across a graphic pyramid of the hierarchy of disagreement. It has eight levels at the top of which is
1. Refute the central point: explicitly refutes the central point with reliable evidence
2. Refutation: Finds a mistake and explains why it’s mistaken, using resource quotes
3. Counter argument: Contradicts and then backs it up with reasoning and supporting evidence
4. Contradiction: States the opposing case with little or no supporting evidence
5. Responding to tone: Criticizes the tone of the writing without addressing the substance of the argument
6. Ad Hominem: Attacks the characteristics or authority of the writer without addressing the substance of the argument
7. Change the subject: “You can’t talk to liberals about anything without offending them.”
8. Name-calling: Sounds something like “You’re an asshat.”

In criticism, let’s all strive to reach number one on that pyramid.

As I was re-reading some of the comments from the end of Double Take, I saw a comment about character development and cardboard cutouts. The subject could be an entire blog by itself, but I think I’ll jump into it with a post next week: Character Arc.

Enjoy!
author Devon Layne

This is number fifteen in the blog series, “My Life In Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community so I can afford to keep writing.

OVER THE PAST THREE MONTHS, I’ve mentioned the editing process several times. This week, I’ll talk about the path I use in getting a book from first draft to published.

I am convinced there are authors—not just on SOL—who spew out a first draft of a story and post it immediately without ever having even re-read it. There are readers who will gladly tell those authors about every perceived error they make. When a reader sends me a comment, I take it seriously. I might not do anything about it, but I listen and try to avoid the same mistake again.

Unfortunately, when readers on SOL send me comments about grammar, spelling, and punctuation, the story they are reading is already published—sometimes years earlier. I might not even have the original files for a book on my computer anymore. I archive things. And once a book has been published, correcting an error involves correcting two websites, as many as three different versions of eBook, and sometimes a paperback across as many as six platforms. Unless I’m being sued for something, the chance that I’ll be going back to make corrections in the Model Student series, for example, are remote. I barely remember the story because I’ve written literally millions of words since that book was published. Of course, that doesn’t stop anyone from pointing out my errors, nor should it.

Let’s take a look at the process I used for writing Team Manager SWISH! I started writing this book on March 15, 2021. Anybody remember what was happening about then? Yeah. Fun times. I was locked in my trailer in Phar, Texas and not going anywhere. I finished the first draft with 155,335 words on April 14. Yes, I really write that fast. My alpha reader, GMbusman, read each chapter as I finished it and provided feedback, even engaging with me on where the story was going to go and brainstorming ideas. My Sausage Grinder Patrons began reading the unedited raw content on March 28 and offered feedback.

But on the first of April, I began rewriting the story, while I was still finishing it. Rewriting means actually reading the story and getting it ready for editors to look at without choking on it. I sent the first ten chapters to my three editors, cie_mel, Old Rotorhead, and Pixel the Cat. These guys have been with me for a long time and I value their input. I had all their comments back by April 11. Then I had to incorporate and consolidate their three different views into a single final doc. I had to re-read and understand what each of the editors was saying. But that wasn’t the end.

I hand code the html for all my stories because I put them on my own site before they go to SOL. This is for my Sneak Peek patrons ($5/mo), and I started posting the story there on May 15. I don’t start posting a story for pre-release until I have all the editors’ comments folded in, have read and coded the story, and then reread it as a web page. But it is a pre-release edition and I have some leeway to make changes from their suggestions. And I read it again.

Finally, on May 25, I posted the first chapter on SOL and the entire book for sale on Bookapy. By that time, by the way, I’d already written 100,000 words of SPRINT! and had started re-reading and sending rewritten chapters to my editors.

So, let’s count it. Before the official release day of May 25, 2021, I had personally written and read the book five times. Patrons who pay for the privilege, had read and commented on the first draft before it had seen a red [blue] pencil at all. [Pixel the Cat reminded me that elementary school teachers use a red pencil. Editors use a blue pencil.] Three other independent editors had read, searching for factual errors, continuity errors, and proofreading for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. And when the book released, I still got email pointing out errors—some of them actually errors and some not. “That’s not the way lenses for a nearsighted person work!” I note that I was making changes in the posted content up through the end of August. But by then, SPRINT! was through the editing cycle and ready to begin posting. And I was nearly finished writing COACH!

I read every chapter again once it was posted to make sure I was satisfied that nothing egregious has escaped. Yes, it takes something pretty awful for me to go back and correct it at that point, and sometimes I only correct it on SOL and not in the eBook or my own site. But it’s important to me to read what my readers are seeing that day. It helps me respond when I get email and to understand what has their undies in a bunch in the public comments.

I believe that an honest reading of your own work is the most important (not sufficient) step in editing your manuscript. Every chapter I post, I’ve read at least five times. I started this post by saying I’m convinced there are writers who have never read what they’ve written. I’ve spoken to writers who have even said that and say it’s too hard to read their own work, or it’s embarrassing.

If you cannot sit and enjoy reading something you’ve written, why would you ever imagine that someone else would enjoy it?

One practice that I have used successfully on tricky books is to sit and read the book aloud. This can’t be overemphasized when applied to dialog especially. It has to sound right! And be sure you read the words as they are written. If something doesn’t sound right and you want to read it differently, then change it. This often reveals places where you would naturally use a contraction, but have used two words, for example. You will hear whether your characters have unique voices or if they all sound alike. You will find out exactly where readers are going to laugh or cry.

I will also mention that there are readers who will become volunteer editors for a specific project—subject matter experts. For example, when I wrote the Hero Lincoln Trilogy, reader iamblindman read the books and corrected any places where I had violated the rules of the Damsels in Distress universe, or could use a previous story innovation. When I wrote Pussy Pirates and The Assassin, a bunch of other SWARM Cycle authors read, commented, and corrected the manuscripts for canon violations—most notably Zen_Master and Omachuck. In writing the Photo Finish series, two professional photographers, Nightmare and ilox11, read the manuscript after the editing was finished to make sure I hadn’t made errors in any of the photographic processes I write about. These subject matter experts are incredibly valuable in the creative process.

My Sausage Grinder patrons ($10/mo) read and comment on my stories before they have seen the first rewrite or edit. These folks vote with their dollars to keep me writing. And I would be amiss if I didn’t recognize GMbusman who practically reads over my shoulder as I write and is often engaged with me in brainstorming where a story is headed and whether something I’m planning will work.

And after all the above, stuff still slips by us.

I’m sure I’ve failed to mention some of the important editors I’ve had. Two have passed away and are still missed. Pixel the Cat even reviews these blog posts for me. Next week I think I’ll talk about criticism: Fair and Unfair.