Show Me Romance (Don’t Tell Me Porn)
My stepmother thinks I write porn. I tried to explain to her that I don’t, but, in the way of mothers everywhere, she wasn’t going to let me finish my sentence. There was sex, sex she wasn’t used to—ergo, it must be porn.
For a while I was really frickin’ angry about this conversation—didn’t call her for a month, didn’t ask her to watch the kids, basically took a few weeks to calm down, take some deep breaths, and figure out how I was going to convince her that I had the English degree, the experience writing curriculum, teaching state standards, writing, marketing, and even speaking on this subject, all of which gave me a little bit of expertise in the matter, and she might want to let me finish my damned sentence.
Then she called me, and she was my mommy, and is, as I’ve always maintained, a really good person, and I realized that no, I was not going to win this argument. I mean, I’ve written a fucktonna blogposts about it, including one titled “I Do Not Write Porn!”, and, even better, I’ve had lawyers actually read my work to determine if my stuff was pornographic in nature. If it had been pornographic, I would have served prison time. As of yet, I haven’t been fitted for an orange jumpsuit, so, well, yes. I am an authority of whether or not I write porn, and no, my stepmother is never going to believe me, so I really am going to have to explain it to somebody or my head might explode.
And ta-da! It’s column time.
So here’s why I don’t write porn.
As an English teacher, one of the staples of teaching writing is Rebekah Kaplan. You all may not have heard of Kaplan, but I bet you’ve heard of her greatest legacy to our craft: showing not telling.
Kaplan’s approach to getting students to write exciting prose was to get them to concentrate on sensory details and figurative language. She would contrast a “telling sentence” in which the writer simply tells the reader how to feel, with a descriptive, sensory rich paragraph that “showed” the same idea. An example would be:
Telling Sentence: The puppies were impossibly cute.
Showing paragraph:
A few of them (the puppies) came to lick his fingers with curious tongues, and then, probably tasting the salt, swarmed over him, chunky little tails wagging, little snouts snuffling. Dicey, the mama dog, was something silky haired, like an Irish setter or a golden retriever, mixed with something wide at the chest, like a Rottweiler, but with less spectacular markings.
Whoever the father was, the resulting genetic potpourri was redolent in snubbed snouts, curly hair, and oddball body types. Tall and thin? Short and thick? Dense curly blond fur? Sparse wiry black fur? The nine creatures in the box with the mama had it all.
Jeremy played quietly for a moment, talking to them like an indulgent teacher to naughty schoolchildren. He tussled with the rambunctious ones and fondled the affectionate ones and reprimanded the bitey ones, finally settling on a little short-haired love sponge with black-and-white spots and cowlicks.
The puppy started to lick Jeremy’s chin slowly and methodically, and Jeremy fondled short triangular ears.
You ’bout ready to go back inside now, Jer?” Aiden asked softly.
Jeremy nodded, but he didn’t move from his spot with the puppy. The poor thing had exhausted herself in the licking, and Jeremy smoothed his hand over her small, blocky skull.
“This one,” he whispered, nuzzling the baby behind the perky little ears. “Tell your mama we’ll take this one, as long as you’ll help me shop so we have all the stuff she needs.”
As you can see, the essence of “Showing not Telling” is the idea that readers can think for themselves. They can look at a collection of appropriately chosen details and arrive at an evaluative judgment. So, if all of the things that puppies do—waddle, cuddle, nuzzle, whimper, and lick, are described accurately, we come to the correct conclusion that puppies are cute.
Tada!
It’s like a magic trick, right?
I give the reader all of the naked ingredients, they mix it up, and the right conclusion pops out like a cake, but decorated and with “Feel This Emotion Here” printed on top—pretty frickin neat, right?
(Well, yes, Amy. But that doesn’t explain why it is you don’t write porn. Hold on a sec, I’m getting there!)
Now, when writing anything, a writer needs to keep this descriptive technique in balance. By necessity, there are some things we are obligated to “tell” instead of show. If, instead of saying, “He stomped his feet in the frosty cold,” we said, instead, “He stomped his feet, his boots making indentation in the frost condensation from the night before and his breath coming like smoke as he walked across the yard. His gloved hand slid from the door handle and he tried again, hearing the creak of the frozen water lining the seams of the car. There was a bird-sicle hanging from his rearview mirror, and he mourned the victim of the insidious frigidity,” every time we talked about the winter, we’d never finish a freaking book, our simplest romances would be over 400K, and we’d be forced to go into real porn or starve. So, yeah, a mix is good—because one of the things a mix does is give us room to “show” some really complicated concepts.
Very often, when we are writing romance and showing the progression of a relationship, we are showing a couple of different literary elements, the most prevalent being character and conflict. So, instead of overwriting a frosty yard or a starry sky or a dirty carpet or whatever, we’re using examples of how the couple behaves toward each other in the beginning, middle, and happy ever after of their relationship to show that they have fallen in love and will probably stay together and in love for a very long time. This is the nature of a sound adult relationship.
Part of an adult relationship—an adult romantic relationship—is a physical relationship.
Now I know that in het romance, there is a big deal about Amish romances, because they are “sweet”. What “sweet” really means in this case is that all the sex is off-page. But there is still sex--even if it is just implied. What happens in the bedroom—even if sex is referred to in vague euphemisms, like a cleverly crafted 1940’s movie—is integral to what two people in an adult romantic relationship do. If one of the people in the relationship is hurt, or disabled, or psychologically unable to have sex—that is still a part of the relationship, because the relationship is still a romance for it to even be brought up. If the story is written like one of the old 1970’s Harlequin Presents, where it’s all build up and the sex happens after the story ends, sex is still part of the story.
An important part of the story. One that shows character development and conflict. And it needs to be written about.
Written well.
And sometimes that means showing not telling.
Of course, there are different ways of showing not telling—especially when you’re talking about testes, peen, and no-no places. Like anything else we do, the quality of our work depends on our choice of details and the language we use to describe or elevate those details. Would you like an example? (No, Amy. We’re only here for the lecture. Swear.)
“My cock was eight inches long, two inches around, with thick blue veins bulging under the surface and masses of blond pubic hair around my low-hanging testicles.”
“I looked at my toes again—I had really long toes, to match, well, you know. Not to brag.”
Guess which one I’d use for porn—and guess which one I did use for a New Adult level book about a kid who gets kicked out the house before Thanksgiving?
Of course, there are going to be other things to describe in the course of physical relations—but if you’re not writing erotica or porn (and believe me, my Kindle library attests to my lack of disdain for either media!) the details you choose have to be important. In the example above, I mentioned Rusty’s endowment not to titillate, but to suggest a certain shy confidence on the part of the narrator. This shy confidence becomes important when our hero is asked to be sexually assertive. We know he has it in him—he just needs to feel safe enough to let it out. Once again, it comes down to character development and relationship development—the bread and butter of the romance writer, the thing we all tune in for.
So when we’re writing a love scene—a sexual love scene—we do need to be conscious of what words we’re choosing, which details we choose to describe. We need to say to ourselves, “Do I want my reader to get horny? Or do I want my reader to be emotionally gratified?” The line is terrifyingly close, I know, and for many of us, the stuff that makes us jump our significant others in the middle of the night is not the stuff that describes length, girth, hairiness and outstanding ribbed-vein capacity. It’s the stuff that makes us remember when sex goes beyond sex, becomes personal, becomes spiritual. If we’re lucky, giving our readers emotional gratification will result in happier marriages (or greater battery consumption!) If we’ve done our jobs right, the showing character growth just might become a sensual experience all in its own.
So, no. I am never going to win that argument with my stepmom. She will continue to believe that a pee-pee in the no-no place is equivalent to porn. I can tell her that four lawyers—two from opposing council (and I’m saying, my district really wanted my ass on a platter)—all agreed that Truth in the Dark in no way violated the Miller Obscenity Test. My other work doesn’t either. I’m a professional—I’ve spent my life in the study of words, exploring the labyrinth of language and learning which ways lead to which ends. I know which paths lead to decadence and orgasm (whee!) and which paths lead to emotional fulfillment (also whee!). In the end, it’s up to each one of us as writers to choose which words that will lead to which literature. Whether you write porn and erotica proudly, or write romance, replete with hope and tenderness, these are the caves you hollow out and decorate with your well-chosen prose.
These are the places you “show” us when we read your work.
My stepmother thinks I write porn. I tried to explain to her that I don’t, but, in the way of mothers everywhere, she wasn’t going to let me finish my sentence. There was sex, sex she wasn’t used to—ergo, it must be porn.
For a while I was really frickin’ angry about this conversation—didn’t call her for a month, didn’t ask her to watch the kids, basically took a few weeks to calm down, take some deep breaths, and figure out how I was going to convince her that I had the English degree, the experience writing curriculum, teaching state standards, writing, marketing, and even speaking on this subject, all of which gave me a little bit of expertise in the matter, and she might want to let me finish my damned sentence.
Then she called me, and she was my mommy, and is, as I’ve always maintained, a really good person, and I realized that no, I was not going to win this argument. I mean, I’ve written a fucktonna blogposts about it, including one titled “I Do Not Write Porn!”, and, even better, I’ve had lawyers actually read my work to determine if my stuff was pornographic in nature. If it had been pornographic, I would have served prison time. As of yet, I haven’t been fitted for an orange jumpsuit, so, well, yes. I am an authority of whether or not I write porn, and no, my stepmother is never going to believe me, so I really am going to have to explain it to somebody or my head might explode.
And ta-da! It’s column time.
So here’s why I don’t write porn.
As an English teacher, one of the staples of teaching writing is Rebekah Kaplan. You all may not have heard of Kaplan, but I bet you’ve heard of her greatest legacy to our craft: showing not telling.
Kaplan’s approach to getting students to write exciting prose was to get them to concentrate on sensory details and figurative language. She would contrast a “telling sentence” in which the writer simply tells the reader how to feel, with a descriptive, sensory rich paragraph that “showed” the same idea. An example would be:
Telling Sentence: The puppies were impossibly cute.
Showing paragraph:
A few of them (the puppies) came to lick his fingers with curious tongues, and then, probably tasting the salt, swarmed over him, chunky little tails wagging, little snouts snuffling. Dicey, the mama dog, was something silky haired, like an Irish setter or a golden retriever, mixed with something wide at the chest, like a Rottweiler, but with less spectacular markings.
Whoever the father was, the resulting genetic potpourri was redolent in snubbed snouts, curly hair, and oddball body types. Tall and thin? Short and thick? Dense curly blond fur? Sparse wiry black fur? The nine creatures in the box with the mama had it all.
Jeremy played quietly for a moment, talking to them like an indulgent teacher to naughty schoolchildren. He tussled with the rambunctious ones and fondled the affectionate ones and reprimanded the bitey ones, finally settling on a little short-haired love sponge with black-and-white spots and cowlicks.
The puppy started to lick Jeremy’s chin slowly and methodically, and Jeremy fondled short triangular ears.
You ’bout ready to go back inside now, Jer?” Aiden asked softly.
Jeremy nodded, but he didn’t move from his spot with the puppy. The poor thing had exhausted herself in the licking, and Jeremy smoothed his hand over her small, blocky skull.
“This one,” he whispered, nuzzling the baby behind the perky little ears. “Tell your mama we’ll take this one, as long as you’ll help me shop so we have all the stuff she needs.”
As you can see, the essence of “Showing not Telling” is the idea that readers can think for themselves. They can look at a collection of appropriately chosen details and arrive at an evaluative judgment. So, if all of the things that puppies do—waddle, cuddle, nuzzle, whimper, and lick, are described accurately, we come to the correct conclusion that puppies are cute.
Tada!
It’s like a magic trick, right?
I give the reader all of the naked ingredients, they mix it up, and the right conclusion pops out like a cake, but decorated and with “Feel This Emotion Here” printed on top—pretty frickin neat, right?
(Well, yes, Amy. But that doesn’t explain why it is you don’t write porn. Hold on a sec, I’m getting there!)
Now, when writing anything, a writer needs to keep this descriptive technique in balance. By necessity, there are some things we are obligated to “tell” instead of show. If, instead of saying, “He stomped his feet in the frosty cold,” we said, instead, “He stomped his feet, his boots making indentation in the frost condensation from the night before and his breath coming like smoke as he walked across the yard. His gloved hand slid from the door handle and he tried again, hearing the creak of the frozen water lining the seams of the car. There was a bird-sicle hanging from his rearview mirror, and he mourned the victim of the insidious frigidity,” every time we talked about the winter, we’d never finish a freaking book, our simplest romances would be over 400K, and we’d be forced to go into real porn or starve. So, yeah, a mix is good—because one of the things a mix does is give us room to “show” some really complicated concepts.
Very often, when we are writing romance and showing the progression of a relationship, we are showing a couple of different literary elements, the most prevalent being character and conflict. So, instead of overwriting a frosty yard or a starry sky or a dirty carpet or whatever, we’re using examples of how the couple behaves toward each other in the beginning, middle, and happy ever after of their relationship to show that they have fallen in love and will probably stay together and in love for a very long time. This is the nature of a sound adult relationship.
Part of an adult relationship—an adult romantic relationship—is a physical relationship.
Now I know that in het romance, there is a big deal about Amish romances, because they are “sweet”. What “sweet” really means in this case is that all the sex is off-page. But there is still sex--even if it is just implied. What happens in the bedroom—even if sex is referred to in vague euphemisms, like a cleverly crafted 1940’s movie—is integral to what two people in an adult romantic relationship do. If one of the people in the relationship is hurt, or disabled, or psychologically unable to have sex—that is still a part of the relationship, because the relationship is still a romance for it to even be brought up. If the story is written like one of the old 1970’s Harlequin Presents, where it’s all build up and the sex happens after the story ends, sex is still part of the story.
An important part of the story. One that shows character development and conflict. And it needs to be written about.
Written well.
And sometimes that means showing not telling.
Of course, there are different ways of showing not telling—especially when you’re talking about testes, peen, and no-no places. Like anything else we do, the quality of our work depends on our choice of details and the language we use to describe or elevate those details. Would you like an example? (No, Amy. We’re only here for the lecture. Swear.)
“My cock was eight inches long, two inches around, with thick blue veins bulging under the surface and masses of blond pubic hair around my low-hanging testicles.”
“I looked at my toes again—I had really long toes, to match, well, you know. Not to brag.”
Guess which one I’d use for porn—and guess which one I did use for a New Adult level book about a kid who gets kicked out the house before Thanksgiving?
Of course, there are going to be other things to describe in the course of physical relations—but if you’re not writing erotica or porn (and believe me, my Kindle library attests to my lack of disdain for either media!) the details you choose have to be important. In the example above, I mentioned Rusty’s endowment not to titillate, but to suggest a certain shy confidence on the part of the narrator. This shy confidence becomes important when our hero is asked to be sexually assertive. We know he has it in him—he just needs to feel safe enough to let it out. Once again, it comes down to character development and relationship development—the bread and butter of the romance writer, the thing we all tune in for.
So when we’re writing a love scene—a sexual love scene—we do need to be conscious of what words we’re choosing, which details we choose to describe. We need to say to ourselves, “Do I want my reader to get horny? Or do I want my reader to be emotionally gratified?” The line is terrifyingly close, I know, and for many of us, the stuff that makes us jump our significant others in the middle of the night is not the stuff that describes length, girth, hairiness and outstanding ribbed-vein capacity. It’s the stuff that makes us remember when sex goes beyond sex, becomes personal, becomes spiritual. If we’re lucky, giving our readers emotional gratification will result in happier marriages (or greater battery consumption!) If we’ve done our jobs right, the showing character growth just might become a sensual experience all in its own.
So, no. I am never going to win that argument with my stepmom. She will continue to believe that a pee-pee in the no-no place is equivalent to porn. I can tell her that four lawyers—two from opposing council (and I’m saying, my district really wanted my ass on a platter)—all agreed that Truth in the Dark in no way violated the Miller Obscenity Test. My other work doesn’t either. I’m a professional—I’ve spent my life in the study of words, exploring the labyrinth of language and learning which ways lead to which ends. I know which paths lead to decadence and orgasm (whee!) and which paths lead to emotional fulfillment (also whee!). In the end, it’s up to each one of us as writers to choose which words that will lead to which literature. Whether you write porn and erotica proudly, or write romance, replete with hope and tenderness, these are the caves you hollow out and decorate with your well-chosen prose.
These are the places you “show” us when we read your work.
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