Please welcome author Shelly Holt
Explicit or descriptive, is less more?
Tasting Fire is not your average
paranormal, shape-shifting, romance. In
my story, twenty-thousand years ago, a heat loving bacteria that lives only in
hot springs, infected primitive nomads in many parts of the world. The bacteria when ingested orally allows the
infected individual with just the right genetic makeup to add a secondary DNA
sequence to their own genetic code. Over
the course of thousands of years this little bug has given rise to the many
different legends of shape-shifting that have evolved on nearly every
continent. Tasting Fire is the story of how one species in particular, the Pari
of central Asia, fought to stay hidden and what happens when they are revealed
to the world.
When I sat down to write my first paranormal romance titled
Tasting Fire, back in the beginning of the year, I had a lot of plot issues to
consider. Among them was what type of
verbiage to use in describing the sexual activity taking place in the story. As this was my debut novel, I was unsure
which way to go. I needed the love
scenes to read realistically and to create those scenes, I needed to be
comfortable with the language.
I remember when I sat down to write that first love scene in
the book, I was so embarrassed that I even picked up my cats who usually are my
constant writing buddies and unceremoniously dumped them in the hallway outside
my office and closed the door. Three
hours later, I had on my hard drive what must have been the worst love scene
known to man (or woman). All I can say
is thank goodness for rewrites!
I remember vividly as I sat in front of my computer trying
to decide how to write that first scene, I wondered how I should approach
it. My final decision was to write in
the same manner as I preferred to read romance novels myself. When I read an erotic romance, I personally
prefer descriptive terms as opposed to more explicit language. As a reader, I have found to be drawn more
into the scene if the language is more descriptive than graphic. One very strong example of that is the John
Norman, Gor saga. The first Gor novel
was written in 1966 and the series has stayed popular ever since. John Norman would go on to write 32 books in
the series. I don't recall any of the
ones I've read having graphic language and yet the books are extraordinarily
erotic due to themes of dominant males and submissive females. Personally, I think they are more erotic due
to their lack of graphic terms. I'm a big believer in less is more in
literature.
