Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Cooking up Sensual Prose

Cooking up Sensual Prose

Today’s blog is a very special treat for all my loyal readers. If you've been checking in from time to time in the hopes of learning something you always wondered about, then today you've hit the Lotto. Today I will tell you where the “Sweet Spot” is in writing sensual prose. I know for a certaint;y that this knowledge is not generally known at Writing.com because I see a lot of swings and misses. Indeed I say this not to assert any superiority on my part but rather as having been a victim of a strike out or two myself. What sets me apart is that I have also hit a home run. While my batting average in writing erotica is probably in the 180,s when I wrote Pageant it was a home run and is currently running at over 270 views.

For those of you that were not athletically inclined in grammer school the sweet spot on a baseball (softball) bat is about a third of the length down from the tip. When the batter connects with the pitch and the ball at the exact point in his/her swing where the arc of the bat and the strength of the batter are focused and the ball connects with the bat at the “Sweet Spot” the chances are good the batter is going to hit a home run. However even in the game this is not a common occruance.

So where do you ask is the sweet spot in writing sensual prose? (I'm so glad you did.) Well first of all it depends on the genre. With romance it is about 7 parts story and I part graphic. With Porn it is 7 parts graphic and 1 part story. For sensual prose it is about 6 parts story and 2 parts graphic…For GC/XGC it is 5/6 parts graphic and two/three parts story. For Erotica it is 5 parts story and 3 parts graphic" For a quickie submission is 4 parts story, 4 parts graphic. Assuming that the male sensual prose writer’s "Wanger" is 8 inches long (Is that being optomistic?) and a woman’s "You Know What" can accommodate this fearsome appendage... you can find the sweet spot by measuring up from the base to the story lines factor.

There! that was easy wasn’t it? Unfortunately it isn't that simple because baseball and softball have many more variables than the sweet spot on the bat but I think that all writers should have a sense for where that spot is….still there is more to consider as you are so wisely thinking, albiet with a shaking of the head.

The game of baseball and softball has a duration. So does a typical episode of sex. That duration is about twenty minutes. I know some men have more stamina and others are sprinters…some women come quickly and others need more time to get into the mood, however having said that I will use a statistical term and venture to guess that the standard deviation is ten minutes. We often hear reference to this statistic when an average is given followed by the caveat "Plus or Minus…" In this case ten minutes. So a sexual experience, in about seventy percent of the cases, is between 10 and 30 minutes in duration. Thus the writer needs to consider this in writing sensual prose. If the bedroom door closes with a click in the novel that is clearly unsatisfactory as is a marathon bout that goes on for over an hour in scene time or actual reading time. This should be obvious but there are some elegantly written marathon love scenes that appear from time to time on Writing.com that are much too lengthy to resonate.

So then what is the rule of thumb….For those who know me it may be conceded that I love a rule of thumb or a Ball Park Stupid Wild Ass Guess (SWAG). Anyway here it is.

Scene time is exactly that…a reader gets a sense for scene time…It might be less and it might be more than actual reading time but whichever is the lesser, the duration should be around twenty minutes.

Into this window are mixed the proportions of story and graphic contact. Like sex the scene starts slow builds to climax and tapers off. In Romance the story predominates the mix and in Porn the story barely holds the structure together….and there you have it. Please! Please! I’m embarrassed and not used to such thunderous applause. I hope this thoroughly scientific analysis has been helpful.