So-I'm writing this book right now and it's a huge challenge, but I'm loving it. It's about a very high class call girl, and it's written in first person, so this is new material for me on a lot of levels. I have to be very careful to make my heroine, Valentine, redeemable in the reader's eyes-they have to feel she's a sympathetic character. Not easy! That's one reason why I felt so strongly about writing in first person-I think the reader needs to be right inside her head and have that sense of immediacy.
But the book is flowing so easily that I'm suspicious. When I sit down to write, everything just happens, and I actually like what I'm producing. Sometimes I even love what I'm producing. My process on this book has been very different, and I think that may be helping the flow. I'm normally a hard-core pantser, but because of the delicate nature of this story, I'm sitting down and really thinking about each scene before I write it. What do I need to accomplish? How does the scene drive the story forward? What do I want to reveal about the heroine?
It seems that the longer I write, the more advance plotting I do. I'm still resistant, but I'm doing it. I still like to think of myself as a pantser. A rebel. *G*
I'm also being very careful with the hero in this story. His name is Joshua Spencer and I'm totally in love with him. He's successful, sophisticated, yet he has a tattoo and is on a hockey league, so he's definitely got a bit of bad boy in him-my favorite kind of guy. Since all scenes are from her POV, I need to make him the kind of man who says what's on his mind-he's a good communicator. But still very masculine and commanding.
The biggest challenge is that I'm including sex scenes with her clients. I have to make the scenes hot, but not as hot as the sex scenes with the hero, of course, and the main focus will be on the emotional content. So far, so good. I think I'm going to shock a few people, but I don't let that stop me-lol! I can't wait to see where these characters take me.
So-how many of you really plot out each scene before you write? How many of you do an overall outline and then go with the flow? How many sit down and write in total stream of consciousness style? And does anyone really do scene cards and charts and all of that, or is it just an urban myth?
Meanwhile, just for my blog followers, here's a peek at the opening:
I learned about something in one of my English Lit classes called ‘suspension of disbelief’. This is when a writer must make their reader suspend their disbelief in the unusual long enough to be drawn in and believe in the world the writer has created. It’s something like that with my line of work. My clients must suspend their disbelief long enough to believe the girl likes it. My particular ‘talent’, if you want to call it that-my particular perversion, really-is that they don’t have to do that with me. The truth is, I love it. This is my dirty little secret. Because this is supposed to be taboo among the professionals of my world. Call girls. Prostitutes. Hookers. It doesn’t matter what you call us. The fact is, I get paid for sex. And it’s the only kind of sex I can get off on. Labels: character development, Eden Bradley, erotic fiction, erotica, sympathetic character, writing |
posted by Eden Bradley-Eve Berlin at 
Oh EDEN! I have to read more...seriously. You have my email...just send me a few more (hundred) pages.