How is BDSM Like Writing? Cecilia Tan at BDSM Writers Con

To a writer of fiction, the word “scene” means one thing. But as we writers of kinky romance know, in a BDSM story, “scene” has a whole other meaning.

In her wonderful presentation, Cecilia Tan, author of numerous BDSM erotic romances, showed us the parallels between the elements of a good BDSM scene, and a successful BDSM romance.

First, she shared her belief that we, as author, are the Dominant or Top and our readers are the submissives or bottoms. For one, our readers give us the power over them. The power to seduce and entertain them with our tales. There must be trust between an author and her readers. They trust us to give good story. To bring our worlds alive. To pen stories with heat and heart. Stories with characters who come alive on the page. To give them romances to feed their readers’ passion.

We begin our “scene” by negotiating with our readers. Our beginnings lay out our world and the cast of characters and foretell of the intense action to come. When we seduce them successfully, they give over their trust to us. They agree to journey with us all the way to “The End”. From the first moments of action and attraction, to the “aftercare” - where we soothe our readers who have allowed our torments. Tales rife with conflict, sizzling sexual adventure, climactic action and a breathtaking resolution for our lovers. We help our readers come down from our carefully doled out pleasure/pain, to bask in the afterglow of our literary “scene” - the kinky ever after for our literary lovers.

It is mutual consent. A power exchange. Promises made, and fulfilled. We agree to write the very best BDSM erotic romance we can, and our readers submit to us, trusting that promise of satisfaction. I torture my readers as I do my characters – putting them through hell, but promising them a kinky heaven of satisfaction.

As their “Dom”, my satisfaction comes from knowing I have seduced and entertained for a while.

My readers are rewarded with my arousing stories of lust, longing and happily ever after. Being bound up in a story of romance and passion. One with orgasmic highs and heart-stopping lows. Like a masochist, they ride my rollercoaster of emotion and sex. Like a Sadist, I apply the writer’s lash with flair and accuracy to wring the perfect response from my loyal readers. Sighs. Moans. Cries of “please, may I have some more?”

It is a true relationship between author and audience. As in a D/s scene, it is reaching that mutually satisfying climax after our readers have consented to be ours. Even for that little while.

Now, let me ask you dear reader. How do you take your kink?

Here's a brief taste of how Eden Grant and Hud Crockett, the lovers in my forthcoming BDSM erotic romance, HOLD TIGHT, take theirs:

“Look at that. I’ve marked you.” The indentation of his teeth marred the soft flesh. It made him nearly mad with possessive power. She looked surprised, but not fearful. “Shall I stop? Tell me you don’t want to push this envelope. I’m all about pleasure and pain. I want to feel your flesh beneath my hands. I want to watch your ass turn red while you beg me to stop spanking you. I’ll make you come like you never have. It will be a wild ride, and you’ll love it. I’m a true sadist, and I want you to walk through that fire with me. But it’s all about consent. Yours.”

“I didn’t expect this.”

“Be honest. You didn’t know what to expect. I will lead you, but nothing happens without your consent. Good?” She smelled incredible. Like sex. A spicy perfume, that aroma of feminine arousal. She was responding, but how far could he push? “Can you let go, Eden? Give yourself to me? There’ll be nothing you don’t want.”

Her eyes were wide. Beneath his hands, against his chest, her body quivered. Excitement. Fear of the unknown.


Releasing from Loose Id
September 15, 2015

What Do YOU Do While You're Waiting For "The Call"?

Congratulations! You have finished your manuscript. You have reviewed, revised, re-drafted, edited and polished like mad. And you have begun the query process, or actually sent off your baby to the agent or editor of your dreams: The vital step on the road to publication. So now you are a contestant in The Waiting Game. Be it for six weeks for a response to a query or six months – or more – for a response to a partial or full submission, you’ve got some time on your hands. Nothing to do but take up a hobby, watch some reality TV, wait and pray to St. Frances de Sales (patron saint of writers). Right?

Wrong!

Now is the most important time of all to be proactive. The time between now and an offer on your book is no time to relax. This is a crucial time, during which you can either learn to bake artisanal bread, finish that sweater you started in 1991, or prepare for the road to publication.

Okay. You know everyone says that once you submit you have to keep writing. And that is essential (no publisher wants a one-hit writing wonder, right?). But what else can you do?

Plenty.

Research: Rejection will be inevitable. (Unless you’re the lucky one in a million who hits it big with the first submission of your first novel – in which case, play the lottery, too.) So who will you submit to next? You want to be ready to go – no wallowing in self-pity. Research publishers, editors and agents. The titles and authors they produce. Study your query letters and hone them for new prey. Ditto your synopses.

Investigate: What’s the state of the industry you are in? What’s happening with technology? Business and trends? Legal and contract issues? Sales? Time to become well versed in the business of which you hope to be a successful part.

Discover: Opportunities to promote yourself in the writing and publishing community via contests, workshops, conferences, conventions and other networking venues.

Fine Tune: Your brand, platform and your presence – by working on your website, social networking, newsletter, and your marketing plan for the momentous day when you are a published author.

Read: Your genre to keep abreast of what’s being published; other genres; fiction – everything! Trends in publishing and reading are key to understanding how to position yourself amid the pack. Your competition is not just other romance authors. It is any writer, any book on which a reader will spend her money.

(And an aside here - be aware not just of trends in publishing, but of trends in entertainment. Someone once said of the railroad magnates that the reason they lost supremacy was because they thought they were in the "railroad business", when, in fact, they were in the "transportation business". As a writer, you aren't in the publishing business: You're in the ENTERTAINMENT business! You're competing for the time and money people are spending on entertainment, be it books, TV, film, sports or theme parks. What else is going on out there?)

Hone Your Craft: Get your do-it-yourself MFA in creative writing. Become a consummate storyteller – work on aspects of craft and technique, do exercises, read critically and take classes, workshops and panels. You can always ALWAYS improve your skills – which improves your chance at success.

Write: Duh, right? But it REALLY IS the best way to keep honing your writing ability, keep your momentum going, to evolve your skills and your voice and become the best author you can be – and have more material under construction so when asked, the publishers know they’re looking at the real deal: a writer looking for a career.

Embrace Your Bliss: Use the waiting opportunity to keep your life sane, organized, productive and joyful. Plant your garden. Reconnect with friends and family who’ve patiently waited for some quality time while you toiled over a hot keyboard. Remind your significant other that romance writers do it with creativity. Do whatever makes you happy to recharge your human batteries.

Explore: Everyone, everything, the world around you. Experience and stimulation are the sustenance of a writer. Use some time to refill your creative well and use everything as fuel for stories. Walk, watch, listen, taste, smell – FEEL.
This time of suspended animation offers precious opportunities to create a solid foundation for yourself, to be ready when you must move on to your next submission or – fingers crossed – publication. Think of yourself as a Writing Olympian. Only the writer who has trained to tip-top shape will be able to compete.


* No matter what stage of the business you are at, these hints can keep you sharp, productive and looking forward to your next achievement as a writer.

The Passion Is In The Details

I am a big fan of the use of sensory details in writing. Particularly when writing romance in order to convey passion and create a sensual atmosphere, even aside from love scenes. These exquisite details can infuse a story with intensity and immediacy which both raises the story to a higher level and allows your reader to swept away, along with your characters.

As a writer of erotic romance, I get great pleasure out of writing, and reading, sensual and erotic stories and enjoying the authors’ abilities to sweep ME away with sensuality. Sensual not just in the sexy sense, but in the five senses sense.

The most frequent use of a sense, and probably the most natural, is the use of visual description. What our characters or the narrator see. Descriptions of physical appearance, clothing, setting. Certainly they add a wealth of detail to a scene and help our readers visualize the bed on which our couple is entwined, or the beach they are laying on, or the meadow in which they are embracing.

To add extra layers of intensity and immediacy to an erotic scene – indeed, to add eroticism to any scene - sometimes all it takes is a judicious use of sensory detail. Sound, touch, taste, smell – combine it with visual detail you can create an erotic panorama that will titillate and arouse your reader from the mind, on down, no matter the level of heat in your tale.

A terrific example of the breadth of sensory detail and the way it can be used to masterful effect in erotic writing, can be found in the latest Cleis Press anthology edited by the prolific Rachel Kramer Bussel. Passion: Erotic Romance for Woman (Cleis Press, 2010) contains a marvelous cross-section of writing styles, but even more intriguing is the use of sensory detail that sets each story apart from the next, and makes each stand out for it’s own strength of atmosphere and passion.

“Autumn Suite” by Suzanne V. Slate is a stand-out. It is impeccable in the seamless blend of music and sexual passion. The imagry of one lover’s cello, and a droplet of sweat, envisioned as a tear; touch and sound echoes throughout the piece when juxtaposed with the physicality of lovemaking. The entire story reads like a sonata.

Sound is used to great effect, too, in Wickham Boyle's “The Cherry Orchard” (a marvelous story simply for its genesis in the Chekhov play) with laughter and screams, before the author moves into sections deftly incorporating taste – from food itself, to the tastes of sex rendered in gastronomical terms.

In contrast to both of these more lyrical stories, the earthy “Crave You Close” by A.M. Hartnett instills eroticism into an environment of family fights and the taste of burgers and blueberry shakes. Lizzy Chambers’ lusty, yet tender, “Riding Wild Things” brings the reader into the unexpectedly sexy and immediate world of rodeo riders, and lovers who ride more than bucking broncs. You can practically hear the lovers' moans in this story!

And I was intrigued to discover Ms. Bussell’s own story, aptly (for the purposes of this post) titled, “Five Senses”, in which she breaks down her voluptuous scene of seduction and surrender into segments, each addressing one of the senses. It is a lesson in itself on writing eroticism via sensual detail.

What is erotic? What sense most conveys eroticism to you? What sensory description arouses you?

Is it the words depicting the feel of a drop of a lover’s sweat dropping to his partner’s flesh and trickling down to mingle with her own? Maybe a description of the tastes of a delectable dish being shared between lovers – before they share their bodies’ flavors? Or the rendering of the sight of a zephyr breeze ruffling a lock of hair that lays upon a pillow as someone sleeps in the aftermath of passion? Perhaps the sound of a sonata as it accompanies the lovers’ timeless dance of love?

Or perhaps it is, instead, the deft rendering of a scream of passion echoing through a country night as hands pound the roof of a caddy; or the building crescendo in dancers’ bodies as they engage in foreplay via a raucous two-step?

Creating eroticism in a romance of the less graphic and sweeter variety may seem a contradiction. But it is not. A sensual atmosphere of passion can be created without the use of four-letter words – or acts.

Imagine, if you will, the effect of a woman’s simple sigh and all it can convey to a reader, as a man takes her in his arms. Create the wealth of emotions in a woman as she watches her lover's hands – the delicate movements, the touch of a caress – as he plays a game of chess, and treat your reader to her anticipation as she craves the touch of those hands – on her body. Perhaps you can convey the heat a lover feels when he registers the delicate scent of his lover from her abandoned scarf as he touches the silk to his nose; as he recalls their last caress before parting company. Share with your readers the depth of emotion welling within a couple as they sit in the symphony, the languid notes of Beethoven’s Pathetique washing over them – drawing them back into their embrace beneath a moonlit sky as their bodies swayed to the melody composed by love.

How fleeting, how simple: the touch of a fingertip against hungry lips; a heated gaze across a crowded room; the sound of a whisper humming along phone lines; the taste of a lover’s skin in a brief kiss upon a cheek.

It can be poetic or raunchy, graphic or gripping, dramatic or light-hearted, earthy or ethereal. It can even be subtle! Using sensory details in creating erotic scenes can compliment the sex and send the story soaring.

Why not give it a try? Pick a sense, any sense … and let your imagination run wild.