et alia: So you want to write RAcy fan fiction? Caveat scriptor or “Don’t try this at home!”

As a fiction reader, I have always been drawn to authors who pay attention to details.  One of those details is plausibility of situations.  Obviously, the range of what is believable varies by genre.  Science and fantasy fiction push the boundaries of believability deliberately, challenging people to open their minds to new possibilities.  In more straight forward contemporary fiction, and especially historical fiction, it seems to me that at least basic plausibility is necessary.  If I can’t understand why a character would do something or if I can’t believe that the action is even possible, I generally lose interest in the story.  “Death is in the details…”

Since they inhabit the same general corner of my brain, my reading preferences were close by when I began writing.  Over the years, I’ve probably read more than my fair share of erotic fiction.  Looking back, I realize now that the bulk of what I’ve read falls into the “Romance Novel” category, with fairly euphemistic descriptions of sex.  I did take a foray into BDSM fiction in college.  I was a huge fan of Anne Rice at the time, reading everything of hers I could get my hands on including the Sleeping Beauty Trilogy written under the pseudonym of A. N. Roquelaure.  At that point in life, I was aghast, titillated, but aghast.  I’ve since learned that what was so shocking to me at 21 is pretty vanilla in comparison to the variety of erotica that is out there.  Erotica is a rapidly growing literary genre today – the enormous mainstream popularity of the Fifty Shades series illustrates how far it has come.

But I digress…I was talking about basic veracity in fiction writing wasn’t I?  When I started to read RAcy fan fiction, I often found myself wondering if particularly acrobatic positions were humanly possibly without double joints and a spotter.  (I’ve long wondered the same thing about some of the positions in the Kama Sutra.)  When I started writing my own stories I decided that in addition to believable basic elements of the story, I’d like to know if the intimate positions I was about to put my characters into were actually possible.  Enter the caveat scriptor:

Some of you may remember me complaining about an injured knee a few months ago.  The official story, the one I told my doctor and everyone else with the exception of my RA (Research Assistant that is – that’s my husband for writing research purposes 🙂 ) and my BFF, was that I slipped on some ice in my driveway.  I did slip on some ice, but that only aggravated an already injured joint.  The real story was that I was testing out a prospective “storytelling device” and sprained my knee.  The moral of my story is that before you try to test out “veracity” of this variety, make sure you stretch!

PS…I determined that this “device” was imminently believable for my characters since they are in much better physical condition than me 😀

PPS…if you’re considering a foray into erotic writing of your own, you may find Cosmopolitan magazine’s take on the Kama Sutra:  The Cosmo Sutra, quite useful!

et alia: So you want to write RAcy fan fiction? Caveat scriptor…

I had never heard of fan fiction before I “discovered” Richard Armitage in the summer of 2012.  Suffice it to say,  I had no idea what I was missing!  I became an avid RA fan fiction reader, hunting down stories about any and all ChaRActers on fanfiction.net, Wattpad, Tumblr, LiveJournal and finally Dreamer Fiction and an Archive of Our Own (If I’m missing any, please do tell!) .  There is a massive variety of stories from fluffy and sentimental to seriously sexy to downright raunchy.  (here’s another caveat for you…caveat lector – Let the reader beware –  My personal policy:  Don’t like?  Don’t read.)

In retrospect, this was no great leap for me really, since I have been a consumer of “romance novels” for decades.  I was in 6^th grade, frantically trying to scrub the images of Steinbeck’s The Red Pony from my brain when a classmate slipped me a purloined copy of Rosemary Roger’s Sweet Savage Love.

The purple prose, the bodice rippery, crinolines, cravats, the eventual happy ending for the handsome hero and beautiful heroine, …I was hooked.  I was also eleven, so my interest in what my mother, to this day calls “smut books,” had to be kept on the Q.T.   Looking back, I know that at the time I didn’t understand most of the excessively euphemistic sex scenes, or the scenes of rape and abuse, but I became addicted to the formula.

Fast forward a bit.  The added incentive of stories about characters played by the oh so delicious leading man Richard Armitage was irresistible.  About six months after my entrance into Armitage World, I decided to take a stab at writing a fan fiction of my own – a “one off” in fan fic lingo, about John Porter in a life after Strikeback.  I’ve written reams of academic papers, and for the past decade I’ve spent an enormous amount of time correcting other people’s writing.  Consequently, I’m a pretty strong writer in terms of mechanics, but I’d never attempted creative writing.  I guess that I just need the right inspiRAtion!  Over the past few months, I’ve tapped into my inner storyteller, and as it turns out, she has a lot to say and she is often not G-rated.  🙂

John Porter – Strikeback S1.5
Courtesy of richardarmitagenet.com

So then, why do I warn, Caveat scriptor (Latin for “Let the writer beware!”)?  It all started with “The Longest Night,” my story about John Porter and an original character named Lindsey Tate.  I won’t give the details away in case you’d like to read it for yourself, but suffice it to say that sexy times ensued between Porter and Lindsey.  When it was finished, I gave it to my husband to look over for general readability.  I guess I did a pretty good job with sex scene in the story since I’ve had to beat him off with a stick since he read it… “I had no idea,” he says 😉  So, if you’re considering taking the plunge into writing RAcy fan fiction, Caveat scriptor:  you may want to make a little room in your schedule before letting your significant other in on your new hobby!