Set in Stone

By Lisabet Sarai

Treatises for authors often recommend against editing as you write. Get the story down first, they advise, no matter how rough it might be. You can go back and refine it later. Write quickly, from instinct, without introspection. Analyze and revise after you’ve captured the flush of inspiration.

I recognize the wisdom of this proposal for some authors, but usually it doesn’t work for me. I have to make plot decisions, finalize my characterization and massage my prose while I’m creating my first draft. Over the years I’ve discovered that my writing has incredible inertia. Once I’ve finished a story, it’s set in stone, or something close.

Over the years, I’ve had many editors comment on how few modifications they needed to make to my manuscripts. That’s one external consequence of my writing method. I’m very grateful that most of my submissions have sailed through the editing process with only minor revisions. Because making larger changes turns out to be ridiculously difficult for me.

This fact became painfully clear last year, after I submitted my erotic romance novel The Ingredients of Bliss to Totally Bound. The book was part of a multi-author series that had some specific requirements. The first manuscript I turned in apparently did not meet those requirements. I realize now that, influenced by my erotica roots, the book veered too far from the canons of romance. Not only did my heroine Emily have two lovers (Harry and Etienne), but she was sexually attracted to the villain Jean as well. There were good reasons – Jean was almost the perfect double of Etienne, right down to the way he smelled, and she was trying to seduce him in order to rescue Harry and Etienne after they’d been kidnapped. Nevertheless, this sort of dalliance is verboten in romance, as it smacks of infidelity. Then there were strong hints of Emily’s attraction to the kick-ass lady cop who joins her in the quest to free Harry and Etienne. F/F eroticism in a straight erotic romance is the kiss of death from a marketing perspective. Finally, the tone of the book was far darker than the publisher really wanted.

I’d already committed to provide this book to the publisher. Indeed, it was a sequel to a short piece (Her Secret Ingredient) that I’d written for the same series. Hence, I was strongly motivated to address the editor’s concerns. I didn’t fully understand the discomfort I was about to endure.

Over the course of the next three months, I revised the entire book four times. I rewrote the scene in which Jean is coming on to Emily to make her disgusted and frightened rather than aroused. I cut all references to F/F attraction. I softened the language in the attempted rape scene. I completely excised Emily’s dramatic, bloody nightmare, in an effort to lighten things up.

At one point, deeply frustrated, I considered pulling the book and publishing it elsewhere. Unfortunately, for that to make sense, I’d have to reclaim the rights for the short piece as well. That would have been awkward and expensive. So I tried to twist the story into the form the publisher wanted.

The book resisted me, every step of the way.

The final result satisfied the publisher. However, after all that effort, sales have been miserable. Is this because The Ingredients of Bliss still doesn’t match the expectations of erotic romance readers? Or is it because readers can sense that the story isn’t wholly mine, that I compromised my vision to bring it into print? Or perhaps the edits did violence to the narrative integrity of the story. Maybe there’s a problem with continuity, or with consistency of my characters.

I’ll never know. All I know is that I don’t want to go through that again.

Although this is the most egregious example of inertia in my writing, it’s by no means the only one. A number of years ago I decided to rework a 5K short story, “Detente”, into a 15K erotic romance novella (Truce of Trust). The publisher wanted third rather than first person narrative. In addition, they suggested I remove the M/m interaction at the conclusion of the short story, making the book a straight M/F/M ménage.

I had a lot of trouble at first. I kept slipping back into first person, because that was the way I’d heard the original story in my head. Gradually I realized that I had to think of Truce of Trust as a different story entirely. Once I’d made that decision, the process became easier. I changed the names of the characters and moved the action from the west to the east coast. I added new scenes and modified some of the ones from “Detente” to fit my new vision. The final result shares some text with the source, but not much.

One sort of change that doesn’t give me too much trouble is simple expansion. I have several books that began as short stories and then grew. My erotic thriller Exposure began as a theme story (erotic noir) written for the Erotica Readers & Writers Association Storytime list. That story, “Private Dance”, became the first chapter of the novel. I hardly changed it at all. In fact, I had to work out the plot so that the later chapters fit with the first chapter, because when I wrote the story, I had no idea about the cause or motivation for the events that occur. I never really considered revising that first chapter, though.

In response to a request from a special reader, I also expanded Bangkok Noir, turning it from an 8K short to a 30K novella. Once again, I didn’t alter the original, aside from a word here and there. Instead, I shaped the latter events to fit the former.

I view the inertia of my writing as a weakness. A real professional should be more flexible. After all, words are infinitely malleable. Aside from being willing to try revising, though, I’m not sure what I can do.

In any case, it’s often hard to summon that fundamental willingness. By this time, I know better than to try to radically work something I view as finished. It’s rarely worth the pain.

Through Whose Eyes?

By Lisabet Sarai

When the police colonel walked into my bar, I knew it was a bad sign. I was pretty sure that I was up-to-date on protection money. I knew the documents proving that all my girls were over eighteen were stowed in my safe, and I'd done a drug check only yesterday, but I couldn't help worrying.

Police Colonel Apichat wasn't a bad sort. He was always polite, both to me and to my girls, when he came by to pick up the monthly envelope of cash. Occasionally, he'd even accept my offer of a drink. He'd sit at the bar, nursing a Chang beer, hungry eyes surveying the dancers as though he wanted to devour them.

I'd send over two of my prettiest employees to try and cheer him up, but with all their teasing and flirting, he rarely smiled.

That night, though, he looked even more serious than usual. And he was not alone. Behind his wiry, dark-skinned frame I saw the crewcut bulk of his lieutenant, Narongchai. The girls called him Kwai, buffalo, though he reminded me more of a gorilla.

I hurried over to Apichat, and gave him respectful wai. "Colonel, this in an unexpected pleasure. Please come inside. Can I offer you and your companion a drink?"

"Thank you, Madame," he said in English. He always speaks English to me, even though he knows that I'm fluent in Thai. "We are on duty. In any case, we come to tell you the terrible news."

Terrible news? Was the government on another morality and social order campaign?

~ Bangkok Noir. First person, past tense

Three years since I last saw him, and now his plane is late. I perch on the edge of the chair across from the American Airlines desk where he told me to meet him, tension winding me tighter with every moment.

It’s always like this. My chest aches. It’s difficult to breathe. My nipples are as taut and swollen as if he already had them wrapped in elastic bands. I try not to be distracted by the stickiness between my bare thighs. I glance at the arrivals screen. His flight has just landed. Ten minutes, fifteen at most, before I can expect him. I fill my lungs deliberately and try to slow my racing pulse.

I hover between joy and terror. It has been so long, too long. What will he think of me, the strands of gray in my hair, the new wrinkles? What will he ask of me? Will I be able to give him what he needs? I remember other reunions, too few, too short. No time for more than a few kisses, a few playful swats on my bared butt. I remember lying on his lap in Golden Gate Park, my skirt flipped up around my waist. I can precisely recreate my shame and my excitement. I recall slouching down in the front seat of his car in a dark, sweltering parking garage, while he unbuttoned my blouse and dabbled his fingers in my cunt, naming me as his slut. A few hours every few years is all we manage, a country and my marriage separating us even as our history and our fantasies draws us together.

~ Reunion. First person, present tense

She's glad to be his slave. She's just not too crazy about being his housekeeper and maid, at least not these days.

When they first moved in together, he used to make her strip before she vacuumed the carpets or washed the floors. He'd watch her, sitting in the wing-backed chair that they bought together at the garage sale, as she strutted around in her collar and high heels, pushing the mop in front of her.

"Arch your back," he'd order. "Stick out your butt."

She'd struggle to keep her balance as she obeyed, her pussy liquefying as it always did at the sound of his voice. She could feel his eyes on her buttocks like a physical caress. He wouldn't miss the signs, the flush on her face, the taut nipples, the musky scent that wafted through the apartment. When he was paying attention, his powers of observation were astounding. Not to mention his powers of seduction.

~ Domestic Goddess. Third person, limited, present tense.

Kit couldn't concentrate. She tried to force her mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on her screen, but her thoughts kept evading the task, slipping away to her damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

She closed her eyes, rubbing her temples against the first twinges of a headache. She saw kaleidoscopic lights, smelled cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. She felt the soft fur of his beard brushing over her bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shot through her, leaving her damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

"Kit? Kit!" Jill was shaking her. Kit blinked stupidly at her friend. "Where were you, girl?"

"Oh, um, I was just working on the bilateral polymerization reaction. Trying to visualize how the radicals would align. What's up?"

"Lunch time. Want to come with me to the caf for a quick bite?"

"Um, I don't think so. Thought I'd go home for lunch. I left some notes there, and it's such a beautiful day. I could do with a walk." Kit couldn't meet Jill's eyes. There were no notes.

~ Chemistry. Third person, limited, past tense.

Once upon a time, in an old port city north of the capital where the clippers used to flit in and out of the bay like giant butterflies, there were three witches. Well, only two of them knew they were witches, at least at the start of the story.

Marguerite, who counted Portuguese traders and African shamans among her ancestors, sported a frenzy of lustrous black hair and was partial to silk. She had inherited a rambling clapboard house that perched on the hill overlooking Western Harbor, which she had filled with ancient Chinese porcelain, Colonial silver, Hindu carvings of entwined gods, and bright tribal hangings woven from alpaca wool or mulberry bark. She had no regular employment. Once or twice a year, she’d invite the public into her museum-like abode, to sell a few artifacts with which she’d became bored and scout out people who might be worth collecting.

Beryl hailed from generations of Boston Irish, as one might guess from her fiery curls and milk-white, freckle-dusted complexion. She ran an antiquarian bookstore on Main Street, on one of the few blocks that had not yet succumbed to chain drugstores and tacky souvenir shops, and lived in a bungalow at the end of one of the Neck’s tiny lanes. With her tie-dyed dresses, dangling earrings and hand-made sandals, she fit perfectly into the artists’ colony. Her talents, however, lay in realms other than painting and sculpture.

Over their years together, Marguerite and Beryl had been responsible for much unexpected good fortune and not a little mischief. The townspeople didn’t realize how much of the city’s special qualities – the invigorating crispness of the breeze, on even the hottest days – the crystalline sparkle of sunlight on the waves – the welcoming sense of history that pervaded the narrow streets – was the work of their resident witches. However, duality limited the women’s power. They were well aware that they needed a third to complete their circle and perfect their occult abilities. However, you can’t simply conjure a witch into existence. You must wait for her to appear on her own.

~ The Witches of Gloucester (WIP). Third person omniscient, past tense.

"Which would you prefer, Sarah, the cane or the feather duster?"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Why do you ask? Don't you trust me?"

"Of course I do. But you do have a way of twisting things around in unexpected directions."

"I thought you liked surprises. In any case, as your Master it's my responsibility to add a certain - ambiguity - to our interactions. To keep you on your toes."

"These ridiculous spike heels do that well enough."

"If I hear any more complaints or excuses, Sarah, I will make you very sorry. And I don't mean something you'd enjoy like a spanking or nipple clamps."

"I..."

"Sarah! Just answer my question. Now."

"Well... I choose the cane."

"Really? Why is that? You're blushing, you know. Tell me why you prefer the cane."

"Well - um - I think it will hurt more. And that it will please you more, to see me enduring that pain."

"But I asked what you wanted. Not what you think I'd want."

~ Trick or Treat. Third person omniscient? Present tense.

Close your eyes. Let your breathing slow and deepen. Feel the blood waking your bare skin. The moonlight teases, silvery silk against your eyelids. Don't give in. The dark is what you need, not the moon's caress.

Can you feel my breath, warm against your neck? Or is it only the autumn breeze drifting in your window? You sense my presence, but you are as always a skeptic. My lips hover above the pulse at your throat. You could swear you feel the heat, the vibration, the waves my fingers stir in the air as I trail them down the length of you.

~ Offering. Second person, present tense.

We make our choices, often blindly. Then we live with the consequences.

It's your fiftieth birthday, I'm half a world away, and married to someone else. I honestly don't know which is the bigger obstacle. No, scratch that. If today's experiment is successful, the distance will mean nothing.

I want to help you celebrate. To give you something special. Romantic and cynic that you are, I want to prove to you my enduring devotion, across time and space. I want to give back to you some of the magic you've shared with me.

~Limbo. Second person?? present tense.

For the next two weeks here at the Grip, we’ll be talking about perspective and point of view. As illustrated by the snippets above, I’ve experimented with a variety of different perspectives. Although strictly speaking, tense is not a part of the POV question, I tend to consider the two elements together because they interact. Together they combine to produce different feelings or voices. Suppose, for instance, that I’d decided to write my short story “Chemistry” in the present tense:

Kit can't concentrate. She tries to force her mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on her screen, but her thoughts keep evading the task, slipping away to her damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

She closes her eyes, rubbing her temples against the first twinges of a headache. She sees kaleidoscopic lights, smells cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. She feels the soft fur of his beard brushing over her bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shoots through her, leaving her damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

To me, these paragraphs feel more immediate, more driven by emotion and sensation, than the original. When you write in the present, even adopting a third person POV, you tend to pull your reader more into the action.

Switch to the first person and the sensations really jump out at you. You’re there with the narrator, feeling every sensation.

I can't concentrate. I try to force my mind back to the list of enzymatic cofactors scrolling by on my screen, but my thoughts keep evading the task, slipping away to my damned annoying neighbor. Well, not to him, exactly, but to his hands and his tongue and the things he did with them.

I close my eyes, rubbing my temples against the first twinges of a headache. I see kaleidoscopic lights, smell cinnamon, cannabis and male sweat. I feels the soft fur of his beard brushing over my bare pubis. A bolt of electricity shoots through me, leaving me damp and breathless in its wake. Damn, damn, damn.

So why didn’t I use the first person, present tense for this story in the first place? For one thing, the it didn’t fit with my character, Kit. She’s a workaholic, used to denying or ignoring her physical and emotional needs. The distancing effects of the third person past made it possible for me to reveal truths to her and to the reader simultaneously. I find that when my characters conscious and unconscious lives diverge, I often choose third person.

On the other hand, most of the time I actually don’t make a choice at all. A particular story “wants” to be written from a specific POV and in a specific tense. I have a sense of the sort of feeling that should accompany the story, its tone, before I write the first paragraph, and I begin to write in the POV and tense that best captures that feeling.

Occasionally, when I’m having trouble with a story, I will realize that the POV is the problem and I’ll switch from first to third, or vice versa. At least 90% of the time, though, I stick with what feels right at the start.

I find that the first person works particularly well for erotica, because of its intensity and immediacy. And despite its technical difficulties, I’m very partial to first person present. Two of my novels (Exposure and Nasty Business, both, alas, currently out of print) use that combination of POV and tense. In fact, Nasty Business alternates among three narrators, all speaking in the first person present,

What do I mean by technical difficulties? When you’re writing present tense, it’s hard to deal with time gaps. This may not be a serious issue for short stories, which often unfold over a period of hours, but most novels cover a longer span. In a first person present narration, you and the reader are inside the character’s head, watching events together as they occur. On the other hand, not every event is relevant to the plot. If you were to describe every moment of the character’s day - brushing her teeth, doing her laundry, walking to the bus stop, riding the bus, climbing the stairs to her office – the book would be incredibly boring. So somehow you need to skip over unnecessary details, without requiring that the character spend too much time unconscious! This is a definite challenge.

Still, I do love that combination. Probably 70% of my erotic work is first person present. In fact, sometimes I deliberately seek out stories to tell using other POVs and tenses, just to introduce some diversity into my literary voice. The witches story above is a good example. I’m putting together a lesbian collection and I thought I needed something very different from my other stories.

Of course, markets sometimes influence the choice of POV. When I first started writing erotic romance, my publisher frowned on using first person. Being a good sub and wanting to please, I adapted. The years seem to have somewhat eroded this prejudice against first person, however. I’ve read first person romance by a number of authors, and gone back to writing it occasionally myself. On the other hand, there’s a genre convention for alternating perspectives between different characters, at least in longer romance works. As noted above, this is easier to do in third person.

Some editors really hate first person. And don’t try to sell a story written in the second person! I’m not sure why, but many erotica editors will toss out a second person story without even reading it. I suspect that this reaction derives from the fact that so many amateur erotic fantasies are written in this mode.

You enter the room where you’ve shackled me to the wall, almost noiseless in your bare feet, but I know you’re there. The blindfold ensures that I can’t see you, but I smell your sweat and that evergreen cologne that drives me crazy. As you rummage in the toy box, I try to identify the implements you’re extracting by their sound.

I’ve heard many complaints about this style. “Why is the author telling ‘you’ what is going on, when the ‘you’ already knows?” I can see the point, but in some situations, the technique can be effective. For one thing, it emphasizes the separation between “I” and “you”.

Of course, this is not exactly second person POV. Similarly, my story “Limbo”, excerpted above, is mostly first person present, but the other main character is referred to as “you” rather than “he”. A true second person tale would not include any “I”. In fact, I’m not sure what that would look like. I doubt that second person would be sustainable over a long work. However, I could be wrong.

And what about the third person “omnisicent” point of view? This was common a hundred years ago, but rarer now. How does this differ from alternating third person limited? I guess the distinction is based on what is revealed. In an omniscient POV, the author possesses and shares information not available to the characters.

I could say more, but I’ve already run on longer than I intended, so I’ll shut up. I will leave further explorations to my august fellow contributors.

However you look at it, though, this is an important craft issue. Through whose eyes will your story be seen? Change the answer and you fundamentally change the story.

A World with Two Moons

By Lisabet Sarai

For the past three weeks I've been immersed in a single book: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Lest you think that I'm a terribly slow reader, let me inform you that this novel, Murakami's most recent, is approximately 1150 pages long. Furthermore, this is not a tale to be rushed, but rather, to be savored. I'm currently on page 743, at the start of Book 3 – “October-December” - and I'm buzzing with pleasant anticipation as I contemplate the next week or two.

Murakami has been one of my favorite authors since I encountered him back in the eighties. I believe I've read all of his novels prior to 1Q84. His stories highlight the isolation and anomie of modern urban life, yet are spiked with a distinctively Japanese magical realism that I find addictive. Practically every character he creates is passive, alone, drifting aimlessly through his or her drab life, oppressed by a vague sense that something is missing. Then the impossible, or at least the unlikely, intrudes and impels the characters to action. In acting, they change. They may connect with other equally lost and lonely souls, though often in a transient fashion that begs any conventional happy ending.

The last Murakami book I read before this one was the slim and elegant After Dark. If you've got the time, you can check out my review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/515578358 In that review, I commented that After Dark really has no plot, that it's like a curl of smoke or a riff of jazz, beautiful and haunting but without the constraints of novelistic structure.

If After Dark is jazz improvisation, the meticulously plotted 1Q84 is more like a symphony. Every movement, I believe, is carefully planned. Separate themes emerge as solo voices, then converge in choruses of the synchronicity that distinguishes Murakami's fiction. The scenario becomes increasingly fantastic and compelling as the book continues.

I don't want to give away too much of the story, because discovering the twists and turns as the author gradually reveals them is part of the joy of reading. However, I can sketch out the initial events that set the tale into motion.

In the first two thirds of the book, alternating chapters present the perspectives of two seemingly disconnected characters. Aomame is a determined, disciplined woman with a secret profession. Desperate to escape a traffic jam on the freeway that will prevent her from making a critical appointment, Aomame exits from her taxi and climbs down an emergency ladder to street level. Only later does she come to understand that this radical departure from the norm has left her stranded in a subtly different world, a world with a different history and two moons in the sky.

Thirty year old mathematics prodigy Tengo teaches at a cram school and aspires to write fiction. A manipulative editor colleague pressures Tengo into revising a fascinating but disturbing novel by a seventeen year old girl, in order to enter the book into a literary contest. Once he has read young Fuka-Eri's strange tale, he cannot resist temptation. He polishes it into a fictional gem; it becomes a best seller. Gradually he discovers that his creative act has set dangerous forces in motion, that he too has been drawn into a new and disorienting universe that challenges his familiar assumptions.

That's all I'm going to say about the events that propel IQ84 forward. I'll just reiterate that reading it is pure pleasure. The book is written in simple but evocative prose, with a certain distance from its characters that does not prevent you from empathizing with them. Like most of Murakami's books, this one concerns itself with the nature of reality and the malleability of human perception. It's a mystery, a love story, a fantasy, a horror tale, a voyage of self-discovery for its characters. I have no idea how it will end. I consider that high praise.

Here's a bit from one of my favorite sections, describing Tengo's experience as he works on the revisions to Fuka-Eri's manuscript.

He printed a draft, saved the document, turned off the word processor, and shifted the machine to the side of his desk. Now, with a pencil in his hand, he did another careful read-through of the text, this time on paper. Again he deleted parts that seemed superfluous, fleshed out passages that felt underwritten, and revised sections until they fit more smoothly into the rest of the story. He selected his words with all the care of a craftsman choosing the perfect piece of tile to fill a narrow gap in a bathroom floor, inspecting the fit from every angle. Where the fit was less than perfect, he adjusted the shape. The slightest difference in nuance could bring the passage to life or kill it.

The exact same text was subtly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both. He turned the machine on again and typed each penciled correction back into the word-processed document. The he reread the revised text on the screen. Not bad, he told himself. Each sentence possessed the proper weight, which gave the whole thing a natural rhythm.

When you analyze any particular paragraph, Murakami writing is quiet, without rhetorical flourishes or excessive emotion. Yet somehow he manages to evoke an intense sense of loss, of desperation or of wonder, depending on his intention. I'm certain the author is describing his own writing process in the passage above. The final resulting prose shows exactly that sort of obsessive attention to detail. As a reader, though, you're not really conscious of the craft, because of the way it pulls you into the story.

I'll stop here. I've got to go exercise, and then make dinner. Later, I'll settle into bed for what may be the best part of the day – a few more chapters from this compelling novel.