BOOK REVIEW - SUSIE BRIGHT – HOW TO
WRITE A DIRTY STORY. 2001 Fireside
Books.
A first rate
guidebook for erotica writers. Bright advises authors on how to avoid falling
foul of the censors, (i.e., just do it), and sets out a series of exercises for
how to lose your own inhibitions, and write erotica in different styles and
contexts. The Book will appeal to writers of stories that focus just on sexual
relationships, (gay, or straight) and to writers in other genres who just want
their sex scenes to come across as realistic and relevant to the context of
their work.
Bright has long
served as a pioneer of erotica, and edits the best Erotica in America
yearbooks, promoting many new authors and championing women’s and lesbian
erotica authors in getting them noticed in a male dominated market. Her
approach is a very no nonsense common-sense one and straightforward.
A book (any
book) should not fall open at the best (smuttiest) bits, she advises. Its sex
scenes should be in context with everything else written in the book. She
advises reading erotica, and her book includes extracts from a number of
authors, i.e., Anne Rice, Mario Puzo, etc. She is writing to people who want to
write just for their own benefits and for a wide public audience.
She advises
against clichés, and the orgasmic scream that goes on forever. She warns that
use of vulgar language is legitimate but that it can get tiresome if used as an
alternative to any other kind of writing. Gratuitousness just gets boring.
Bright advises writers to write about what turns them on, so the book is in
some ways a sex-guide in general as well as an author’s resource. She suggests
masturbation exercises, and sharing our erotic poetry and fiction with our partners.
She is a big fan
of public readings of erotic literature. She advises taking a long break
between drafts in editing your work, and offers assurances that writing erotica
will do no harm to your own sex life. She even talks of the groupies who she
attracts to her readings for being in such a trade.
She shows how
the media will expect the sex-novelist to be a sex expert and a sex maniac.
Some are disappointed if she turns up to interviews in ordinary clothes rather
than in fetish-wear rubber and latex. As to any worries about the ‘nay-sayers’,
Bright’s attitude is a healthy call to ignore them, and be you, and just to get
on with the writing.
Arthur Chappell
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