Erotica homework 4: Water rites — Vincent’s POV

As usual, the class last night was fascinating. If I haven’t mentioned this before, or if you are just catching up, I’m taking an erotica class from Shanna Germain. While I don’t have any plans to cross over to writing erotica, I am interested in having the tools in my box even if my scenes still “fade to black.”

Shanna is a darn good teacher. What I’m finding through the class is that I’m actually learning a lot about deepening characters in general and about the specificity of language, that will apply to other scenes. In our last assignment, we were asked to create a scene in which there were only two characters, who could not leave their location, who wanted to have sex and could not. And there needed to be a transformation. This reminds me of a scene from a video from sex-hd.xxx. A friend told me that it served as a fantastic inspiration.

In class, Shanna asked us what was hardest about the scene and for me, it was finding a way to link all of those elements. You can read the story that I wrote, “Water Rites,” but I almost wrote another which I mentioned in class. I almost did a scene in the carriage that Jane and Vincent take from Calais to Binche. It was a funny scene in which the reason they could not have sex was simply from mechanics. The carriage jostling, benches too small, angles all wrong. I abandoned it though because I couldn’t find a transformation.

What Shanna said in class was that the transformation did not need to be big. It could be minimal and internal. They could be having a bad day and the sexuality could lift their spirits and show that they are great for each other. I had this moment of duh. It makes me want to look at my other writing for small character transformations in scenes.

She also suggested, in general, thinking about how long have characters have known each other. Are there power structure differences between real and the bedroom? What is the purpose of the story?

Then she talked about common mistakes. Knowing that some of my readers would rather not read that, I’m putting those behind a cut below. It is not particularly explicit but it does mention body parts.

Meanwhile… here’s this week’s homework. We had two choices.

  1. Write the same scene as last week’s assignment from the other character’s POV
  2. Write the scene that would come next.

I’ve sort of opted to do both. So, if you would like to read “Water Rites” from Vincent’s Point of View you’ll need a password.

Password SelectShow

Here are the other notes from the class. SelectShow

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