When characters get headaches 2/3rds of the way through
I have an idea for an erotica novella, but it has one problem: about two-thirds of the way through, the sex dies off. My lads boink like bunnies until they hit the Wall of Emo and Angst, and after that I think I can manage one instance of conflicted!angst!sex and one instance of "happily ever after, or at least until the next installment" sex. Putting in more sex seems ghoulish. If there's enough relationship payoff to make up for the missing sex, will this pattern be all right, or is it a flaw in need of serious work?

Plots do that sometimes. I haven't found it to be a problem as most publisher take a range of sexiliciousness anyway :)

Excellent. Thanks. Good to hear, since I don't want to scrap the idea.

Don't hammer in a sex scene. No matter how well you write the scene it will still come off a gratituous.

I’m having the same problem at the moment. My story seems top heavy with sex and now I’m at the stage where it’s died off in order to become more plot driven, in so much as there is a plot (my stories are all basically character driven). So much so, I’m not even sure if it’ll qualify in the erotic genre anymore. :cry: Stephen King offers some very good advice in his book On Writing, and from what i remeber he says to think of your story as fossil, in that it already exists, and it’s a writers job to uncover what’s there. In other words, it’s no use trying to add an extra bone to your skeleton, because all it’ll do is make your story less credible. And as a reader, I’d rather read something that flows naturally and believably, in whatever genre, rather than be put off by all the, as cup says, gratuitous sex scenes.

Just understand that even if you as a writer are trying to drive the plot forward, your characters are still trying to get it on. Get that part right and things will take care of themselves.

Try not to worry about genre while you're writing it. If you never finish the story, all your genre fretting will be for nothing. After you finish the story, THEN figure out the genre.

I tend to agree with you on that, Cup, but I hear a lot of people say that you should know what audience you are writing for in order to get published, and it's kind of hard to refute. The only thing I can think of is if you compromise on the story you are writing then it will show in the quality.

I highly recommend that On Writing book of Kings. I didn't think it would be good, but he really does an excellent job of summing up the core issues of writing.

Jane Yolen wrote a book about writing that's pretty good too :)

When in doubt, add more conflict.

Man, I can't stop laughing over the cup size.