Q: What do you think is the most difficult scene for authors to write and why?
A: The most successful pieces of fiction come from the confluence of what we know best and what we feel most passionate about. That’s no secret. Take Michael Crichton, for example. He was a medical doctor, passionate about medicine and the many facets of human nature. At the same time, he was a sci-fi enthusiast, and most of his best-selling titles come from the conjunction of these two worlds: medicine and sci-fi.
Consequently, I believe we struggle most with writing things we either don’t know that much about or don’t feel that passionate enough about. Or both. However, in modern penmanship, there’s another area that causes authors some grief: lack of visibility into one’s audiences, demographics, preferences, and, finally, Amazon’s procedures.
To me, personally, that area is writing sex scenes. The reason for it being difficult for me to write is the many questions around it that I have no answers for. As a crime writer, how “hot” can I make my sex scenes without offending my average crime reader? Without tripping Amazon’s artificial intelligence screeners and dooming my book to be restricted as “adult only” material?
I pushed the envelope with Glimpse of Death, a serial killer thriller I released a few years back, and to date, I’m not sure if the adult content didn’t hurt it more than helped. It sold well, has one of the highest star ratings (4.6) from my entire list, but it’s the uncertainty that bothers me.
I believe many authors struggle in this area, and some, myself included but only sometimes, opt out of it, skipping over sex scenes and steamy romance altogether. But the thing is, to become wholesome in the craft of writing, we must learn to command the areas where we struggle, at least to a level of proficiency that is satisfying to our readers. And for that, practice makes perfect.
Happy writing!
- Leslie Wolfe, author of The Girl You Killed
· Link to my latest release, The Girl You Killed, https://bit.ly/GYKpsych
· Leslie Wolfe website: https://lesliewolfe.com
No comments:
Post a Comment