How NOT to get reviewed . . .

Dear Faithful Readers;

Here are some discreetly edited e-mails I’ve sent (or wanted to send) to some aspiring authors and publishers who had asked to have their books reviewed on Erotica For The Big Brain. I think you may find a clue or two about what not to do when writing erotica or attempting to solicit a review. Enjoy—or cringe as the case may be.

TAS

Dear Author,

After perusing your sample, I have to be frank; as fascinating as the broad outline of your story sounds, I don't think your book is ready for review just yet. The problem isn't one of bad writing per se, but mostly of organization. You begin with a long and rather dry digression about the history and politics of this matriarchal island state, going to great lengths to make it all seem plausible. But that’s not a very good way to engage readers, who will be far more interested in your characters and the conflicts that motivate them. You do a great deal of "telling," giving us lots and lots of detail in a series of baldly declarative sentences, but you don't show us your characters in action or get into their heads through intimately observed scenes and dialogue—at least not until well into your second chapter.    

I would highly recommend two books. First is Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. This volume is very helpful when it comes to understanding the whole "show don't tell" principal, and does a good job of covering aspects of organization and formatting. The chapter on dialogue mechanics is alone worth the price of the book.  Second, James N. Frey's How to Write a Damned Good Novel is a quick, easy primer on the creation of effective dramatic narrative.

Ultimately, I think you have the raw material for a pretty good series of books. You simply need to refine it in order to draw in and hold potential readers. When you've done that--and perhaps chosen a subtler, better formatted cover--I'll be happy to take a look, and very possibly write a review. Till then, good luck.

cheers

* * *

Dear Author,

I think you are a brilliant storyteller. It’s rare to find an erotic novel at once so engaging and original. You may well have the Next Big Thing on your hands, and go on to enjoy the kind of success and wealth most writers only know in their dreams.

This being said, the problem—and it is, in my opinion, a serious one—is the editing, or, to be more specific, the total lack of editing. It appears that you relied on AutoCorrect and never bothered to get a pair of trained human eyes on the text. There are far too many sloppy instances of tense-disagreement, and other confused usages; words that aren’t quite right. At one point—in fact, the point where I stopped reading—the narrator talks about “volcano larvae”. Are you serious? Would it have been so difficult to go through the story a few times, find and fix these errors? Proper attention to small detail can often make the difference between a memorable, great book and a mediocre, forgettable one.

I also have to say that you throw in an awful lot of specific product and brand names. I understand the motivation behind this, endeavoring to give the text a feel of contemporary realism and “now-ness”, but after a while, this constant name-dropping gives the book less the feel of an edgy erotic adventure than the copy in some old Sharper Image catalog. In the end, this surfeit of unnecessary detail will not tell the story for you,

Get this book to a good professional editor as soon as possible. You won’t regret it.

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Dear Author,

It is unfortunate that you severed communications with me before I could give my reasoning for passing on your work. It had been a long day and I was tired when I wrote that I could not give your novel a positive review, but I fully intended to come back and provide you with a summary of my observations, which might well have proven helpful to you.  That you would be so childish as to “take your ball and go home” does not bode well either for your book’s chances or your own future as an author.

I think you should fire your copyeditor—the one you so lavishly praise in your acknowledgements—he has not done well by you. Among other things, he ought to know that one can write “till” or “until”, but there is no such word as “‘til”.  While I think most readers would never notice such a tiny detail, you called special attention to the fact that the novel had been “thoroughly and professionally edited”, thus issuing an irresistible challenge to whole squadrons of eagle-eyed pedants.

Would that the editing was the most serious issue with the book; there are problems that go much deeper. In a novel purporting to be a work of erotica, you go into greater detail about technical aspects of IT, and express more passion about the meals your characters share than the sex they have together. People interviewing for jobs in the IT sector, going into torturous detail that will only put non-tech-savvy readers to sleep may be a way of padding the word-count, but is ultimately beside the point. And then there’s the food! Every meal, from the most elaborate haut cuisine found in fancy restaurants to the simplest take-out is described in such thorough and graphic terms there were times I thought I was reading an article in a culinary magazine. Granted, your writing about food is often quite beautiful, and that’s good; but in an erotic narrative such passages, lovely as they may be, are little more than extended digressions, cluttering up the scenery and clouding the point. In fact, I think you may have missed your calling. You are clearly more turned on by food than sex, so, perhaps, that’s where you should focus your energies as a writer.  

On the other hand, your writing about sex is downright disturbing. Your story is of a middle-aged woman in a passionless marriage who meets an aggressive male co-worker while on a business trip. The man insinuates himself into the woman’s life and, at least in their first encounter, rapes her. You treat this act as an erotic episode, but it is blatantly, painfully un-erotic. (This notion that rape or sexual violence somehow unlocks a woman’s repressed sensuality has been an all-too common trope in French cinema over the decades. It is also utter and complete merde.) Your descriptions of the woman’s physical response (“she felt like she had to shit”) and, later, her passive acceptance of the co-worker’s continued attentions, are, at best depressing, and, though I seldom judge writing about sex in conventionally moral terms, disgusting. I come away from your writing with the idea that you hate sex almost as much as you love food.

Please, consider another line of work.

* * *

Dear Author

This writing lacks subtlety. You seem intent on pouring as much backstory into the first few paragraphs as possible. I would suggest reworking this, allowing the narrative to "breathe". In other words, spread the details and descriptions evenly through the text. As it is, your front-loaded exposition is graceless and clunky. Hard to tell whether you're writing a police report with full-metric descriptions of every physical characteristic (the young man is 6:4, 220 pounds with blue eyes yada yada yada) or a Dick and Jane primer for an adult literacy class. ("Hello," she said "I am Jane." "Hello," he replied, "I am Dick. That is short for Dickhead. Want to come over to my place and see Spot run?”) 

Your first sentence is adequate if unextraordinary, but you need something that will draw readers into the story immediately. Make something happen, or, at the very least, show us what the heroine is thinking about before you give us her whole life story. Drop us into the middle of a conversation or situation already in progress. Give the reader some mystery to latch on to, and let them use their own imaginations here and there.

It takes a lot of practice to develop a fluent, subtle narrative style, so my advice to you is keep working at it, honing your skills and stretching your imagination. Write constantly, and, when you're not actually writing, read everything you can get your hands on (not only erotica, but everything). When you're not physically reading or writing, be thinking about writing. "To write" is the only solution for all the difficulties a writer knows. To write is the only answer. 

Good luck.

* * *

Dear Author

I have read two of your “disabled erotica” short stories. I don't like them. It's not simply that your writing is clunky and simplistic; your portrayal of blind people is inauthentic, ignorantly stereotypical, and  hopelessly shallow. Do you actually know any blind people? Have you ever dated a visually impaired person? Your approach to eroticism in the context of "disability" is childish, lacking any insight, subtlety or sophistication. Rather than engaging my interest and turning me on, your work elicited anger--which, I am sure, is not the response you were hoping for.  

I was hoping for imaginative descriptions of beautiful foreplay, sensuous rituals of discovery, followed by feverish couplings. Instead, you made your characters simple-minded porno-brained idiots, desperate to get it on right away, because, of course, blind people have to move fast before their dates silently run away in disgust. Your text was rife with bullshit pronouncements such as "Being blind, I was afraid to ride in a taxi," or "Being blind, I liked my ham shaved extra thin" or "Being blind, I had extra-acute hearing." Perhaps you should have gone all the way and piled on clichés like "Being blind, I was an exceptionally talented musician" or "Being blind, I was a natural for the food-service industry". You seem to have gotten your ideas about "being blind" from comedian Mark Blankenfield. Then again, your statement that “well, if dinosaur porn can sell, why not handicapped erotica?” tells me almost everything I need to know about the level of thought that went into these stories.

I feel it is only fair to offer you an "out" at this point. I can either write an insightful, probing, thoughtful and scathingly dismissive review of your work, or refrain from posting any review at all. The choice is yours, though a scathing two-star-equivalent notice from me might do more for your sales than any number of gushy, semi-literate five-star write-ups from your friends and family.   

In the end, I urge you to focus your energies elsewhere, preferably writing about something you know.

cheers

* * *

Dear Publisher:

I took a long weekend to catch up on some of my reading, and was able to get through the novel you sent for my consideration. I regret to have to tell you that I cannot give this book a positive review.

The writing is competent, if dismally predictable. The story is derivative and overly formulaic; it put me in mind of those gawdawful Danielle Steel novels I used to read on tape for my ex-mother in law with its contrived coincidences and clichéd portrayals of "exotic" locales. The book is not populated with believable people, but with cartoonish caricatures of one-percenters; the kind of shallow cardboard cutout pawns one sees portrayed on any average run-of-the-mill network-TV drama series. (Fitzgerald was right; the rich aren't like you and me; but I doubt they're anything like the addle-brained morons on Revenge or Desperate Housewives either.)  Frankly, I don't find the rich and powerful all that compelling as fictional characters--this is a complaint I've had about many writers from Anne Rice to Dan Brown--they can buy their way out of any situation, and who gives a damn about a shallow, spoiled trust-fund baby who can have whatever the hell she wants and never changes for the better? What real obstacles are there to be overcome?

I have no difficulty with the underage sex storyline, though I think this could have been more skillfully mined for its potential of moral complexity. Many readers are reflexively turned off by this sort of scenario; still, if we went around burning books that treat of any such relationship, we'd have to toss "Lolita" on the pyre along with half of Balzac, Zola and a goodly percentage of 20th-century French erotic literature as well.

In general, what I like least is the cloying cynicism of the characters. I suppose one might find the so-called heroine's bi-polar cynicism/naiveté rather original, but as I said, somehow, I've read this book before.

A novel-length erotic narrative must have VARIETY to retain interest. Also, in any successful novel, regardless of genre, the characters must undergo a process of change, either for better or worse. In this story there's an overabundance of sameness in the sex scenes, and the characters do not experience anything that changes them in any sort of profound or interesting ways. I was not dazzled; merely annoyed, and, ultimately, bored.

It is a pity that the only notice this title has received on Amazon is the clueless, semi-literate ramblings of a certain so-called “Top Reviewer” (a well-known professional dimwit in my opinion); all the more damning because she gives it four stars along with her pant-load of nonsense. I wish I could, in conscience, give the book the thoughtful, honest, well-crafted, scathing 2-star write-up it deserves, but doing so would represent a conflict of interest, since I can't post negative reviews of books in the genre I publish in, at least not on Amazon.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful

* * *

Dear Author:

Thank you for your kind words--feedback is always welcome, and affirmation doubly so. I should tell you that I don't participate in "review exchanges", as tempting as they may be on occasion. In this way I am able to maintain independence without constraint on my frank opinions. I know that it can be difficult to get honest, intelligent reviews, especially of erotica, and the urge to "take shortcuts" can, at times, be overwhelming. Of my fourteen published titles, all available for more than two years, only one has ever received a review, and that was a terse, three-sentence affair on the Amazon UK site—subsequently removed. At least I got three stars, and the reader didn't seem to hate it, which, under the circumstances, seemed quite the glowing recommendation. A good, literate three-star notice will always trump a clueless, poorly written five-star one as far as I'm concerned.

I would like to take a look at your book. However, in perusing your sample, it seems there are a number of serious problems with formatting, including inconsistent paragraph indents, and poor spacing. It would be a much more pleasant task to read something with the look of professional polish, suggesting that whoever produced the book actually cared about what they were doing.  Clean up the formatting, upload your revision and I will consider it. 

cheers

* * *

Dear Author,

Having perused your sample, I'm going to have to take a pass on this book.
The story may well be a good one, and worth the telling, but I found
the writing clunky, often carelessly repetitious, and overburdened
with gratuitous modifiers. You effectively lost me in the first
paragraph.

This is not so much a rejection, as a challenge to do better. When
writing fiction, always strive for an economy of expression, and work
to achieve an effortless flow of language. In short, say more with
fewer words. The constant use of adverbs to provide dubious
information is awkward, and gives the writing a herky-jerky feel.

You need to have this book thoroughly edited with an eye towards
eliminating instances of apposition, that is, repetition of similar words in close proximity, and getting rid of unnecessary modifiers, paying special attention to adverbs.
Also, it's not necessary to give your readers a running commentary on
every ordinary action your characters' take. For example, at one point
you have your narrator say something like: "I walked to the file
cabinet and found the L document under L. . ."  Do you see how this
might be a problem?

I do hope you will keep working to improve your craft. Read some good
books on writing, and, of course, read great fiction by accomplished
masters, always learning from the best examples

cheers

* * *