Hour Vixen Laura Roberts serves up erotic fiction lessons
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GRAPHIC STEPHANIE VRIEND
A new workshop promises to help would-be writers improve their erotic writing skills.
In her upcoming intro workshop to erotic writing, Hour’s “V for Vixen” columnist Laura Roberts will share her saucy talents in sexy smut-writing.
“I think people frequently leave out sex scenes more because they’re scared of doing them wrong than because they don’t think they should include them,” said Roberts, who is also founder and publisher of Black Heart Magazine, an online source for smut.
“And there are tons of ways to screw up sex scenes, so it’s intimidating.”
The workshop, titled “Saucy Smut: An Introduction to Erotic Writing,” offers ways to avoid the pitfalls of bad eroticism.
“Most people come at them from either a kind of Harlequin romance or a porn video angle,” explained Roberts. “They don’t think there are many options. There are actually lots and that’s what I plan to teach.”
“Saucy Smut” benefits not only the serious writer of erotica, but any fiction writer who is trying to write a sexy scene into their novel.
A bad sex scene can ruin an otherwise perfectly good book and no author is immune. A list of famed authors who have been pilloried for horrible sex scenes includes Canada’s own Michael Ignatieff (in Asya) and Tom Wolfe (in I Am Charlotte Simmons).
Wolfe won The Literary Review’s Bad Sex award in 2004 for his efforts and did not accept the honour graciously, which touched off a minor scandal in the literary world. Roberts not only wishes to help writers avoid a similar fate, but said she thinks the genre of erotic writing can be raised to a new level of quality.
“I think [the Bad Sex awards] are interesting and sort of funny, but I also wish there were an accompanying ‘Good Sex award,’” said Roberts. “That, to me, is more of a challenge than writing bad sex scenes.”
In her opinion, Montreal needs to be doing more to encourage erotic writing.
“I find it kind of disappointing that in a city like Montreal, which comes off as so sexually liberated, there’s no sex writing community,” she said. Roberts pointed to writers such as Susie Bright, Violet Blue and Audacia Ray as authors who have raised the profile of erotica and wants to see Montrealers get the same exposure.
“It would be awesome to read a Canadian anthology of sex writing, the way Cleis Press publishes yearly anthologies of Best Sex Writing,” said Roberts. Cleis is a queer publishing house and their Best Sex Writing issue includes such categories as Best Gay Sex, Best Lesbian Romance and Best Women’s Erotica.
Roberts wants to teach workshop participants that good sex writing extends beyond dirty language, emphasizing that character and plot development are the key to writing any good story.
“It’s like being seduced by a new lover every time you read a good story,” said Roberts. “Even if you know the endpoint is going to be sex, it’s exciting to get there in a different way.”
“Saucy Smut: An Introduction to Erotic Writing” will be taught at Joy Toyz (4200 St-Laurent Blvd.) on Oct. 9 at 6:30 p.m. Price is $35, $30 for students.
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