From: Kirkland@yabbs
To: Natalie@yabbs
Subject: Let's talk about sex...
Date: Wed Apr 13 15:52:34 1994

(Hellion lies...I'm practiaclly a virgin.  NOT!)

Oh, well, since he put me up to it...
   One of the hardest images to convey is the emotion of sex.
I used to think it was just an act, but once you think of it as a feeling
you can begin to explain it-- not just experience the physical sense.
You can bring up memories in other people, shared experiences, fond
remembrances, etc.  Sure, everyone wants to read a "good fuck scene", but
there's more to it than that.  You need to drag their feelings and
emotions into the story, not just their loins and hormones.
   There are three types of sex stories: 1) The professional writer's,
 2) The amatuer's and 3) The pornographic.
 They all work, but in different ways.
    The pornographic is designed to get you all hot and sweaty, sporting 
wood
if you're male, breathy if you're female.  That's what it's all about.
It's primal, it's dirty, it's nasty.  It's what we all want to do once
(and some all the time), but it's meant to make your body react, with just
a little imagination because it leaves little to your imagination.
   The professional writers have been writing about sex since they knew
what their thingies did.  They have written about sex so many times and in
so many ways it comes naturally.  Personally, you can only read so many
Harlequins (which I don't read-- I'm male) before the sex scenes are just
one more scene in the book.  I think the overuse, the flowery words, have
just lost their glamor.  It works time and time again, but their version
of a sex scene doesn't have you breathing all that heavy.
   Then there's the amatuer.  Everyone else fits in this group.  You fall
into the good amatuer group because your story doegive a certain sense of 
urgency.  Longer sentences add to the dreaminess.
You have the "correct" progression of moves.  You have good details
throughout.  You give your thoughts.  You give your emotions-- and that is
why it works.
   You can write a hundred sex stories and none of them would be as good 
as
this one because it was your first.  (Kinda like sex-- you will always
remember your first time).  It's stilted, it's direct, it tells what you
felt.  If it flowed it would be bullshit.  You think that you need points
on how to make it better?  Read it again, and this time let yourself
experience the same emotions you're trying to evoke in others.  Don't look
at it as "what I wrote" but as "what I experienced".  It might be better
than you thought.
   No, you used beautiful about as much as you'd want to, you're still
okay.  You write quite well and have a good future in it.  (I know--
critique me, tell me what I should change, not what I do right.)
The only thing I can suggest is that you don't change it too much.
I was once told that to write a really good story one had to write it 
twice
and put the best of both together to form the best version.  This would
kill the innocence of the story.  It works because it is so personal.  If 
this
is what it takes to be an amatuer, there's nothing wrong with being an
amatuer.  Hell, I enjoy being one.  Professional or not, you did a fine 
job.
                              -Kirkland