Seriously, it depends on the audience and the story. Some stuff is full camera on. Others is fade to black. Some things the intimacy is important, even if the story isn't NSFW, and even in adult stories sometimes you don't need to focus on stuff because the action (hurrhurr) is elsewhere.
(And if you're wondering, I publish the adult stuff under a different name. It's not hard to find or figure out, but I don't link the mostly-all-ages stuff and the porn)
Be it lovers entwined, a refection on someone's death, a mental break down, or that quiet moment two people understand a relationship is over.
If we're being coy and really mean "two people fucking" then I don't.
Erotica isn't in my wheel house.
Absolutely no shade to those that write erotica.
I just write them? I write historical romance, and most of my novels contain explicit love scenes. They can be part of the character arc; they're always part of the relationship arc - each scene reveals something new about the relationship and / or pushes the relationship forward.
I choreograph love scenes before I start writing them, and they're often among the first scenes I finish when I'm working on a new story.
A) One character bushing another person's hair. They end up in a pillow fight.
B) The narrator dealing with the LI having a meltdown over the narrator only giving them compliments on their looks.
C) LI gives the narrator permission to call them by a personal nickname.
I often find in close intimate conversations one character will find they no longer have words to say what they want. So I end up using ellipses. I also use ellipses to show how characters start saying something and then editing what they want to say. "you should... we should.
If you mean sex, it's just another action scene. There may also be intimate portions of the scene.
I signed with a new agent and spent the last 5 months on a major restructure of a maximalist ecofiction novel imperfectly disguised as a contemporary workplace comedy. #WIP Hollywood has taken over casting for a televised mission to Mars. It’s back up to over 400 pages and my agent is going to be so mad when I finally turn in this draft. Just need to untangle the final 50 pages, which is why I’m playing here. Procrastination is part of the process.
No regrets. Though I do feel a little bit like a sucker trying to write for traditional publishing again. I’ve been here, I know what it’s like, but I put my foot right in the trap again and am hoping it doesn’t snap shut this time, even though I know that’s what the trap is designed to do. So… ask me in a few months if I have regrets.
I struggled a lot with how to approach content warnings for Weird Fishes. I ended up going with this Author’s Note and including a list of potential sensitive subject matter in the back.
#writerscoffeeclub 3 June: Should books contain a content warning?
(somehow missed yesterday, but this is important).
I never did that before I entered the English market. But I put a content note on #OdysseyToThePromisedLand. I realized that there are some things in it that might be disturbing, so I'm warning.
Should is the right word. Sometimes, however, I feel like it has to do with respect for the reader.
If this is with regard to sex scenes: I'm not afraid of that, but it has to fit the story. Some stories are fade-to-black, some more explicit. The most explicit feature the incubi twins and their companions.
In general, I shy away much more from explicit violence (which you'll find nowhere in any of my stories).
If this refers to other types of intimacy: heck yeah. I got them, loads of them.
As a translator I am lucky that the buck stops with the author/ editor of the originals. So I have no problem with a rich old fool marrying a horse, nor with a bride's mother shouting her sex advice through the door to the bridal couple (who are in fact trying on tight shoes).
They used to scare me. Most of my books do the fade-to-black thing.
And then I got adventurous (after reading a lot of Romance) and wrote an SF series with a LOT of bed scenes. Explicit ones. Yes, it was a challenge. And yes, since I had a male MC, I asked a friend to check those scenes. cue blushing
Because I have friends who will not read spicy, those books are published under Joanna Steenen.
I include CWs if the publisher or host requires them (Mastodon does) keeping to the spirit of the requirement. Beyond that, I refuse to impose my opinions on the matter upon any author, other than to point out that you dismiss this topic, and its implications for finding and retaining an audience for you work, at your own personal risk.
For certain things, yes. I plan to include one in my next book, which deals with pregnancy loss. But I think they need to be specific, not just 'this book contains mature themes' which is pretty useless as far as it goes. I plan to put the notice in the front and the actual content warning on the final page so no one who doesn't want to gets accidentally spoiled.
When I first saw content warnings, I didn’t like them much.
Art is often intentionally challenging, but not necessarily bluntly so. I was concerned that content warnings would distort by strictly reducing topics that a writer might handle with sensitivity to their sharpest, most off-putting edge.
As time went by, I understood 1) it’s healthy to be able to enjoy entertainment without fear;
the power to choose before purchase or time investment is a good thing;
people who are not worried about triggering past traumas and who think content warnings “ruin” the story, can skip them and go straight to Chapter One;
give people more credit; they know it’s also healthy to heal the past and engage with fears. 2/
Content warnings build trust.
The writer says to the reader, I trust you to know what’s right for you.
When handled well—for example, including page numbers so a reader can skip select pages rather than opting out of the book, or presented as a note at the beginning of a book stating that content warnings are included at the back of the book—they can be a gift.
Only if there is genuine unsettling content in a book that one would not typically expect in a story. Content warnings are good because it allows a reader to make active decisions about the type of material they will be reading. It's a kind thing to do, in my opinion; I wouldn't want to read a story which puts me in a bad state of mind.
#WritersCoffeeClub WWriting 24-06-03:
Should books include a content warning.
Cont.
That doesn't mean I am in favor of mandatory trigger lists.
A) They become vehicles of censorship.
B) They target minorities and enforce majority conformity.
C) they are arbatary. Why must you CW spiders but not lizards? I am sure there are people with lizard phobias.
D) They become outdated, witness the words you must not say.
I CW for Bullying, and homophobia because they can be triggering.
I CW smoking and swearing because I don't want to deal with purity folks getting on my ass.
I don't CW that I write queer fiction. I'm not going to cater to prejudice and besides, isn't obvious from my title and blurb?
I grew up in the 70s/80s, and there was a wealth of shit I shouldn't have read ^_^, but that's not why I put warnings at the start of my books.
Landmines are a problem. These readers decry problematic themes and make finding them a personal issue. They don't comprehend the notion of 'I shouldn't read this' and process their exposure as: 'You shouldn't write this,' so my warnings are solely for them.
Books already contain content warnings by how they are categorised, their cover images, blurb, etc. Adult, Young Adult, Children's, Romance, etc.
This is where the author can give the reader a good idea as to what's inside. If you feel the need for anything more specific, you probably haven't written your back cover (or web-page description) properly, or you need to find a better cover image.
#WritersCoffeeClub 3/6: Should books include a content warning?
I haven’t included content warnings in any of my books. I would do so if they included graphic violence or explicit sex, but I don’t tend to do that anyway. The question, of course, is where you draw the line. I do have same-sex (FF) intimacy, and if someone is offended by that, I feed that’s their problem. I’m not inclined to pander to prejudice. #books#writing#TheShatteredMoon
They serve a valuable function, though “should” is a strong word. In one way, it’s a personal preference — I see more content warnings in author notes than from the publisher, which implies to me that the publisher is neither enforcing content warnings nor preventing them. And obviously self-published authors (like myself) make the decision for themselves, both to include them or not, and where to draw the line.
BUT if the author/publisher doesn’t provide them, it’s almost certain that reviewers will. Some reviewers just list them to help out other readers. But some get very annoyed that they had to find out for themselves.
I also suspect it’s generational ie younger authors are more likely to do it, for their younger (but still adult) audience. I think it comes from losing the unspoken cues (imprint, genre, cover style, blurb etc) from traditional publishing that told us what to expect, due to the rise of genre-busting self-publishing, and also a more general blurring of genre lines, combined with the culture of fanfic, where thorough warnings are expected as a community-driven convention.
And I also think it is a bit muddled, as any big and self-determined umbrella term is likely to become. It can be “warning: contains graphic violence” or it can be “warning: only-one-bed trope alert!!!” And that’s ok but it might undermine the serious content warnings for the readers who need them. But I think readers have become used to parsing CWs for themselves.