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From: Tesseract <HyperTesseract@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.d
Subject: Re: {ASSD} In Media Res, and other beginnings
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:39:05 -0700
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Jordan Shelbourne wrote:
> It occurred to me today that starting a sex story In Media Res could
> refer to starting while in the act of copulation, which in turn led to
> me thinking about what stories are best suited to that type of story.
>
> Which in turn leads to this question-- What are your favourite sex
> story beginnings?
>
> Oh, the how-to-write books all talk about starting in media res (Go
> look up Aristotle's _Poetics_ if you don't know the term) or with the
> inciting incident. And I'm not particularly fond of "Her name was
> Francine Ursula Condoleeza Kane, and she lived up to her initials,
> being tall (5'9") and slim (110 lbs) with improbably pert 38D breasts
> and thick red-brown nipples that went _sproing_ when you sucked on
> them (or so I was told by her father)."
>
> My current favourite (yes, I'm writing the well-hung cuckold story,
> and this is the current beginning): "A symptom, I guess, is that I
> like to suck cock."
>
> Yours?
Hey! I just learned a new word. Well, phrase. actually. If you can
wade through the spam this can be quite an educational place.
You asked "What are your favourite sex story beginnings?"
"Sex" is superflous. It's a story. It has to meet certain requirements
of all stories. You have a maximum of the (web or newsgroup equivalent
of) the first page to make me want to continue. Something better
happen. Second best is to tell me about something that has happened.
Shopping list descriptions of characters won't do it. I don't care
what they look like. Maybe later but not yet. The rest of the scene?
You have precious few sentences to tell me why I care that I'm
enjoying a beautiful sunset on a mountain top.
In medias res is popular because the author gets to start with the
most exciting scene in the story. If the story has any chance of
catching the readers' interest, that scene would be it. After I become
interested in the story I have a reason to be interested in how the
characters got into that situation. You can still screw it up but I
may be more forgiving about typos, atrocious spelling and poor grammar
if I believe it is worth the effort.
If you don't want to start at the end or in the middle and tell most
of the story as a flashback, at least start with an action scene. Make
it exciting. Make it original, not a cliche. Make it well written:
show me, don't tell me. You can fill in the mundane details later,
after I care about them.
Does that answer your question?
--
Tesseract