Ah HA!

[blamebrampton]

FANFICCERS!

Worried about lack of reviews?

Sad that everyone is reading everyone who is not you?

Depressed to see teenagers who don't know how to spell frottage and cannot accurately gauge the bendability of the average penis with thousands of ffnet reviews while your finely crafted and beautifully edited masterpieces are lucky to garner 23?

FRET NO LONGER!

THE SECRET IS REVEALED!

''People say it isn't good quality but you have to remember Fifty Shades started as fan fiction and as fan fiction you have to have action,'' Hayward says. ''You have to have a sex scene in every chapter because that's how you get your reviews. The amount of people who review per chapter shows popularity, that's how your ratings get up. In fan fiction every chapter has to give you something to keep you reading it.''
(From an SMH interview with Amanda Hayward, the really rather brilliant publisher of the not as brilliant book.)

So there you go! You lot who've been telling me to porn it up were right all along! (I mean, obviously I'm not going to, but that's for the best. The Bad Sex Awards longlist is already inches thick.)

I thoroughly recommend the article, which is interesting and respectfully written, without being actually nice about bad writing. It includes this gem from The London Review of Books' Andrew O'Hagan, which I had previously missed: ''It's not that Fifty Shades of Grey and E.L. James's other tie-me-up-tie-me-down spankbusters read as if feminism never happened: they read as if women never even got the vote.''

Comments

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I find it enormously hard to write sex, because even in the actual moment, it is somewhat ungainly and ridiculous, and translating that to the page without the ridiculous aspects over-riding all the others is … well, you know my passion for the ridiculous!

[leemarchais.livejournal.com]

I don't mind writing it. I just have a feeling it's not nearly as good as it could be. As much as I like realism, I know that you want some aspects to be sexy or whatever. I don't know. Once upon a time when I didn't think about it at all, it came very easily, no pun intended. lol I just have no ... guage for my own writing. Like Autistic people have no guage for emotions, you know? lol I know that sounds ridiculous, but it's true. Drives me up the wall, actually. Meh. I know I'm hard on myself, but at the same time, I have really high standards. I have no clue how to write humour or crack. I wish I did.