Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1037816 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-14
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Good for beginning writers
If you want to write dirty stories, and only want to buy one book, then this would be a good choice. It's got decent overviews of the various markets (with a bias towards writing short stories for magazines, which is seems to be the author's main experience), and broad if shallow coverage of "craft" aspects such as point of view, dialogue, story structure.

If, like me, you already have a fairly extensive writing library, a lot of this will going over old ground, though van Belkom does put an "erotica writing" spin on a lot of the material.

Also, as someone who's recently been offered a contract for my first erotic novel, I found his attitude to longer stories (essentially "the sex novel has had its day") to be disappointing - and inaccurate...

On the other hand, if you're looking to break into the short story/magazine market then this could be just the thing for you.

The book is divided into 3 parts:

- Part 1 is really an overview of the market, and of the various story forms.

- Part 2 is the nuts and bolts: the "craft" aspects such as characterisation and dialogue. There's a thought-provoking chapter called "How Does Erotica Work?" which, among other things, delves into the differences into how men and women respond to such material.

- Part 3 is about marketing. It should be useful to anyone who wants to do this professionally, but again it's more aimed at the magazine market, and goes into certain detail (manuscript format and cover letters, for example) that's not specifically to do with erotica.

Overall, if you take your writing seriously as a craft, you're going to want more than this. In that case, get some more "rigorous" writing books such as Sol Stein's or Orson Scott Card's, and then consider this if you need some hand-holding on getting the steamy stuff done.

If you just want to get up to speed quickly, and maybe make a few bucks selling to magazines, this book should do fine.