Nouns Are Important

Every woman should have a little black dress/cat. Read that as you will. I have both. Considering I also have two teens, I get more use from the LBC (little black cat). I figure in that sentence, dress and cat are interchangeable. They’re both nouns . . .

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t work quite like that, but why not? I’ve long held the suspicion that someone who can write a really good love scene could write a passable fight scene, and someone who can write a really rocking fight scene should be able to write a passable love scene. The theory is: write the scene you’re good at, say sex, then go back and change all the verbs and (hopefully) nouns. Voila! Fight scene. Fine, you may have to clean it up a little, but you’d have the framework. For someone who doesn’t know where to start, it’s somewhere to start.

Have I tested this theory? No. Why? Partially no need yet. The few skirmishes I’ve had have flowed from my fingertips organically and I didn’t need to cheat. The other reason why is I’d rather stay off The Guardian’s radar. They give an award every year for the worst sex scene in a book. Usually it goes to someone I’ve never heard of, but they’ve had some big name nominees. And while it would be free advertising, I’ll pass.

That’s me being a chicken, by the way. I’ve gone back and reread some of my first attempt sex scenes, and I don’t think I’d win against those writers The Guardian picks on. The winners aren’t just bad scenes, they’re creatively bad. The avid romance reader probably knows what I’m talking about - like finding a scene several pages long where everything is described in terms of food, or flowers, or (shudder) cars.  Or authors who stubbornly refused to call anything by its anatomical or common name and instead terms like ‘winkie’ and ‘hoo-hoo’ slip in there. Talk about ruining the mood. If you can’t say it, honey, don’t write about it. Granted that’s an extreme example and I saw that in a pre-publication piece I was critiquing. (Disclaimer: it might have been intentional, I’m not sure.)

So the point? Nouns matter. Writers hear over and over that adverbs are bad and adjectives are weak. Use stronger verbs. What about nouns? In romance we hear about purple prose – the practice of giving decorative names to body parts and actions. Her shimmering globes and his velvet shaft, you’ve heard it before. Romance writers are told purple prose died a painful death over a decade ago, but it’s been a lingering one. In fairness, there is a reason it’s still around: repetition. There are only so many times you want to say dick, penis, and cock in nine pages. And describing female genitalia is arguably worse.

For some small-print publishers, there is a list of terms you can’t use. Ever. I’m not just talking about the F-word, the C-word is almost always on there if you see such a list, but some publishers don’t like other phrases or words. And some authors aren’t comfortable writing some terms. Maybe it doesn’t suit the character to admire her honey’s ass - she would think of it as a bottom, where another woman would most definitely think of it as his ass.

Nouns are one of the most basic building blocks of sentences, and therefore your book. Pay a little bit of attention to them. (And I was kidding about switching out the verbs in a love scene, by the way! Although, if anyone wants to try it, I’d love to see the results.)