Novel Thoughts

Yesterday, I wrote about 2,700 words for my novel. That gives me about 13,000 words of rough draft. I don't know yet what I'm going to do in the middle or end, but the beginning is going fairly well. I like the main character.

The novel is a fantasy. I am rather tired of the pseudo-medieval or pseudo-renaissance settings so common in fantasy, so I'm going more modern. The technology level of the primary setting is roughly that of the United States in 1950 with a few changes. They don't have internal combustion engines, concentrated fuels, or explosives. They do have electricity and external combustion engines. Medical technology is closer to 1975 or so. The have short-range electric cars and dirigibles.

I'm debating with myself whether I should include sex scenes. I currently intend to post it to the Web eventually--if I finish it--and many, perhaps most, of the popular Web novels have a good dose of erotica. I certainly don't have anything against erotica. I especially like the amateur erotica posted to the Internet. It is interesting to see what people reveal about what turns them on when they are primarily writing for themselves. It's true that a lot of the writing runs from god-awful to rough, but some of the writers are skilled, and I know of a few who write at a professional or near-professional level.

On the other hand, the focus of the novel isn't erotica. I'm 14,000 words in, and no natural place for a sex scene has yet presented itself. If some of my ideas pan out, there will be a few natural places for sex, but the scenes will make up only a small portion of the novel. I could probably fairly easily make an adult version of the novel with the sex happening on camera and an adolescent version of the novel with the sex happening off camera. I might try that. That's assuming that I can write a sex scene that isn’t laughable.

If this thing actually turns out to be good enough that I'm not embarrassed to send it to publishers, I'm not sure what having posted it to the Web will have upon my chances for getting a book contract. The late Jim Baen, publisher of Baen Books, said that posting free novels to the Web appeared to help his sales, but most publishers might not think that way.

Oh well, I'm getting way ahead of myself.

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