The Short Story: First Impressions

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Metaphor, On Writing, short story

 “To begin at the beginning.”

Under Milkwood Theatre Poster – Clwyd Theatr Cymrd

With this beckoning sentence, Welsh author and playwright Dylan Thomas opens his renowned and much-performed radio play Under Milkwood.

The narrator speaks here, setting the scene for a sleeping town; one “moonless night” in Spring, “starless and bible-black.” Most famously narrated by the resonant, deep tones of actor Richard Burton, the words bid the listeners to pay attention. Here comes a story. The alliteration and repetition already draws us in. For those of us with Christian backgrounds, the words echo the very first sentence of one of our oldest and most epic of stories: the Bible.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

We teeter on that first sentence with the narrator, waiting to step down into the rolling, seething, ribald psyche of the sleeping townspeople; to creep into their cellars, be voyeurs of their wet dreams and illicit affairs, their silent sorrows and repressed desires.

Begin at the beginning …

Described by Thomas as a “play for voices”, Under Milkwood has been produced many times worldwide for radio and stage. I was cast as narrator for a stage adaptation in my first year of drama school, and the opening lines always stayed with me. The play’s language and imagery is rich, visceral and poetic, alive with alliteration and metaphor, onopatopoeia and intoxicating rhythms. For those interested in language, I’d argue the play-text reads just as well as a short story. Vividly realised through both narration and brilliant dialogue, the characters of Llareggubb Hill leap off the page and into your imagination.

A compelling short story ideally can and should make use of the elements I’ve highlighted in Under Milkwood to achieve the same intensity of resonance in the reader’s imagination: opening, imagery, language, characterization and dialogue.

For this post, it feels appropriate “to begin at the beginning”, to focus on first impressions: title, the first sentence and the opening paragraph.

A brief aside: all of these elements are also important in longer-form fiction. Additionally, I’d underline the importance of the entire first chapter to lay the foundations of the story and capture the reader’s attention. But that’s another post in the making.

In a short story, you’re going to have less time with the reader than with a novel. You need to make every word, sentence, paragraph and scene count. First impressions matter.

I’ll say it again:

First impressions matter.

FIRST SENTENCE: THE ENTRY POINT FOR YOUR READER

First impressions are as important in a story as they are in a job interview or a first date. As a university student, majoring in theatre and taking literature as an elective, I studied Kafka’s polemic short story Metamorphosis. Kafka’s story begins with this intriguing first sentence:

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

How could a dull story possibly emerge from that opening premise? I had to read on. It may well have been while studying Metamorphosis that I became convinced of the vital role of the opening sentence to set the short story in motion and to coax the reader inside the story-world.

A strong short story nearly always has a riveting first sentence. A sentence that beckons, or yanks you in by the hair.

To begin at the beginning …

How do we, as writers, find the right entry-point for our story? Where is that place in the charged narrative swimming inside our minds that we can clearly signpost as its unique and compelling beginning? As we know, it’s not always, chronologically speaking, the first “beat” of the story. Some narratives are most effective when they move back and forth in space and time.

As a writer, the idea for a story often coincides with the words of the first sentence, appearing in my mind’s eyes like burning neon on my retina. Heart pumping, I race to get it down on paper, because I know it’s my ticket into my own story-cinema. If I lose it, I may lose the story, popcorn and all. Here’s one:

“Last week, she tried to leave him on a Wednesday just before dinner.”
– Wet Satin Plaything (2015)

Just like a love affair, there’s a lot of heat in the imaginations’ first encounter with a new story. Other times, when I don’t get the first line, I draft out the story in chunks – whatever is coming to me. Then as it starts to take shape, I pull out my magnifying glass, and go hunting for that first line. It’s often buried somewhere in the body of the draft.

Some writers may relate to this. If you’re not excited when you read the first line of your story, chances are your readers won’t be either. Keep an open mind, and go hunting. Oftentimes, you’ve written it already – you just have to pull it out of the pile of words, set it on top of the page, and give it a polish.

Time for an eccentric writerly confession: I collect first lines of stories. I have notebooks full of them. For this post, I decided to re-visit some of my most beloved short story writers, and pull out some first-rate first sentences.

Let’s begin with the writer who made me truly want to be a writer, and precipitated my love for word-play and images: Ray Bradbury. If you haven’t read him, and you claim to love short stories, please stop what you are doing and go find some of his stories. Now. Start with The Martian Chronicles if you like science-fiction, or The Illustrated Man if strange tales with dark carnival themes appeal.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

“He came out of the earth, hating.”
Pillar of Fire

“The rocket metal cooled in the meadow winds.”
Dark they Were, and Golden-Eyed

“The city waited twenty thousand years.”
The City

All of these first sentences, short as they are, feature important players in the story, and invoke the particular story-world. A man who should be dead, walks and feels again. A rocket has just landed – “cooled” being a telling verb. Where, we wonder, and who will come out? A city is a protagonist. It exists: has memory, a consciousness and a tenacious patience, and something is finally going to happen.

The first example also establishes one of the driving emotions of the story: hate.

Below are some other first sentences, by authors I have long read and admired:

“My father lost me to the Beast at cards.”
The Tiger’s Bride, Angela Carter (from The Bloody Chamber)

What’s introduced here? A desperate father, a wager gone wrong; betrayal of the deepest kind for a daughter. How beastly is this beast? We know we are not in a naturalistic story, at his mention, and that uncanny elements will be at play. How horrific her loss of choice. What happens next?

“Suddenly – dreadfully – she wakes up.”
The Wind Blows, Katherine Mansfield

The main character erupts into consciousness just as the story does, and something awful has either happened in her dream or is happening around her. These five words, and the clever use of the staccato energy of dashes as punctuation create a suspenseful beginning.

“Lilith was sexually cold, and her husband half-knew it, in spite of her pretenses.”
Lilith, Anias Nin (from Delta of Venus)

Nin creates an intriguing beginning that establishes the theme of pretense, and tension between a husband and wife. She wastes no words in getting to the “obstacle” of sexual frigidity, which the narrative then explores.

“First, mother went away.”
Being Kind to Titina, Patrick White (from The Burnt Ones)

An understated rendering of a life-changing event.  We sense this story will be about loss, and survival from the perspective of a child.

“My lover Picasso is going through her Blue Period.”
The Poetics of Sex, Jeanette Winterson (from The World and Other Places)

Here, Ms Winterson twists and subverts several aspects at once with her wry feminist perspective. Picasso is a woman, not a man. The reference to her “Blue Period” seems at first to be about art – but as we read on, she subverts our expectations with a description from her female lover’s viewpoint of  her behaviour when she’s menstruating, creating a secondary word-play on the meaning of “period”.

A strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

All of these examples show the writer’s agility and ability of story-telling. They know how their story unfolds, and they place the reader at the best vantage point to survey the story’s landscape. Prominent characters are introduced and emotional tones are established.

All of these sentences achieve one other more complex thing: the first sentence houses the seed of the story. The microcosm of the macrocosm.

What do I mean by this? Come back with me to the “vantage point” metaphor. As the writer, we locate our opening sentence at a specific point in space and time. We direct what the reader gets to see, but we also look out over the story landscape, noting the important stand-out features. These features can be themes or crucial plot-points or core emotional evocations of a character’s relationship to themselves, other characters or the world.

We describe where we are, and then we project our vison deeper into the story-world. We use words to link where we are (as character or narrator) to one of those prominent features. Or we lean into the metaphorical wind blowing at us from our story-world, to capture something evocative about our story, carried to us on that breeze. A scent of something, or a seed.

In your opening sentence, situate the reader where you want them at first contact with your story,  then try giving the readers a hint of something enticing to be encountered further into the narrative. What your first sentence introduces can then be elaborated upon in your opening paragraph.

I once did a movement theatre workshop around the theme of story-telling. One of the exercises was to find a first sentence of a favourite book or story, and translate that sentence into a movement piece – with a beginning, a middle and an end. The facilitator believed in the power of first sentences; that they could in some way, convey the entire essence of the story.

As a writer and editor, I’ve become increasingly interested in this idea: a strong first sentence finds a way to lean into the themes of the story, to be simultaneously at the beginning, and also at some other important emotional or thematic elsewhere in the story.

Short story writer Eudora Welty conveys a similar idea here:

“A short story is confined to one mood, to which everything in the story pertains. Characters, setting, time, events, are all subject to the mood.”

A large proportion of story drafts that I receive as a developmental editor have not had enough care and attention given to their opening sentence and paragraph. Eighty percent of the time that’s where I begin the work with the author. I’ve read openings of books already on sale on Amazon that have typos and grammatical errors in their first paragraphs. I have read no further, nor have I bought the book. And I would never be inclined to look up that author again.

I’ve nothing against self-publishing as a concept. But, writers, it should never be an excuse for releasing sloppy work onto the market. Use beta-readers, find yourself a skilled editor, or consider developmental editing to hone your work. Ensure it’s copy-edited before you release it. Putting unpolished, un-edited work before the public eye is not going to benefit your reputation as a writer. In fact, it will do the opposite.

From a writer’s perspective, I understand why haphazard, slap-dash story openings happen. We’re in a hurry to get it on the page before the idea fades. We’re impatient to just start the damn thing, and we can’t wait to get into the meaty part of the story. So we bumble and stumble bull-headed through our opening, when this is the part of the story where we most need to take care.

If this is what it takes to get you started, great. But go back and revise your opening once the heat of that first wave of inspiration has subsided. Then sleep on it, and revise again. As you generate more material, be aware that your true beginning could be somewhere in the middle of your draft.

This is one place where developmental editing can really offer something to the writer. I work with the author, giving them permission to slow down, take a breath. I ask questions, give them a framework in which to take a better look at the details of their opening, and I show them what they should be focusing on, or point out details have been sketched too hurriedly and aren’t clear to someone standing outside that writer’s head.

Write. Revise. Write. Revise.

Once you have that stellar, kick-ass beginning, revise it again. How tight can you make it? How clear? How intense” Can you eliminate excess words or phrases that are muddying the meaning or the impact?

In short, will it give the reader the most compelling view of your story-world?

The more essential every word you render in your opening sentence and paragraph, the more intense its impact will be upon the reader’s imagination.

The Short Story: from First Sentence to Final Words

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Creativity, Developmental Editing, editing fiction, Fairytales, Greek Mythology, My Bookshelf, On Writing, Published Fiction, quotes, short story, Women Writers

I’ve always been a voracious reader. I learnt to read a little earlier than was usual, and after that it seemed I couldn’t get enough words inside me. As a child and teenager, my reading habits bordered on addictive, and maybe that’s why I loved short stories; as for most children, these came at first in the form of fairytale and myth.

Image Credit: Brooke Shaden

Their brevity and the fact that they were a complete experience in themselves meant I could consume more stories in the amount of stolen time I had to read: under the desk at school while it was officially maths, beneath the bedclothes with a torch long after my parents thought I was asleep, even occasionally (though less successfully) in the shower. Following my mother around the supermarket. Sometimes I’d lose my mother, but never my place.

When it came to short stories, I guess you could say I was greedy.

Writer Ali Smith expresses this idea succinctly, and with a wry twist of logic:

“Short stories consume you faster. They’re connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality.”

We don’t just consume short stories; they consume us. It’s an interesting idea. Even at five years old, I seemed to sense I would only have so long to read in my lifetime, so I’d better get to it.

Myth and fairytale beguiled me as a little girl, and they still beguile me now. I don’t think it was ever the happy endings I craved, but more the sense of magic and the uncanny. Now, I enjoy reflecting on the archetypes in myth and fairytale, that resonate through different centuries and cultures. I like to muse on their themes; themes that swim; primal, invertebrate, deep in our psyches. Love. Belonging. Loss. Yet before I ever knew the words archetype or symbol, I sensed the wicked witch was more than she appeared to be, and that forests were governed by different lore and logic to houses or towns.These are the treasures hidden in fairytales and myths. Upon entering these story-worlds, as a very young reader, I believe I first comprehended the power in words, the pull and expansiveness of story on my imagination.

The world didn’t stop at the end of my street.

As the wonderfully imaginative writer Neil Gaiman observes:

“A short story is the ultimate close-up magic trick – a couple of thousand words to take you around the universe or break your heart.”

I could visit other times, places, civilizations, and planets. I could be a princess, a witch, Thumbelina – all without leaving my backyard, and return home in time for dinner.

The myth of Persephone, first read when I was five, translated into a short story and included in the Childcraft Encyclopedia volume on stories and fables, has been whispering wisdom and insights to me all my life. What I related to in the story as a child is different to what I related to as a young, sexually adventurous woman in my twenties, and different again to how I relate to her story more than a decade later.

The theme of mother-daughter love drew me in as a child. The tantalizing sexual and psychological symbolism of the Underworld that Persephone is made to spend part of every year in fascinated me as a young woman. The idea that Persephone represents the sexual and psychologically integrated woman from a feminist perspective intrigues me now, and compels me to keep writing about her.

Like a set of Russian dolls, the other parts of me at different ages are still nestled  inside me, and re-visiting stories that have companioned me through my life-journey is one powerful way of accessing these other selves. Changes of perspective in how and what we see in a story, are like sign-posts, or scars, marking the places of our own growth or change.

My well-read collections of Bradbury short stories

As a teenager, I continued to read fairytales, but also developed other tastes – for science fiction, mystery, the macabre and ghostly, the absurd. I devoured the short stories of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, and Roald Dahl. All of these authors approached the short story with their own style and signatures of their era. All of them taught me something about the qualities of short story writing.

Writer Andre Dubus professes that he loves short stories because  “they are the way we live. They are what our friends tell us, in their pain and joy, their passion and rage, their yearning and their cry against injustice.” For certain styles and subjects of short stories, I think he’s right.

We live our lives day by day, and a short story is an apt framework to capture what happens to us or our lover or a neighbour in the commute to work, or late one night, or over a week. Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others:

“A strange thing happened on the train to work today.”

“So, I met this guy last weekend at my local cafe when I accidentally spilt my take-away coffee over his shoes.”

These kinds of short stories are close relatives to the conversational anecdote. If they are good stories, they will inevitably play with the tension between the everyday and the profound, the trivial and the significant. The teller is not quite the same person they were before the story happened. And they will have that same potential for the reader or the listener.

Short stories don’t just encapsulate how we live, but the way we recount how we live to others.

In this series of posts, I’m going to be exploring the short story up close. I’ll be peering inside, prying the pages apart, savouring sentences upon my metaphorical tongue, and inviting you to do the same. How they differ from longer forms of story, such as novellas and novels, will also be touched upon. Writer Lorrie Moore makes apt comparisons between the short story and the novel:

“A short story is a love affair; a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

I’ll be exploring the writers of short stories who have inspired and informed my own writing, and I’ll be musing on what works and why. To do this, I’ll be calling on three different perspectives I have into the short story: as a life-long reader of them, a published writer of them, and most recently, a developmental editor of short stories by numerous other authors.

Over my four decades of reading life, the number of short stories I’ve read would have to be in the thousands; maybe even the tens of thousands. Two literary theorists whose work I admire greatly were enthusiasts of lists to bookmark various ideas: Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes. So, here, I’ll list the authors of short stories that have inspired, intrigued or affected me:

• The brothers Grimm
• Ray Bradbury
• Roald Dahl
• Edgar Allen Poe
• Oscar Wilde
• Franz Kafka
• Anton Chekhov
• Patrick White
• Katherine Mansfield
• Angela Carter
• Jeanette Winterson
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Anais Nin
• Tobsha Learner

Some of these, such as Gilman and Kafka, are there for singular, stand-out stories. Most of the authors listed are there, because I’ve read many of their short stories, often returning to them again and again. Then there are the many anthologies I’ve read; attracted more to a genre or theme than a particular author’s voice. Ghost stories, Australian short stories (we’re pretty good at them as a nation) stories about the ocean, stories by women authors.

Try making a list of your own short fiction inspirations – just for fun, or to see who your influences are.

As a writer of short stories, I won first prize for a short story competition when I was eleven. I wrote a few decent short stories at high school, getting some published in the annual school magazine. Then, a long hiatus from any fiction-writing, where I took to copious journal-writing, poetry and snippets of memoir. I’d often had people say I had a gift for writing, but for a long time, I was too focused on pursuing my passion for theatre.

Since I started taking my writing more seriously just over four years ago, I’ve written twenty-two short stories (if I include flash fiction) and had seventeen publications, with a few other offers that didn’t eventuate. The first story I ever submitted for paid publication got accepted, the next one was also accepted, and currently my acceptance versus rejection rate is about 4:1. I think Ray Bradbury would be proud of me for having the courage to submit as soon as I started writing. I’m not one to let finished stories moulder away in a bottom desk drawer for years.

About two years ago, I started working as a developmental editor and have worked with numerous authors across different genres, editing some thirty short stories to date. My first editing project happened somewhat by accident, but was definitely fate in motion. I was asked by friend and writer Emmanuelle de Maupassant to critique one story for her new collection in progress. She liked how I approached it and asked me to work with her on the whole collection. It was a dream first editing project for me. Inspired by Eastern European and Russian superstitions and folklore, Cautionary Tales had macabre and erotic elements, and archetypes and symbols galore.

It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out.

Consider this post as an introduction to the series. From my own reading and writing of short stories, but also particularly from what I’ve gleaned through the drafting and editing process with other writers, I’ve compiled a list of seven elements I think are crucial to the writing of a compelling short story, and I’ll explore each element in more detail in a subsequent post.

1 First Impressions: Title, First sentence, First paragraph

2. Finding the Right Words: Imagery, Atmosphere & Metaphor

3. Character: Details, Depth & Dialogue

4. Narrative Gaps:  Sleuthing in the Spaces

5. Developing Themes

6. Paring Back & Revision (What Stays, What Goes)

7. Final Words: Finding your Ending

As an editor, working with other authors, I’ve gained what I’d call a privileged perspective into the potential challenges and blind spots that can be seen to recur over a sample of writers. It’s extremely rewarding to see, through the developmental editing process, a story go from sketchy to stand-out. Every writer has their own strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes these will even vary over different stories from the same author. While one story may have a very strong, engaging opening, another from the same pen might splutter and dither around in the first few paragraphs, or seem to start in the wrong place. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

These posts are intended as much to unravel my own fascination with the short story, to discover what I know about them, as to assist those writing them or wanting to write them. It’s my observation that some writers do need ongoing, considered feedback to help them identify (and strengthen) their weak spots. Other writers will have a gut instinct about what their weaknesses are, and take or leave advice accordingly. I tend to fall into the latter category. Whichever kind of writer you are, I invite you to take what resonates for you, and consider that what doesn’t resonate for you may be helpful for another writer.

Possible approaches to generating material for stories and for writing them are manifold. Any exercises I suggest are based on what has worked for me or other authors I’ve worked with, and occasionally what I’ve picked up or modified from a writing craft book or workshop. Take what you feel might work for you, or try something out of your comfort zone.

I’d also hope these posts will generate some vibrant dialogue, as I know many writers out there who enjoy the short story form, and, like me, would agree with writer Annie Prioux:

“I find it satisfying and intellectually stimulating to work with the intensity, brevity, balance and word play of the short story.”

Intensity. Brevity. Balance and word play. I love the qualities she singles out, and I’ll be discussing these qualities through the ensuing posts. I hope you’ll join me.

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Chords of Desire (Erotic Fiction Excerpt)

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Adrea Kore, Cello, Creative Process, Desire, erotic dreams, erotic fiction, Female Sexuality, Fiction Excerpt, Inspiration, short story, women writing sex, Writing Process

Lights up.

There are two bodies, up here on stage.

One is of cool flesh, lavender-scented. Sleek, dark hair, parted perfectly in the centre, is pulled back into a chignon, revealing the white arc of throat, the shadow formed by the sweep of her jawline as she bends her head in concentration. Black silk accentuates the pale sheen of her skin, her dress cut wide against the shoulders to reveal her collarbones, and the stretch of her swan-like throat. Slender hips cradle a spine which draws itself, erect as a candle-flame, towards the ceiling. She has arms of alabaster, impossibly long, arms of a conjuress.  Her eyes are closed, her nostrils open. She breathes music into her, as if it were all she needed to exist. All senses are focused on this other body, gripped between her thighs; this body of violent swells and curves so different to her own.

I am smooth and gleaming, the light from the chandelier creating honeyed ripples on the surface of my flesh, flesh of maple.  I am shaped to hold secrets. I am hollow, yet fecund.  Bodies such as mine are made for the fervent embrace.  Flesh such as mine will not erode easily, even from the rituals of the most devout of lovers. 

My senses are so exquisitely honed that a flutter of fingers at my throat forges fire in my womb. I feel the strength of the thighs which clasp my hips, the tender determination of her hands upon my spine.

I cannot but yield up my music.

Is this how I was born into consciousness, the bow keening across my strings, animating them with music? My cords, through which I sing and speak, and feel. She calls me Seraphine, her burning one, her angel. No matter where we are in the world, I feel as if I am always here; caught in light, cradled in her arms, pivoting on a single point of pain like a ballerina, poised between grace and chaos.

She makes love to me each night on stage, each performance a fresh seduction.  Together, we weave sound and silence into incantations which bewitch and benumb those who listen.

Those who come to sit in the dark and watch are nearly always men, no matter if we play in the theatres of Paris, New York or Cairo.  It is when the lights are directed away from them, when lulled into the roles of mere observers, that the truth of their lives is revealed in their faces, all yearnings and disillusions.  Men with hungering eyes and lonely mouths.  Men with laden wallets and leaden hearts.  There, in the embrace of the illuminating dark, they become my performance.

I am of wood, yet something of me is woman.

 

I love my mistress. But she has a heart made of wood. She does not respond to the caresses of love. It is only music that makes her soft, Bach that brings fire to her cheeks, Schumann that coaxes a languorous curve from her lips. Only for Brahms does her body quiver, her sex yielding to the vibrations of the notes through my body, becoming moist with desire. But for what? Strangely, it is I who long for the touch of a man, I who am fashioned from the finest of maple wood.

Perhaps, one night, whilst playing me in a frenzy of passion, she transferred her heart to me.

There are stories woven into the sinews of my strings. My mistress slices her bow along them like a scalpel.

But there are stories and there are secrets. The secrets I keep deep in the hollow of my body. These she shall not have.

I love my mistress. But equally, I love desire itself, the sensual energy that dances between two beings.  And if I cannot be completely fulfilled myself, then to invoke desire in others is what I will do.

 

* 

‘A dream, like trying to remember, breaks open words for other, hidden meanings.’

Rosmarie Waldrop

This is a curated excerpt of a story that was seeded in my psyche sixteen years ago, when I had an incredibly erotic dream. I was a cello, being played to an audience of only men, in tuxedoes. I could feel the music pouring out of me as if they were physical sensations, my whole body was full of this incredible cello music, and I woke up in the middle of some intense krias (a Tantric word, describing the movement or release of orgasmic energy through the body). I had woken up my boyfriend with my sounds and writhing, and I could still hear the music in my head, as I described the dream to him. The telling of the dream had an erotic effect on him too, and we umm … didn’t sleep for quite a while.

Over the next few days, I wrote about three pages of what the dream had evoked for me. It was the beginning of my first erotica story, and the words felt as if they were pouring out like streams of melody – but I couldn’t tie together the passages. Flash forward sixteen years, with several attempts in-between. I finally finshed it recently. Interestingly, I used almost all of the original material, but found my way into the “narrative gaps” to write a more fully-formed story.

Around the writing of a story, are often other stories.

Plots are something I used to struggle with, as a younger writer. That, I believe, is what hindered me from shaping the “scenes”, moments and characters I so strongly envisaged into stories. So, I am developing my “narrative muscle” with each story I work on – and complete.

To develop a strong sense of resilience and healthy writer-ego, I believe the completion of one’s creative ideas is crucial. Half-finished ideas have a terrible tendency to haunt you.

The defintion of a chord is:

Three or more notes that combine harmoniously.

And Chords of Desire is actually told from the perspectives of three characters: three characters that sound their own unique note on the exploration of desire, three characters bound together by its power. This excerpt is just after a short prelude that begins the story, and is from the cello Seraphine’s perspective. That initial dream, the surreal fact that I was the cello, and could think and feel, always meant she was going to be a sentient character. She could be said to embody feminne desire. Inevitably, this story weaves elements of magical realism into its narrative.

I’m still searching for a home for this story – if any editor or publisher reading it feels it might resonate with their publication, or indeed if any writer knows a place that its style would be at home in, please do feel free to comment or write me here. The full version is around 4000 words. Paid publication leads only, please.

As always, this writer very much appreciates reades who take a moment to let to me know their thoughts on how the story has connected with them.

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‘Dance for Me’ – Erotic Fiction by Adrea Kore via ERWA

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Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Dance for Me, Dominance / submission, erotic dancing, erotic fiction, erotica, ERWA, Exhibitionism, Female Sexuality, Seduction, sexual fantasies, short story, Voyeurism

So this is what he meant by a challenge of submission.

I’m standing in this cage. In the centre of a fetish club dance floor. In a leopard-skin corselet. It could look like I planned this, but I didn’t. …

“Dance for me.”

 

Thrilled to have my short story “Dance for Me” selected to feature in ERWA’s Gallery of erotica for the first quarter of 2015  (January – March).

I really enjoyed writing an erotica story around the act of dancing for someone, as I’ve loved dancing ever since I was very young. There’s a real challenge in translating such a deeply physical act into words and imagery.

Dancing can be such an art of erotic and sexual expression – for oneself but also for others. Some of this story is autobiographical; some of it is fiction, and the thrill of writing stories sometimes is the fascinating way the creative mind functions. In the flow of the writing itself, fact and fiction become fused in surprising ways – even to the author. I find myself writing huge chunks, then stopping and looking back in surprise at how effortlessly my brain has woven elements of both together. Occasionally, choices are conscious (to preserve anonymity of real-life people I might turn into characters, for example), but it’s amazing how much the creative brain simply ‘takes care of’ in the act of writing. I don’t know how many other writers experience this – but it certainly makes me wonder how many of Anails Nin’s erotic scenarios were a least based on things she actually experienced. (if so – what an incredibly erotic life she led!)

So – to read my story – unlock the cage and step inside with me …

(UPDATE: ERWA rotates its showcase of of fiction seasonally i.e. every 3 months, so this story is no longer availabe there to read – however I’ve updated the link in the picture to take you to an excerpt. The complete story is going to be part of an erotica collection I’m currently writing around the themes of exhibitionism & voyeurism – watch out for it!)

A Peek into “Peek Hour” – From Journal Jot to Paperback Anthology Release

Tags

Adrea Kore, Creative Process, erotica, MBOBNE13, On Writing, Peek Hour, Penephilia, Phallic Worship, Published Fiction, sexual fantasies, short story, Voyeurism

Although I’ve been dabbling in this writing caper for over 3 decades, and received my first offer of publication fifteen years ago, my affair with writing erotica began only two years ago.

Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica is a “Best of” anthology of erotica short stories, that have been published in some form within the preceding year. Hand-picked by well-respected editor Maxim Jakubowski (himself an author of many genres of fiction including erotica), this anthology has been going for over 13 years (it started getting numbered after a few releases) and has a considerable standing amongst the erotica-writing commmunity.

Just one year ago, I was (very politely) rejected from this anthology. The piece I submitted wasn’t even a story, more a scene. But the editor must have seen something he liked, because he encouraged me to submit again. After reading the anthology I didn’t get into, and being so impressed with the quality of story-telling, as well as the diversity of sexuality represented, I was determined to get a story in one of them – one day.

Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 13

My complimentary contributor copies for this year’s anthology arrived earlier this week.

And I am proud for my story to be there, nestled between the covers with writing peers, authors I have oodles of respect for, people I’ve interacted with and exchanged story critiques with, via my favourite online erotica writer’s forum. And proud of my ability to not let a rejection fill me with self-doubt or stop me from submitting to the same editor.

It still stuns me when I see one of my stories in print. I’m a green enough published writer for this still to be enormously exciting, and somehow unreal.

I don’t share this to gloat. I share it to encourage fledgling writers. Persistence and practice can actually lead to publication. (I really didn’t mean to execute that much alliteration in one sentence.) Oh – yes – the other factor :

PUTTING-YOURSELF-FORWARD.

(I seem to be on a roll with P-concepts.) Not at all surprising, considering the subject of this story.

Little Raven Two out now!

Tags

Adrea Kore, erotica, Little Raven, reviews, short story

Check out this glowing review for Little Raven’s second erotic anthology. Delighted to have my short story Salad Days feature inside with lots of other diversely sexy reads.

Support small press publishing – this little birdie works very hard!

Little Raven Two out now!.