How To Get Rid of an Earworm

Legend has it there's a song out there that will cause the listener to commit suicide. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I listened to the song. (I know.)

It's called Gloomy Sunday, originally written in Hungarian by Rezső Seress in 1933. The idea that a song can be so emotionally gripping that someone would actually end their life because of listening to it really got my imagination going. I read about it, listened to many versions of it (because if so many people are still recording it, surely not everyone killed themselves) and found it so, so beautiful.

Here's what happened as a result of that little science experiment: I got a fucking earworm. What's the one song you never, ever want stuck in your head? The one that might kill you through repeated listens. After the third straight day of having it stuck, I thought, maybe this is how it kills you: it gets in and doesn't leave and you have to shoot yourself.

This hasn't happened severely since then. Sure, I get a song stuck in my head, but mostly it's something I like and it disappears after a few minutes.

Saturday, I went to a Christmas party and someone played Prince's Kiss a few times -- a song I generally dislike. Well, everyone at the party went nuts singing and dancing and in basic agreement that a prissy little man is sexually attractive to women.

Like we yanked the bathroom door open without knocking.

For the next 2 days (up until this very minute), I've had that song constantly playing in my head. It's making me irritable and stabby.

So how do I get rid of it? After looking up several solutions online, these are the best ideas anyone has:

• Do an activity that works out the brain, like a puzzle/teaser, or reading an engrossing novel. Nothing too taxing, nothing too easy.
• Listen to the offending piece all the way through so that the song finds a natural ending.
• Listen to a different, equally catchy song.

If those solutions don't work you can shoot yourself and the song will be gone forever.

Unless that's what Hell is. Maybe don't risk it.

I tried suggestions 1 and 3 with limited success. Because the song Kiss is like nails down a chalkboard, I was reluctant to call it up online and have yet another listen. Desperate times...

Here's what I found on YouTube:

Maybe I'm still a 90's teenager at heart, but I like this song, and thought my prayers were answered that I didn't have to listen to Prince. I shut my eyes and played this video a few times thinking that's where the madness ended. 15 minutes later, though, Kiss was back. I even listened to Gloomy Sunday a few times, because even if it got stuck again, at least I find that song beautiful.

Actually, listen to this tiny girl sing it. It'll make you cry.

Now at least I've listened to enough music all day trying to shove out that damn earworm that maybe it'll perish sometime tonight.

Please add your favorite earworm-killing tactics in the comments section. 

How To Write: Chopping

When movies started talking in the 1930's, it's kind of all they wanted to do. Fill up that silence.
Just a few years before, characters communicated with a glance or a gesture, relying very little on title cards.

Eventually, moviemakers discovered that while their characters now had the ability to talk, they didn't have to do it all the damn time.

As a new novelist, you might face the same problem. Now you've got all these glorious words, and pages are stacking up, you love the feeling of having created something so ... BIG! But now I'm going to tell you to cut a chunk of those words and send them down the great cyber toilet.

Ooooh... bummer.

Let's talk about cutting scenes.

There are many stages of editing, but none more painful than taking a giant chunk right out of your book. That's a high word count to trash ... and there was that funny line in there you can't bear to part with.

Not sure what to cut? Take a look.

Let's say you're writing a story about a murder. The only way your detective character can trap the criminal is if he goes to the store first and picks up some supplies.

Scene 1:
The Detective and his friend are discussing how they can trap the criminal before she strikes again. They know ~information~ and how she'll react, they just have to lure her with enough candy to get her in the trap. (It's not original, but what do you want?)
The Detective says he'll go to the store, get the supplies, and the two will meet to set the trap.

Scene 2:
The Detective browses the aisles of CVS to get just the right kind of candy. Maybe his mind wanders and we learn some backstory.

Scene 3:
They have the supplies and set the trap, which stops the criminal.

When I write a story that follows a similar formula and proudly show it to my beta readers, one of them invariably comes back to me with, "the story was good, but wordy."
"WORDY?" The whole thing is words, right?

Here's what WORDY means: BORING.

By the time I get that critique, I'm full of my own words. "You stuck-up blankety-blank! That scene shows CHARACTER! It's got backstory! It's not wordy, you just don't get my writing."

We're writers and we're sensitive. Our books are our babies (for some of us, the only grand children my mom will ever get).

When I was reading another author's book, though, I came across a similar problem. I was THIS close to the good part, when I get stuck waiting for a damn train to cross the road. Once I trudged through, I realized if the author had started with the first scene and skipped to the third with the detective holding a bag of newly-bought candy, I could have assumed what happened in between.
Of course, when I see someone else doing it, it's easier to go back to my own novel and fix the mistake without all those hurt feelings.

That backstory or joke or clever line you've got in that dead scene? Either move those pieces somewhere else in the novel, or trash them.

How to Write: Sex Scenes

Right now, I need to tell my parents to stop reading. I appreciate your love and support, but this is not the post I want you to remember me for. Click here instead. (goes doubly for grandparents)

Anyone else who doesn't appreciate R rated material should also skip this one.

Alright.

My current work in progress, Awake, has something none of my previous works have had: a sex scene. Believe me, I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to show this novel to my parents without chopping out a whole chapter. Actually, when I first picked up the book Sex, Murder and a Double Latte the first sentence resonated with me:

"The downside to writing sex scenes is that my mother reads my books."  

Yeah, obviously, I'm not the first person to have this problem. I guess I'll figure something out when the time comes. (Just now getting a lot of unnecessary anxiety about this.)

Barring the difficulties of sharing scenes as intimate as these, getting the words out can be difficult too. This post's aim is to help with that.

There are different kinds of sex scenes for various situations.

For realistic scenes in which you don't want the girl to seem too easy, or the guy to be a coarse, ill-mannered brute, there's a specific order to the action, starting way before the scene itself. It's not so much what is done – ‘petting’ (kissing and limited fondling), ‘heavy petting’ (breast fondling with direct skin contact, stimulation through clothing), or even actual intercourse. Assuming mutual attraction in the first place, what matters is actually the order in which the characters do these things. As long as they each go through the same stages step by step and it is accepted by the other, everything is usually okay, even if the stages are gone through quickly. 

If you follow the stages in roughly the right order, sex will always seem consensual, and therefore acceptable. Some of the later stages often merge or are skipped altogether without problem. The faster it happens, and the more stages you skip, the more explosive and lust-based it seems, BUT you have to show both parties at same stage for it not to seem like rape for one or the other. The slower you take them through the stages, and the fewer stages you skip, the more it becomes love-making, and the more erotic it becomes. This order is roughly: 

1. ‘Accidental’ hand touching.
2. Hand touching/holding.
3. ‘Accidental’ body contact. e.g. arm brushing breast or vice versa, hips/legs brushing while walking/sitting.
4. Deliberate contact. Arm round shoulder/waist.
5. Touching other’s face/hair.
6. Kiss, with minimal body to body contact.
7. Long kiss, full body contact.
8. Brief contact with lesser erogenous zones. e.g. Ear lobe, neck, back.
9. Longer deliberate contact with major erogenous zones (breasts, followed by thighs/legs, followed by inner thighs and upward, through clothing.
10. Naked contact between torsos. Strong genital to genital contact through clothes, accompanied by strong pressure and movement.
11. Full naked contact.
12. Actual intercourse.

How to describe the sex scene:

1. Making it coy, old-fashioned, clichéd and funny
1. Use pet/old names for the sex organs. 
2. Recycled metaphors and similes. “His train entered her tunnel at full steam ahead.” “Her maidenhead opened for him like a flower to the sun.” “His honeybee sipped her delicious nectar.” “His rocket launched into her orbit.”
   

1. Making it pornographic:
1. Rapid invasion of personal space.
2. Make the sexual response one-sided.
3. Focus on the sex organs and intercourse.
4. Use lots of the four letter words repeatedly, and the more insulting slang.
5. Repeat words like thrust, rammed, forced at regular intervals.
6. Keep repeating the same actions over and over.
7. Skip lots of stages.
8. Focus on physical descriptions rather than emotions.
9. Avoid gentle gestures, or touching non-erogenous zones.
10. Skip kisses unless they’re brutal and forceful.
11. Lots of loud cries, especially four letter words.
12. Significant use of force or pain.

1. Making it love-making:
1. Go slowly through each of the stages, at least to start with, and show that each is enjoying and accepting it.
2. Place the emphasis on how it feels rather than on what is being done.
3. Loving touches on each other’s bodies away from erogenous zones, kisses and eye contact. Whispered endearments (but not coy ones). Lots of foreplay in other words.
4. Show each showing their pleasure to the other. 
5. A small amount of scratching and biting is okay, but it’s easy to overdo it. Qualify it to stay safe e.g., gentle scraping, nipping.
6. Show mutual surrender to the pleasure as you approach the climax.
7. Both achieve climax; together is best but not compulsory, as long as the one who reaches orgasm first continues until the other does. Let the climax continue for a reasonable time, at least for the woman. Average time for a man from initial onset to final contraction is up to about 7 seconds for a man, 30 seconds for a woman, though the last ten seconds or so, they’re fading down. 
8. Don’t be too graphic/specific. If you need to be specific, stick to the accepted words and/or the commonest, least coarse alternatives/abbreviations. Even so, keep it the minimum.
9. Gentle sounds if any.
10. Remember intercourse is simply one stage in love-making.
11. Repeat 3c after climax.
    

1. Making it fairly steamy/ erotic/spicy:
1. Go through all the early stages very quickly. Can put up to three in one sentence.
2. Skip odd later stages, but mix in foreplay/kisses/eye contact even during intercourse.
3. Include the same loving gestures as in love making. But make them more forceful and produce a stronger and noisier response.
4. Can use more graphic/specific description but stick to the ‘acceptable’ options as in 3g.
5. More of stuff in 3e, but more strongly, but make sure you show a pleasure response by partner, and have them return it.
6. Make it noisier, quicker and more forceful for both.
7. Make them collapse with exhaustion afterwards, if only for a few moments while they get their breath back.
8. Even more important to repeat 3c afterwards.

Other resources: 12 Step Guide to Writing Sex Scenes, How to Write a Kissing Scene