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RoughSN novelist rarely ever profits from.
What, you may well ask, differentiates between a Big Sexy Novel and a Rough Sexy Novel? Most
importantly, language. In a sane world, we might expect the dirtier, more arousing book to make the
biggest money. In a land of sexual hypocrisy, however, the opposite is true. The BigSN contains at least
one sex scene in every chapter, but describes the bedroom action in a "refined" way that is acceptable to
a broad spectrum of American book buyers who can, because the crudest language does not appear,
pretend they have no interest in the prurient passages of the work and are reading it for other reasons
when, of course, the prurient passages are at least half of what they want to get out of the book. The
RoughSN, on the other hand, pulls no punches, describing the bedroom scenes at greater length and in
greater detail than the BigSN, letting the reader see them from every conceivable angle and character
viewpoint, and employing any word no matter how "filthy" its connotation or denotation. Furthermore,
the tone of the RoughSN is very straightforward, honest, and blatantly arousing, while the tone of the
BigSN is coy, flirting with style and "meaning" while actually delivering a great deal of thinly disguised
erotica.
In most categories, clarity of prose is important and overwriting is taboo. Not so in the Big Sexy Novel.
Here, the writer often uses the over-written scene to pretend toward "literary content" or merely to avoid
using earthier language that could describe the scene better and more directly. For example, the BigSN
might contain something like this:
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As Rita swelled towards her peak, she felt like the sea, the great, all-encompassing sea, the churning of dark
waves, so that she was a mindless mass moving, moving everywhere and all at once. And she cried out, but
softer than the sea when it cries against the rocks, more like the soft cry of water on sand, rolling, breaking,
foaming, rocking up and down in liquid ecstasy, pulling back to build up and rush in again, exploding,
shuddering&
Or the Big Sexy Novel might contain this sort of passage:
It was like a storm for Glenda. He entered her like lightning striking into the dark heart of the sky, and she
was filled with a momentary light that faded but, in fading, promised to return in even more brilliant
display. And, with that bolt enfolded by her dark night, the rolling clouds came, moving together, parting
and then mingling again; and the thunder was their breath as they rolled together, achieving, at last, that
greater flash of lightning and the wet release of storm water.
If you think these examples are humorous, you would do well to read some of the financially and
critically accepted Big Sexy Novels to be sobered. None of what I've written here would be particularly
out of place in D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover or Henry Sutton's The Voyeur.
Of course, the strength of language permissible in the BigSN changes from year to year, and the potential
BigSN author must read the latest works to know just how far he may go. Today, four-letter words
appear on the average of two to four times on every page of the BigSN, and euphemisms for the parts of
the body and the sex act are frequently supplemented by the vulgar tongue. But one thing that has never
changed and will never change in the BigSN is the lack of the clinical descriptions of bodies and acts
which are the life's blood of the Rough Sexy Novel. The BigSN reader is not interested in how the act is
done so much as in the seduction leading to it: he wants to read about the lust more than the satisfaction,
just as the suspense reader likes to anticipate more than witness the violent event around which a
suspense novel is built.
Another appeal of the BigSN, aside from its artificial literary value, is its gossipy quality. Americans are
great gossipers, especially about other people's sexual proclivities and adventures. Therefore, a BigSN
will be written around one of five main plots:
BEHIND THE SCENES IN SUBURBIA
The author attempts to show that moral corruption and sexual permissiveness are the norm in
middle-class suburbs.
The book is full of cheating wives, cheating husbands, wife-swappers, and promiscuous teenagers.
Examples of the form are John Updike's Couples and Edmund Schiddel's The Devil in Bucks County.
BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE JET SET
Harold Bobbins' The Adventurers and Burt Hirschfeld's Fire Island are examples of the form. The author
shows us the moral corruption and sexual permissiveness in the world of exotic resorts and swinging
young people.
BEHIND THE SCENES IN HOLLYWOOD
The author paints the "inside" story of moral corruption and sexual permissiveness among stars, starlets,
producers, directors, screen writers, and other motion picture glamour types. Henry Sutton's The
Exhibitionist and Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls are "classics" of the form. Harold Robbins' The
Inheritors is another, interesting for the strength of its language which is harsher than in most Big Sexy
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