LTUE 2018 Writing Dirty While Staying Clean
Sometimes you need a little dirt:
- Clipped Romantic payoff
- Soft Characters
- Bland Fight Scenes
- Lack of Physical Conflict
Curse without Cursing.
- Use a dialogue tag.
- Utilize other character reactions
- Replace profanity with made up words (establish made up words early in the story)
Rust and Ruin - Mistborn Light burn you - Wheel of Time
- Don't use overly long swears
- Don't use funny sounding words - Fudge Nuggets :-)
What about Oaths?
- Change the God
- Establish early in the story
Metaphor
- spat a word as hard as iron
Change the language - Firefly (Chinese) Slumdog Millionaire (Hindi)
Stay true to the character.
Sex
- cap of romantic plotline
- character building
- part of romantic relationship
Start determines the finish. Pride and Prejudice vs The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Dont' start hot and heavy in chapter 3. There is only so far you can go.
What makes sex dirty
- Describing body parts
- Straying outside the norm
Clean it up
- Fade to black - secene break comes after
- Turn the lights on after - scene break comes before
- Insinuating
- Pointing the camera elsewhere - Focus on emotions instead of body parts, Use metaphor.
If no romantic plotline leave it out.
Rape - Woman in the Refrigerator - DON'T DO THIS Don't kill the woman as motivation for the man. If you include Rape - recovery is a long term thing. Is it plot?
Write About Empahty
Violence
- Lean on the readers imagination
- Don't forgo blocking (Don't stand back from wehre the characters are and what they are doing)
- Strategize where to place the reader's focus (Emotional vs Physical cues)
- Trim excessive details
- Emphasize pain/sensation rather than gore.
To increase stakes change where they are being hurt. Hurt more sensitve areas.
Violence used as abuse will be much more unsetting Pleasure in violence is more stomach churning First person will be more unsettling
Writing well
- Don't rely on shock factor
- Create rounded likeable characters
- Utilize romance - 60% of market - Natural Page Turner
- Up the stakes - Make the stakes more personal
Don't write anything that you're not comfortable writing. Don't judge others on their definition of clean.

Rob Skidmore writes science fiction stories about being human. Raised in rural Western New York, he now lives with his beautiful wife in Utah. They have four kids whose initials spell HOME. By day he's a software engineer. By night he's exhausted. Every door in their basement is painted with a Disney-themed mural. His claim to fame is that he was an All-American and the 2004 New York state champion in the 400m hurdles in high school.
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