Monday, February 25, 2008

Oh no, not again...

(Sorry, I had a draft ready to go Sunday and promptly forgot to post it before I went to bed. Better late than never....)

Well, here it is, another post, and I’m still having my butt kicked with the end of this synopsis. I do not know how this story is going to end, and perhaps in the end it doesn’t matter that I know, because the good thing about synopses is that they are not set in stone.

However, if my solution turns out to kill off one of the two heroes, then that might be off-putting to the editor who agreed to the idea with all three living happily ever after.

Perhaps, a serious maiming would do. (Because truthfully, I can’t bring myself to kill off either one of them.) But a maiming would make for an interesting sequel, which would probably never see the light of day.

Of course, there’s always the: you get Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays; and you get Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and I get Sunday to myself -- solution. Which with these two jealous brothers? Not so sure would work without bloodshed and, well, see above, and the need for this ending to be satisfying.

Dammit.

This stream-of-consciousness has been brought to you by someone who thought threesomes might be a fun thing to explore and it turns out that they’re a major headache.

So, readers, what do you like about threesomes in erotic romance? Are you satisfied with the endings of those books?

Authors, what am I missing? Why is this so hard? *whiiiiiiiiiine*

5 comments:

Victoria Janssen said...

Oh, don't kill one of them. It always bums me when the whole book is about a happy threesome and then it becomes Obligatory Heterosexual Pair at the end. Then the only mystery is who will you get rid of, and how. (Of course, if your threesome is NOT happy, that's another thing entirely--you have the jealousy issue, for example. But no matter whom you eliminated, he would be some reader's favorite.)

That said, it would be very cool to see a maimed hero coming to terms with how he's going to express his sexuality in future. It would be a tricky sell though, I think.

The ending could be somewhat open; you could imply that the trio will stay together, but there will always be renegotiation, and they accept that. Or imply or even show that one of the participants relieves the group pressure by having a relationship with an outside character (conveniently available for sequels!). Or just show that, eventually, the threesome will dissolve on its own--maybe in an epilogue.

Unknown said...

I tried to write a real 'menage a trois' book for my second Aphrodisia, I really did, but my characters got away from me. First off, I found I really wanted my hero to be loved by one special person because he damn well DESERVED it, and secondly, the other male character developed in, um quite different ways than I had imagined so he found his own solution and one that I hope works for the readers.
Not sure if I'm the right person to give advice seeing as I couldn't work it out myself :( can't wait to read it though!

Pam Rosenthal said...

Search me. I'm thinking of writing a threesome story, but it'll have something like a Tale of Two Cities ending, only sort of bent out of shape, to help me, after all these years, recover from the death of Sydney Carton.

But... Celia, whining, really? I thought Aussies whinged.

Vincent Copsey said...

Celia, it's hard because you have three peoples emotions and needs to take into consideration, and relationships are hard enough when there are only two sets of ideals involved.

I find it hard to accept long term threesomes without jealousy issues. I think they are inevitable.

Oh, and I'm all for open endings, but not everyone will be satisfied with that.

Celia May Hart said...

Pam, only Poms whinge :)

Victoria, I am tempted by the Maimed Hero sequel aspect, indeed....

But good news! I have figured out the ending! And I do rather like that because the beginning was inspired by my bible reading, so is the ending! (from a completely different part of the bible).

Not sure how the Bible belt will react to *this* particular use of the Bible. But too bad...