It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.

To some extent, emotions are universal and can be treated that way; no matter what the participants’ orientation or preference, they have sex for the same reasons and can experience the same array of emotions in the process. But there are three important distinctions to be made: 1. The logistics of physiology 2. The basics of sexual attraction 3. Cultural impact on character and situation

Men have external genitalia, while women have internal genitalia. This simple difference makes a lot of difference in how they write about themselves—and how you might write about your characters. Male writers don’t often address internal sensation in a character, because they don’t experience it (and probably often don’t realize consciously that it’s there). This accounts for a lot of Really Terrible sex scenes written by men (if you look at the “Bad Sex-Scene Awards” in any given year, you’ll see that the vast majority are done by male writers).

There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional.

Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids

If you can’t look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it’s there—take it out or change it.

Don’t go overboard in avoiding “said.” Basically, “said” is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it’s an invisible word that doesn’t draw attention to itself.

You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones.

You don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, you should be able to point to any given element—be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point—and say why it’s there.

As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.

Don’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.

Dialogue doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage.

Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.

If there’s true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.

Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what’s happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you’ll see the change of focus—zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above—easily. You want to do that in what you write; it’s one of the things that keep people’s eyes on the page, though they’re almost never conscious of it.

Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene requires immense restraint. Show things as simply as possible.

Jamie’s viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He’s using physical language, but he isn’t talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions.

For a different woman, a different relationship, a different situation, gentleness might have been the proper, the only approach—but not for this woman, in these circumstances. The only thing that will cleanse Claire (and reassure her: look at what she says at the end of it. She feels safe again, having felt the power and violence in him) is violence. And—the most important point here—Jamie pays attention to what she wants, rather than proceeding with his own notion of how it should be, even though it’s a sensible notion and the one most people would have.

One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element—a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase—once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn’t disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won’t notice it consciously—but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it’s a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it.

Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good.

Okay. This has to be a credible threat. Ergo, we have to have seen (and heard about) the real damage Randall has done to Jamie thus far; we have to be in no doubt whatever that he’d do real damage to Claire. We can’t just say, “Oh, he’s such a nasty person, you wouldn’t believe…” We have to believe, and therefore appreciate, just what Jamie is doing when he trades what’s left of his life for Claire’s.

But it wouldn’t have half the power of a story in which Jamie and Claire truly conquer real evil and thus show what real love is. Real love has real costs—and they’re worth it. I’ve always said all my books have a shape, and Outlander’s internal geometry consists of three slightly overlapping triangles. The apex of each triangle is one of the three emotional climaxes of the book: 1) when Claire makes her wrenching choice at the stones and stays with Jamie, 2) when she saves Jamie from Wentworth, and 3) when she saves his soul at the abbey. It would still be a good story if I’d had only 1 and 2—but (see above), the Rule of Three. A story that goes one, two, three, has a lot more impact than just a one–two punch.

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, "I was just wondering if you've ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl?" I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said "Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit.

#Outlander QOTD Claire and Master Raymond.Snapped abruptly to a realization of how rudely I had been staring, I blushed and said without thinking, "I was just wondering if you've ever been kissed by a beautiful young girl?" I went still redder as he shouted with laughter. With a broad grin, he said "Many times, madonna. But alas, it does not help. As you see. Ribbit.