Source: 10 Things I Learned About Writing and Publishing From Managing a Porn Store | LitReactor
By Christoph Paul
I used to manage a porn store in northeast D.C. I worked there for two years and it was the best writer job I ever had. There were whole blocks of time where I could read and write while I sat behind the counter. It was a blessing to get paid to practice my craft. All the hours added up and I became a better writer, but managing the porn store also taught me certain skills that I use on a daily basis in my writing and publishing career.
Covers and Titles
The first thing I learned was that we had to buy and sell lots of rentals on our new releases to stay afloat. If I picked a lot of bad movies for the new release wall that didn’t get bought or rented within the first month, my boss would be pissed. The customers also got pissed, and then I would have to deal with a lot of bullshit instead of focusing on writing or reading. The only real work I had besides putting movies back on their shelves was picking the weekly new releases. With the goal of having my boss stay off my back, I made sure to kill it each week with my new release section. I learned what sold and what type of titled stood out. I use that same skill when writing or publishing a new book. Whether it be porn or fiction, the cover and title has to show the readers and viewers that they will enjoy the product. The cover must at least peak curiosity and satisfy something a reader or porn watcher is wanting. Bad covers, whether on a porno or on a novel, are easy to spot and will always stay on the shelf.
Dialogue
My shift was eight hours a day, five days a week. Though I would have loved to spend every hour reading and writing, I had to interact with the customers. There were a lot of regulars who wanted to talk about politics, sports, their personal lives, their kinks, and their jobs. They would not hold back, and almost treated me like a priest. I heard some hardcore confessions. When I am figuring out how a certain character would sound, I have a ton of examples from the porn store. I can use their quirks and speech patterns to inject more realism and humor into my dialogue. Whether it be someone in the closet renting gay porn or a person explaining why they don’t want to have sex with their significant other anymore, I heard people speaking their truths. This gave me an ear for both inner and outer dialogue. There are things that a character reveals in more subtle and nuanced ways, through their rhythms, vocabulary, and even through the things they pointedly leave out.
Writing Through Chaos and Distractions
You can write anywhere. That is what I learned those years behind the porn store counter. I’d have homeless people come in, zoning law inspectors, gang bang recruiters (seriously), cops coming in to shoot the shit, the boss stopping by to complain, and customers looking for very specific fetishes. I learned to stop and deal with who or whatever I had to attend to, and then get back to writing. While there, I finished the second draft of a literary novel, some short stories, and read a ton. I learned there is no perfect place to read and write, and that even through the most awkward disruptions you can still find time to be creative.
Con Selling
If you can sell a $29.95 DVD with ‘anal’, ‘cuckold’, and/or ‘big cocks’ in the title, you can sell a book you have edited or written to a stranger. I picked up some practical sales skills at the porn store. My constant goal was to keep enough money coming in so my boss never suspected I was writing on the job. Though selling shitty porno movies and fake penis growth pills felt disenchanting at times, it taught me how to interact with strangers. When I started doing book festivals and conferences three years ago, they were a joy, because I actually believed in my books and understood how to communicate each book’s value. While penis enlargement pills are bullshit, I actually believe in what I sell. That combination of enthusiasm and sales skills has helped me finish in the black for almost every con/festival I have attended.
Character Studies
It wasn’t just dialogue I learned from the porn patrons. It was crafting real characters with real quirks and commonalities. Listening and talking to the porn store patrons was as good as reading any craft book on creating realized and memorable characters. After working the store for a year, I could usually tell a lot about a person within the first minute of talking to them. I noticed the physical: body language, the sound of their voice, build, did they look me in the eyes or not; sociological: how well read or educated they were, where they worked, what kind of money they made, religion, nationality; and emotional: were they stable, lonely and needing to connect, fake happy, assertive or aggressive, timid. All of these characteristics combined into making them who they were. I could use this skill to build real characters in my fiction. I could take physical, sociological, and emotional attributes and combine them into a unique human being. I would sometimes compare them to real individuals I met at the porn store to see if they felt ‘real.’
Genre Expectations and Surpassing Them
Different fetishes and types of porn are really just different genres. The videos that end up getting rented and bought the most not only meet ‘genre expectation,’’ they also add something special. While I don’t want to get super graphic here, it usually involves something memorable in the video—a scene, a style, and many times, a certain actress. I learned from the popular porno videos that when writing in a certain genre you have to make those genre fans happy, but also give them something unique. It can be your style of language, it can be taking a new approach on a familiar trope, and most importantly giving the reader an outstanding character. When you meet the expectations of genre and create something memorable in your story, your books will sell as good as porn.
Talking Books
On very slow days I would sit behind the register and read. A lot of customers didn’t want to interact and I would just look up, put in my bookmark, and get them their movie. This was pretty standard, but sometimes the porn patrons would be curious about what I was reading. Many of these guys were proud non-readers. I took this as a challenge to infuse the porn store with at least a little literary curiosity. To do this I had to tell them why the book was enjoyable and get them interested enough to want to hear more. I was very proud when I was able to get 4 men excited about the story of one of my favorite novels, Anna Karenina. Experiences like that have made it a lot easier for me to write the back copy of my own as well as other writers’ books.
Vibrator Editor
Until I got the hang of it, selling and recommending vibrators was a challenge. Though white male privilege exists, it doesn’t come in handy when talking to a woman about what vibrator she should buy. At first it was very awkward and I didn’t sell many vibrators, but I learned that I had to help the female customer feel comfortable. I also needed to be knowledgeable and a little humorous, as well as respectful. When I took this approach I easily sold vibrators and learned better communication skills. These skills help me so much when editing other people’s work. Communication and making artists feel comfortable is important. Sex toys, someone’s story, they both involve vulnerability, but if you communicate the right way, a writer will be able to access the right technique and tool for the job.
Storytelling
When it was cold, the porn sales always rose. Wintertime was the most popular time in the store. Not just for rentals and purchases, but for guys just wanting to hang out. The porn store would feel a lot like a barbershop. There were guys who proudly didn’t read and didn’t even like watching movies or TV. They only liked sports, but some of these guys would come up with the funniest stories I have ever heard. There were always men wanting to talk, but if you couldn’t tell a good story or keep people’s interest, they wouldn’t give you a chance to be heard. I saw that being a great storyteller had nothing to do with being a great writer. Storytelling was a separate skill, and there were some guys who might not have ever picked up a book but could tell a great story. I started listening to these guys and dissecting their stories. I realized they were using many of the techniques I read about in the craft books about great storytelling.
Snobbery
I started the porn store job a good 7 years ago. At the time, I was a big literary snob. I believed that only the serious literary novel is what people should read, and even though I was selling porno, I thought erotica and romance writers were total hacks. After two years of working there my mind really opened, and I saw that whether it be porn, erotica, or romance, they were art forms and audiences enjoyed the fantasy and desire that they provided. I lost my snobbery, seeing that any kind of storytelling takes skill. A few years later I would take what I learned at the porn store and write erotica under a pen name. The erotica I have created is still the most successful work I have published. If I hadn’t worked at the porn store, I would be just another bitter failed literary novelist complaining about Chuck Tingle.
Filed under 2017, Writing Tip Wednesday
John Berger (RIP) and Susan Sontag Take Us Inside the Art of Storytelling (1983)
“Somebody dies,” says John Berger. “It’s not just a question of tact that one then says, well, perhaps it is possible to tell that story,” but “it’s because, after that death, one can read that life. The life becomes readable.” His interlocutor, a certain Susan Sontag, interjects: “A person who dies at 37 is not the same as a person who dies at 77.” True, he replies, “but it can be somebody who dies at 90. The life becomes readable to the storyteller, to the writer. Then she or he can begin to write.” Berger, the consummate storyteller as well as thinker about stories, left behind these and millions of other memorable words, spoken and written, when he yesterday passed away at age 90 himself.
This conversation aired 35 years ago as “To Tell a Story,” an hourlong episode of Channel 4’s Voices, “a forum of debate about the key issues in the world of the arts and the life of the mind.” Though Berger and Sontag surely agreed in life on more than they disagreed (“not since [D.H.] Lawrence has there been a writer who offers such attentiveness to the sensual world with responsiveness to the imperatives of conscience,” the latter once said of the former), they here enter into a kind of debate about storytelling itself: why we do it, how we do it, when we can do it. Berger, for his part, characterizes all fiction as “a fight against the absurd,” against “that endless, terrifying space in which we live.”
Sontag, in the words of Lily Dessau at Berger’s publisher Verso, “considers the storyteller as inventor, in control of the material, out of which the ‘people come.’ Berger conversely takes the form of the story as the result of the language coming out of the people — but he does characterize their differing views as arriving at the same place — the scene of the text.” While both of them wrote fiction as well as essays, “Berger considers the story and essay in one breath, both as a form of struggle to model the unsayable,” while “for Sontag the two are entirely separate, although the struggle persists in both.”
Or, as Berger puts it in highlighting another aspect of the difference in their perspectives, “You say you want to be carried away by the story. I want the story to stop things being carried away into oblivion, into indifference.” The many tributes already paid to him, especially by influential creators formed in part by the influence of his work, indicate that Berger’s legacy hardly finds itself now on the brink of an indifferent oblivion. Now that his long life has reached the end of its final chapter, well, perhaps we can begin to read, and to tell, his story.
Filed under 2017, storytelling
Part 25: The End, except for the credits
Filed under cartoon by author, Eleanor and Rose, Story by author
Part 24: One last reveal
Filed under cartoon by author, Eleanor and Rose, Story by author
Part 23: Crypt-ic ending
Filed under cartoon by author, Eleanor and Rose, Story by author
Even the “wee little people” have to consider climate change when finding new digs.
“Well, Colm, have you and the little missus decided on which home will be yours?”
Colm didn’t like the way the realtor used the phrase “the little missus,” but he held his tongue. He’d let “the little missus” glare do all the talking on that point. He and Caroline had come to look for a new dwelling, one outside the faery hill they were living in. The sea level was rising and their hill had already started taking in some water. Yet, he wasn’t quite sold on this type of housing. After all, even it sat on spindle taken from an old staircase in rundown historic home, as advertised, he didn’t know he was quite ready to buy one.
“Maybe this will help you make up your mind,” Jasper the realtor said. He rubbed his hands together, then slapped then against each other, then shot his sleeves. His jacket was as loud as his actions. Rumor had it, the darn thing was actually made from a section of a horse blanket. If it had been from a braying jackass, it would have been more appropriate.
“For today, only,” Jasper said, “I will throw in a ten pound bag of birdseed at no additional charge.”
“Birdseed?” Caroline asked, speaking for the first time in over an hour. “What do we need birdseed for?”
“Why, my lovely, for the birds that will be stopping by.”
“You mean this is a bird house?” She asked.
“Only if you let them stay,” Jasper said. He rubbed his hands together again, then slapped them against each other again, then shot his sleeves again. “And if they should become a bother, I have a couple of cats on retainer that for a small fee I can send over your way for a few days, and that should clear things right up.”
Colm sighed. Moving into a neighborhood above ground was going to be harder than he had imagined.
Filed under Photo by author, Photo Finish Friday, Story by author
[Editor’s note: Parts 1 – 8 of The Kibitzer and the Kidd are available by clicking on “Kidd” or “Kibitzer” in the tag section. This is science fiction western with more than dollop of humor and satire.]
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“The Boss wants to see you,” said one of the men blocking the Kidd’s way.
They were both tall, thick, and none too brightly dress. In other words, they fit the typical definition of goons.
“Tell him I have an opening next Tuesday and I’ll pencil him in.”
One goon looked at the other one as if they were seriously considering this offer, and that’s when the Kidd made his move. He ran toward then, feinted to the right and then to the left, and then charged right toward them, intending to split the space between them. But a loose board sprang up from the floor, tripped the Kidd, and he tumbled into one of the goons, almost knocking the goon backwards.
Soon the second goon was behind the Kidd, pinning his arms to his side with the first goon pulled a dark hood over the Kidd’s head and tied his hands.
Then they started jerking him across the floor.
The Kidd thought he heard a floor plank say, “Had to do it to keep the plot going.”
It was then the Kidd realized he was looking at the plank with his right eye. The left one was covered. Soon they were both covered and he was lifted up and shoved outside.
The air felt noticeably cooler, as if the evening were sighing at the folly of humans. But there were also sounds: clanging and banging, voices raised and footsteps running along the wooden sidewalk. Somebody bumped into the Kidd, slumped by him, and continued running without even saying “excuse me.”
The Kidd thought he heard someone shout “Fire!” and “Spreading!” but he wasn’t sure from which direction.
Were they headed toward the fire? Were these goons going to throw him into the flames?
“There’s somebody trapped inside.”
“It’s only that Kidd fella.”
Two voices, both soon gone.
He was being lifted again. One goon on each side.
“Open the door,” the goon on his right said.
“You open it.” the other one said.
“The Boss is waiting.”
“Then open it.”
The Kidd kicked his legs around until he felt his boot hit something.
The goon on his left groaned.
The Kidd kicked again, aiming as best he could.
The goon let go and cursed.
The Kidd turned and kicked at the other goon while he worked his hands free. They had not tied them well. He then reached up for the hood.
He was free of the hood and the other goon at the same time. He turned to run and immediately bumped into a third person, who looked uncomfortable and displeased.
“You have come all this way to see me and now you want to leave so soon.” It was a statement and not a question.
“I came here for cough drops,” the Kidd said, “and a hot toddy. Whatever festering range war you have is none of my concern.”
“Global warming is everybody’s concern.”
The Kidd stared at the man. He was tall, stocky, and looked very much like Al Wayne. A step-brother maybe? Or was this some sort of joke with the same guy pretending to be two different people? That way, he got all the good lines.
“Let me introduce myself.”
“You are Al Wayne’s evil twin, John Gore.” It was a statement and not a question.
“Don’t interrupt the Boss!” one of the goons said and shoved the Kidd toward the surrey’s open door.
The Kidd tripped and fell to the street. The air was clearer down by the dirt, not as much smoke and burning odor, though it stank of the shit recently dropped by the horse pulling the surrey.
“Goon!” Gore said. He then reached out and helped the Kidd back up. “Please excuse the manners of my aides. Sometimes their enthusiasm exceeds my expectations.”
Gore brushed some of the dust off the Kidd’s upper arm. He then climbed inside the surrey.
The goon’s nudged the Kidd toward the surrey’s door.
“Let me go so I can help a friend who might be trapped in that fire. Then I promise I’ll come back and we can talk all you want.”
The goons kept the Kidd boxed in. He nudged away from the door, but the goons clamped hands on him, lifted him up and threw him inside. They then slammed the door shut.
The Kidd scrambled around the tight quarters until he was up on the seat opposite Gore.
“I will send my aides,” Gore said. “They can handle the situation better than you or I.”
Everybody wants to talk to me, the Kidd thought, but nobody says very much.
Reluctantly, he agreed. If nothing else, once the goons were gone, he could escape, albeit, without his sidearms. No plan was perfect.
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(To be continued….)
[Editor’s note: this is the second half of the “Hal” articles. The first article appears under “Hal, open the keyboard. Hal….” and is about a computer application writing non-fiction articles. I am not sure what to fully make of either article, but they seemed oddly linked to each other. It seems storytelling is something genetic in humans. We are born to tell stories. maybe in some strange way Alzheimer’s is a “revenge” on humans for not valuing storytelling enough.]
by Joanne Silberner, NPR
May 14, 2012
Ask family members of someone with Alzheimer’s or another dementia: Trying to talk with a loved one who doesn’t even remember exactly who they are can be very frustrating.
But here at a senior center in Seattle, things are different.
On one recent day, 15 elderly people were forming a circle. The room is typical — linoleum floors, cellophane flowers on the windows, canes and wheelchairs, and walkers lined up against the wall.
Linda White is leading a session based on a program called TimeSlips. The idea is to show photos to people with memory loss, and get them to imagine what’s going on — not to try to remember anything, but to make up a story.
Storytelling is one of the most ancient forms of communication — it’s how we learn about the world. It turns out that for people with dementia, storytelling can be therapeutic. It gives people who don’t communicate well a chance to communicate. And you don’t need any training to run a session.
White walks around the circle holding up a stock photo of a fit elderly man. He’s wearing a banana-yellow wet-suit vest and is water-skiing.
The man is smiling broadly at the camera, perfectly framed by a big arc of water.
“He’s experienced and he’s cool; he’s happy,” says White. “Look at the grin on his face.”
Many of the people in this group don’t talk much on their own. But they’re enthusiastic about making up a life story for the water-skier — he’s a retired guy who’s been divorced several times. He’s got four children and a wife onshore, waiting to be taken out to dinner.
Most people with dementia live at home and don’t have the opportunity for this kind of session, run by someone who’s been trained to do it. But storytelling can be done at home, according to the founder of the program, Anne Basting.
“Anybody can do this,” says Basting.
She directs the Center on Age and Community at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She started work on storytelling as a way to give people with dementia a low-stress way to communicate, one that did not rely on their memories. She sees it as giving caregivers a chance to reconnect with their loved ones.
“People with dementia start to forget their social role; they might not remember they’re a spouse … a parent,” says Basting. “They need a social role through which they can express who they are, and the role of storyteller really supplies that.”
One study co-authored by Basting in The Gerontologist, a journal, found that storytelling made people more engaged and alert, and that staff members at residential facilities had more positive views of their patients. An independent study published in Nursing Research showed participants were happier and better able to communicate in general.
Basting says one of the biggest hurdles to getting the program going has been skeptical family members.
“Resistance comes when people say, ‘My dad would never do that; he’s a very distinguished man. It’s beneath him; it’s childish,’ ” says Basting.
And then Dad hops right in.
Basting tells of one man who came to her in tears of thanks. For the past three years, he had been driving his wife crazy, trying to get her to talk about shared memories. He tried her on storytelling so they could talk about the story and play with the plot line. And eventually, he was able to communicate with her again.
Filed under Hal, make believe, storytelling
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It wasn’t fair. Not only did he have a nickname he didn’t like – Kibbey – but he was also sleeping in the stable with the horses. Horse and hay, flatulence and flies, though it seemed odd that there were so many flies at night. He wondered if a fly got zapped by lightning, would it be resurrected.
Even the popcorn they delivered to him was stale and a little soggy from the humidity it picked up from the air. He had a bag of his own, but it had started raining again, so he couldn’t pop it outside. He looked around to see if the blacksmith’s workshop was part of the stables or nearby.
There was not a blacksmith’s forge, so he was on his own to create a fire.
He understood that the Kidd was the hero, having shot the pistol out of the floor-faced man’s hand. He knew that kibitzers were not easily or fully accepted into society. They were witnesses and scribes, and they reported to an authority most didn’t know about or understand. He certainly wasn’t sure why he had been selected. His family were not kibitzers. Nor any of his friends. And when they came in the middle of the night and told him he was selected, they did not give him a chance to say goodbye to his wife and two sons. Only a short note, quickly scribbled. It read: I’ve been selected. Don’t wait up.
He wasn’t sure how long ago that was, what his wife was like now, if his sons even remembered him.
The Kibitzer piled some hay in one area of mostly dirt. It was turning cold. He’d need the fire for more than popcorn.
Popcorn was his only solace. Bags of it turned up at the oddest times in the oddest places. He took it as a sign he was doing a good job.
He kept a book of matches dry and buried deep in a saddle bag. They were hard to get and he usually sparked a fire with a piece of flint and a piece of steel he carried; but they were both wet from rain. He was also too tired to try.
He added a piece of dried horse manure to the hay pile.
He found the matches, walked back to the pile of straw and dried other things and selected one from the box.
It was then somebody, head draped in a hood, stepped into the stable and tossed a torch on a larger pile of hay nearby. As the man left, he said, “Don’t wait up.”
At least that’s what the Kibitzer thought he said. The words were muffled by the hood. The words stunned him. By the time the Kibitzer recovered, the fire had spread to other parts of the stable, and the culprit was gone, and the Kibitzer was trapped.
(To be continued.)
Filed under humor, kibitzer, kidd, science fiction, story, storytelling, western, word play, words, writing
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