Editor's notes: I exclaimed that she retorted

Still here? I'm going to do a round-up of lots of little bugbears this time, as this is my penultimate Editor's notes post for now. 

Just say it

Some writing advice will tell you to avoid the word 'said'. And I spend a lot of editing time replacing words such as 'ejaculated', 'confessed', 'admitted', 'retorted', 'exclaimed', 'laughed', 'giggled' and 'interjected' with 'said'. I'm with Alison Tyler, who wrote on the How to Write Erotic Fiction blog, "'said' can go a long way". And she's put together more than 50 erotica anthologies. Also, you don't always need a speech identifier at all if it's obvious who's speaking, or the action immediately before or after their words make it clear: "I'm going to eat you all up." He pressed his teeth to my neck. 

Basically, you’re lying

Characters lie down a lot in erotica. And in erotica written in the past, they lay down a lot too. I once wrote a story in which a fairytale prince is found lying on a rock. He’s lain there for a hundred years or more. It’s not the bed of heather where his lover laid him down. But it’s amazing how often people think the present tense of the verb is ‘to lay’. It’s not; it’s ‘to lie’. Perhaps one day, when enough people have got it wrong for long enough, this will change. But not yet.

That’s enough

Some advisers would have you lose the word ‘that’ altogether. ‘I think that we should take our clothes off’ doesn’t need it. Nor does ‘I could tell that he was getting sleepy’. But ‘I was well aware that I was pushing my luck’ is borderline, in my mind. And ‘I felt that to stay there would be stupid’ almost certainly needs it. My rule? Purely pragmatic. Get rid if it still makes sense and sounds ok without it. And that’s that.

Adding and subtracting

Get rid of all your adverbs. That's what some 'writing rules' advise. The thinking is that (that? I think it’s needed there) if you’ve picked good strong, specific verbs you shouldn’t need to modify them. So instead of writing ‘she walked slowly’, you could put ‘she ambled’. Instead of 'he laughed childishly', you could put 'he sniggered'. My rule? Most of the weaker ones can go – slowly, gradually, softly, gently – along with most instances of the overused ones – suddenly, instantly, shockingly. Use them sparingly. Use them with intent instead of lazily slipping them in. Like that.

Next time is going to be my last Editor's notes post for now, and I'll be talking about cheating and burning thesauruses (thesauri?).