BTW, can I alternately thank everyone for forgiving my sloppy typing (this, as well as not seeing the typos when I read before posting, is apparently a side effect of this damned multiple sclerosis), and bless the fact that the phoenix, unlike most boards, doesn't set my poor typing in stone after 30 minutes?

So I can go fix "corssover", for instance.

Crimean War Dawson's Creek Fiction

(blinking) - into the Creek of Dawson rode the Six Hundred? Must check this out.

Although, okay, what is a good word for that?

What's wrong with the old-fashioned "caresses" or, for that matter, "foreplay"?

As far as sloppy typing, that would be the pot calling the kettle black, and wrod, on the editing chances.

My current pet peeve isn't a badfic thing, it's just over used: "ghosted across". Susan's right, "caress" is good, "slid" is a good as well. There's really nothing wrong with the phrase itself, except I see it too much.

"Foreplay" is a good word, I think, Susan, but "caresses" comes off as, I don't know, bad romance novel language. Like, I would never use the word "caress" outside of a soap commercial or a sex scene; whereas I use "ministration" or words closely related to it all the time.

The problem with a word like "ministration" is that it seems a bit too wishy-washy to describe a sex scene. It's too all-encompassing. It could describe a nurse tending to a patient in a manner acceptable under most hospitals' code of ethics, or it could describe a nurse tending to a patient in a manner more commonly seen in a XXX movie.

I don't know. I think there are scenes where caress is really appropriate, if the sex is soft enough."Tender Sarah Mclaclan love" as it were.

See, to me "caress" is much less purple than "ministration."

I'm just now writing My First Love Scenes for the non-fanfic novel, and I'm already feeling like Thesaurus Girl in my efforts to avoid using nice basic words like "touch" and "grasp" five times each in the same paragraph. I'm further limited by my first-person narrator's 1810 vocabulary, which rules out 21st century plain English like "have sex" and "make love."

Hm. That would be difficult.

"And then there was this -- um. And it was -- er. And then, whoa!" Suddenly, Miss Dashwood sounds like Keanu.

Truthfully, "ministrations" are something a nurse does to a patient, at least in my head: "Nurse Mary moved through the wards like an angel of mercy, selflessly and tirelessly. The patients looked up with gratitude in their eyes, and responded to her ministrations like flowers to sunlight" or some junk. It strikes me, I don't know - clinical.

I don't think I've ever used "caress". But then, I don't much see the reason for wanting to compress the reality of sex into a single word. Hell, the whole thing about writing, the first basic rule: always show, never tell.

Gimme the full description of the hot monkey love. Alternately, touch one finger to the soft pale skin of her thigh. But show me the scene. I really don't much want it in one word.

(sorry - Wednesday is my bad MS day and it makes me ramble.)