Mapping Fifty Shades of Grey
Nothing Really Happens, But Maybe That’s on Purpose?
Before attempting to produce my own erotic fiction I started doing some research. I started with Fifty Shades of Grey and while I found the film much more compelling than the book I had to force myself to finish both because I felt like other than having a sex with each other a lot, nothing really happened in Fifty Shades of Grey. When I mapped out the characters and relationships it was pretty simple:
When I shared this with Marcus he knew just what I needed to read next. He gave me a shiny gold paperback which he only handed over after making me promise to take special care of it: The Pirate.
There are many great things about The Pirate, but to be clear, this is a trashy book. Like a reality-TV buffoon recently-elected President kind of trashy.
On the back is a wonderful quote from The New York Times Book Review, “This novel is going to sell like crazy!”
In bold all-caps it proclaims: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM WARNER BROS. Sadly it was reduced to a low-budget made-for-TV movie (YouTube).
Mr. Robbins, who once predicted that he would ultimately be known ‘’as the best writer in the world,’’ said he never rewrote anything and never tried to figure out a plot in advance (NYT).
It’s incredibly trashy and over the top but tempered with “real world” politics and events like JFK’s inauguration and the oil crisis. This paints a much more engaging world than the hastily sketched descriptions of the pacific northwest in Fifty Shades of Grey. Mapping out the characters and relationships of The Pirate revealed a far more complicated set of overlapping characters and sexual encounters:
Keep It Simple, Stupid
The relationships in Fifty Shades of Grey are basic. No character expresses any motivation beyond the sexual desires of Christian and Anastasia for one another. Christian wants to spank Anastasia and Anastasia wants to snuggle Christian.
And yet this incredibly simple story has been so wildly successful… Is that the lesson to be learned? We’re no longer interested in Harold Robbins, we want to “keep it simple, stupid.” Perhaps the complications of The Pirate are a throwback to a time when trashy novels could incorporate the rich details of a whole world. Probably the real lesson is that I need to read more romance/erotica material (Do you have recommendations? Let me know!)
I mapped out the relationships of these books as part of my next great project: A tale of a powerful businessman with plans to conquer the world and falls for an anti-capitalist. If you’re interested in how that will all play out sign up here for updates.
