Literally Aspiring discussion

Hey guys, I'm new to good reads so I hope this works.
I've been writing an erotic romance/suspense book for a while now. I'm planning it for a trilogy, and I've finished writing book one. I don't have an editor, so I'm editing everything myself. In the editing process, I've come up with some questions along the way.

-first, I noticed that I start every sentence with either "he, his, I, or we." It gets annoying for me to read, but I'm not sure if it would bother other readers. Does anybody have any tips on starting sentences with something other than a pro-noun?

-my next question was something I've been wondering about for a while. Everything that I have read about how many words a book should be is confusing me. They say for your first book, it should be around 80,000 - 100,000 words. I'm up to 98,000 words, not having started the editing process yet. I wanted to add a few more chapters in the beginning, and I'm worried it will go over 100,000 words. I'd like my book to be around 350 pages, but if it goes over, I'm fine with it. For an semi-erotic romance book, what would the typical amount of words be? Would it be inappropriate for me as a first time author to go over the 100,000 words, and if so, how many pages would that put me at? I really know nothing about the word count, so any information on that would be very helpful to me.

-I also wonder about the technical editing. I have yet to purchase books on how to edit, but I figured that I would see if you guys had any tips first. I've heard of things called "dangling participles." I've read about them a little bit, and noticed I have a lot of them. Unfortunately, fixing them is quite difficult. Are there any tips to help fix them? Other things that have confused me are knowing how to format dialogue.
"Do I write it like this?" I asked, hoping for answer.
"Or is this the correct way," I asked again.
Even things for non questions like just a conversation:
"I picked up the food on the way home," she said. Is the comma placement correct? "I picked up food on the way home." She said. Or do I use a period instead of a comma.
Also, do I need to press the enter bar after every piece of dialogue?

-other little things that bother me when I'm writing that make me wonder if they bother anything else. After every piece of dialogue, I say what inflection it was said with, or what they did. It feels like the dialogue is too broken up. Here's an example:
"What time did you get home?" I asked her quizzically, while I hang my coat up.
"I've been her for a while." She pokes at her food that was on the table.
"How was work?" I pull up the chair next to her and sit down.
"It was alright."
In my book, it isn't this extreme, but I exaggerated it a little bit for you to see. Are there any tips on fixing that, and do they even need to be fixed?

-I know I've been referring to my book as either erotic or semi erotic. I'm also unfamiliar with how to classify my book. I know the basics, that it's in the romance category and has a strong suspense and mystery plot line. I'm not sure what subcategory it would go into. What makes a book erotica? Is it the amount of sex scenes, or how graphic they are?

Thanks so much, and I hope I did this right. It's my first time posting on good reads. :)

I'm afraid I'm not an editor so I wouldn't be able to offer you great advice and you seem to be sensing a lot of concerns with your book. You may have the best luck on a site geared towards that genre and find a beta reader with strong editorial skills to offer advice.

Thank you Courtney. Do you know of any sites that could help?

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercis...


I hope I got that correct as I can't copy and paste on my kindle. I have fond memories of dangling participles in school because they provided some of the few funny lessons we had. Best suggestion I have is to get a friend to either read aloud to you or you read aloud to them. If a sentence makes you giggle it probably has one. Journalists tended to use them then but otherwise we were told they are best avoided.

"It's a comma instead of a period," I replied. "Unless it's not followed by a dialog tag."
"Would I ask a question like this?" you wondered.
"Yes!" I said. "And each new speaker's dialog belongs in its own paragraph."

I'm honestly not sure it matters these days how long your debut novel is. Some authors debut with 500+ page novels. To get more info, I'd suggest reading some erotic romance & noting how they do things. It will answer questions about dialog tags, phrasing, punctuation, & how to start/end sentences.

As a general rule, you don't want to start every sentence with the same word or group of words. "I can't believe it. He looks at me as if I'm the only thing that matters. He has a heart of gold and eyes only for me. I breathe. He still looks at me. I need him..." should be shaken up by using his name, other pronouns, different phrasings, & 'the.' "Disbelief fills my very being. Joe gazes at me as if I'm the only thing that matters. He has a heart of pure gold and eyes only for me. I breathe. His eyes are still on me. The only thing I need is him." Kinda see the difference? Get creative with your word choices & phrasings.

"Quizzically" is unnecessary when you're asking a question, as it makes it redundant. And you don't need to include where her food was when you say she poked at it.

Books can belong to multiple genres. Erotica has a lot more sex than the average romance, but can also be subcategorized as mystery, thriller, horror, comedy, coming of age, etc.