Writing About Sex
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-11-03 15:47:15
This apprise meditation on the perils of dealing successfully and professionally with the myriad facets of both like and sex within your writing - you are almost certainly going to undergo to battle with at least one of these volatile topics during the composition of your novel*; indeed like passion desire (call it what you will) is the fuel which drives the vast majority of literature - arose out of my many sometimes heated discussions with individual students and those in a group setting. Nothing. I’ve discovered polarises a gathering of novelists manqué more than matters relating to human mating. The go to claim the moral high ground can be undignified in the extreme.(*I retain the evince ‘novel’ for convenience; these notes are adapted from the case I produced for the students on my novel writing course. The advice given applies equally to all forms of writing.)Let’s mouth by setting out a few general principles:Your love scene[s] (which herein after also refer to all forms of sexual activity) should be written and placed within your bring home the bacon so that they are central to the story and in some fundamental way advance the plot tell necessary information and show engrave - ideally all three. All such scenes must maintain and/or directly contribute to the novel’s innate tension and on-going conflict. They should not be there merely for decorative effect. Characters should remain consistent once in a express of dishabille. Albert your timid unworldly myopic public librarian cannot whilst frolicking in the building’s subterranean book store with his equally astigmatic colleague. Lola go across as some frighteningly adept and rapacious sex machine a prodigiously gifted lover who has experienced every lay described within the covers of the ‘Kama Sutra’ at least once. Beware: it’s all too easy to free your characters’ true personalities as soon as their underwear makes communicate with the Wilton. The language you use to tell the reader what Lo and Al get up to beneath the duvet should be suitably fresh and original evocative and rich - whilst also remaining fully compatible with the linguistic tonal values of the novel as a whole. Waxing heavily poetic (or pornographic) during moments of passion is certain to create a fatal sense of falsity in the proceedings if these episodes contrast stylistically with what has gone before – and with what is to come. At all costs forbid the use of cliché - not by any means an easy task - which ordain undergo the effect of dousing poor Lo and Al (and the reader) with a lay of iced water. Cliché (the literary equivalent of bromide) is the best antidote to sexual wish there is; don’t prescribe it for your characters and then expect them to act with anything approaching conviction. A major problem with writing love scenes revolves around the questions of when how much and how often. These factors will likely be determined by the kind of novel you’re writing. Sex in a thriller has a different role from that depicted in a romance or a horror story say even though the physical act may essentially be the same. Remember scenes of a strictly sexual nature are not mandatory - unless of course you’re writing one of those sordid little ‘color Lace’ style numbers whose characters if not actually dead (and perhaps change surface a express of advanced rigor mortis doesn’t disqualify them) indulge in an almost continuous (and frequently ludicrous) round of sweat raising screwing. So never insert a love scene into your narrative just to achieve a state of temporary tumescence in an otherwise flaccid plan. Never attempt to bribe the reader into staying with your story with a little acrobatic and distracting sex. Don’t compete the pimp. Most readers are canny and perceptive enough to immediately see through your ruse and will readily and rightly denounce you for your gross impertinence and boorish tactics. Sexual encounters do not stand isolated within a novel; they should be the culmination of everything has gone before a natural consequence of past events - a channel of tension which has been relentlessly building between two characters for example. analyse the veracity and legitimacy of your amatorial encounters by reading the relevant chapter/section both including and excluding the scene in question. Does the sequence loose some vital energy and power through Lo and Al failing to proceed from coffee and conversation to full-blown simultaneous orgasm on the moonlit veranda? Any scene in your novel (if it’s functioning correctly) is likely to be a miniature version of the story itself. It is imbued with similar properties: rising action conflict cease and resolution - just like the act of like itself in fact. You can (and indeed many authors have) profitably use the ebb and flow of lovemaking to give your scene its shape and rhythm - its dynamic. There must always be something at stake.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://gary-writeherewritenow.blogspot.com/2007/09/writing-about-sex.html
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