To f*ck, or not to f*ck...

scarletpeaches said:

As someone who's read every word tt42 has ever written, I can confirm she does quite well on the 'constructing paragraphs' nonsense.

Her editors think so, too.

Click to expand...

Excuse me?

thethinker42 said:

I think you're overthinking this.

Click to expand...

I think we might've been skirting around an important issue, and I may have been coming at it sideways too.

We say 'sex scene' as though the scene is about sex, but real scenes are about conflict, and for most purposes sex is just imagery. We don't really write sex-scenes. We write sex-passages.

So we can't compare sex to fist-fights or car-chases (and I replaced my earlier examples for this reason). We have to compare it to rhapsodies on soufflé, or the cut of a ball-gown, or brooding forests or the snap of sails on the yard-arm. In other words, it's about mood and theme, and the same rules of craft apply: make it strong, memorable but keep it focused and don't go overboard. Some writers get this. Many just don't.

Mario Puzo wrote a few sex-passages in The Godfather. Published in 1969, it's the quintessential Mafia tale of power, passion, lust and betrayal. But the sex is infrequent, terse and even forty years since he published, still contains punch. His first 'sex scene' consisted of one line: a woman exposing her genitals to humiliate a guy. The second was (from memory) a couple of paragraphs of the hotheaded Heir Apparent Sonny boffing a bridesmaid at a wedding. It was punchy, memorable and did its job. At the end of Sonny's Quickie we learned exactly what kind of guy he was.

Contrast with (say) Eric van Lustbader, who if he can fit six pages of BDSM in a broom-closet between intrigues, will. It isn't mood and there's not a theme to be found. Any drama is usually superficial. It's just pornographic interludes in the plot, written to sell to bored people in airport lounges.

So my point is: if you want to write 'sex scenes' well, write them like Puzo and not like Lustbader.

Ruv Draba said:

We say 'sex scene' as though the scene is about sex, but real scenes are about conflict, and for most purposes sex is just imagery. We don't really write sex-scenes. We write sex-passages.

Click to expand...

Again, we're splitting hairs about terminology. "Sex scene" is a perfectly reasonable shorthand for a scene containing sex, whether it's "about" sex or the sex is imagery or whatever.

So my point is: if you want to write 'sex scenes' well, write them like Puzo and not like Lustbader.

Click to expand...

There is a shitload of middle ground between those two extremes.

If y'all need me, I'll be right over here teaching my granny to suck eggs.

I'll be taking pictures

Ruv Draba said:

We say 'sex scene' as though the scene is about sex, but real scenes are about conflict, and for most purposes sex is just imagery. We don't really write sex-scenes. We write sex-passages.

Click to expand...

Maybe you write sex passages full of imagery and mood and rhapsodies and what-have-you. I write sex scenes, which also have their share of mood and imagery, but are based in either the introduction or the resolution of conflict.

Example? The scene I completed last night, in which the recently consecrated squire, Daniel Willoughby, requests that his master, Lord Thanatos, to relieve him of his virginity, as it has become a burden to him and leaves him vulnerable to the mockery of the other Champions and their squires. Thanatos is resistant to the idea, for reasons he will not share.

Conflict.

The scene -- a sex scene, not a passage -- is quite explicit and, at over 1500 words, fairly long. (It's also full of mood and atmosphere and imagery, but I try to include that in all my scenes.) By the end of it, Daniel's virginity problem is solved (sort of) but now he has another -- he liked it quite a bit more than he thought he would, or (more importantly) should.

One conflict resolved, another one introduced.

I suppose I could've done it one paragraph. But that would be telling, not showing, and while telling has its place, it doesn't belong in a scene that sets up or resolves or heightens major conflicts for the the protagonist.

Yes, I am writing erotic romance. That doesn't mean sex can't make up valid scenes in other forms of fiction. It's another arena for conflict, and conflict makes story.

thethinker42 said:

There is a shitload of middle ground between those two extremes.

Click to expand...

They're hardly extremes. Van Lustbader is far from the worst writer we can find on an airport bookshelf, and Puzo is hardly the best.

Ultimately, every writer has to decide what they'll aspire to and what they'll settle for. Fortunately, authors and readers self-select. Gratuitous imagery certainly isn't confined to sex -- the fantasy, horror and crime shelves are full of it too, and there are no end of punters who'll happily read it. Then there are readers who won't touch it.

I'm somewhere in between -- if the story is otherwise strong, I'll read a para or two of sex-imagery, slash-imagery, cadaver-imagery or whatever. But if it gets dull I'll flick some pages and on DVDs I fast-forward. Not everyone may want to roll that way, but I've never heard a reader say that a passage of imagery was ruined for being short, intense and well-written.

Ruv Draba said:

They're hardly extremes. Van Lustbader is far from the worst writer we can find on an airport bookshelf, and Puzo is hardly the best.

Click to expand...

There is still middle ground between short/terse and long/overdone. A lot of middle ground. If there's anything to be gained from writing more like one of those authors than the other, it shouldn't be the length or style of the scenes, it should be their purpose. If Van Lustbader's scenes are gratuitous and pointless, then they would be whether they were a single paragraph or 5,000 words. If Puzo's sex scenes are powerful, relevant, and the story would be somehow "less than" without them? There again, they would be whether they were long or short.

Lengthy, explicit sex scenes are perfectly valid if they serve a purpose.

But if it gets dull I'll flick some pages and on DVDs I fast-forward.

Click to expand...

As will I. And this can be a conversation, a sex scene, a battle scene, whatever. If it's dull and tedious, I skip it.

This thread is going 'round and 'round in circles. You know what we need? A web comic. Start here, and click the right arrow at the top to read more of this story arc. It gets really good.

Selah March said:

I write sex scenes, which also have their share of mood and imagery, but are based in either the introduction or the resolution of conflict.

Click to expand...

I haven't read your work, Selah, so I can only guess. But in my experience, most 'sex scenes' -- I mean whole scenes beginning in a sexual advance and ending in an orgasm, or a phone call or whatever -- aren't about sex at all, but power.

Which is not to say that the imagery is irrelevant -- sexual imagery can carry themes just as any other imagery can. It can reveal characters (which is part of what anchors a theme) and so on. But if you had to, I bet you could write it with nary a lick of sexual imagery, and still produce exactly the same character insights, relationships and problems at the end.

I'm not saying that you should. I'm saying that the drama we associate with sex lies in the relationships, intrigues, the internal conflicts -- the social and psychological stuff. And that stuff exists with or without the sex -- which is why a seduction to murder say, can look so much like a sexual seduction at times.

So when we evaluate sexual imagery, I think we can't simply do so by saying 'it creates drama' -- I don't think it does. More likely it contributes to mood, to theme and may enhance the underlying drama or compete with it. So that's how I think we need to evaluate it.

But several posters have said that it's not about the sex, and I agree. Several other genres are also strong mood genres -- fantasy, horror, and romance for example. None are known for their authors writing too little imagery. When we have a criticism about their imagery, it's usually that authors are writing too damn much. (If I had to pick a worst offender it'd be Fantasy by a country mile, but that's hardly the point.) So the same criteria that apply to descriptions of squelchy-bits apply equally to shiny swords, mutilated cadavers and Audrey Hepburn's hats. My point being that a paragraph or so on any of these subjects without some intervening drama or some theme to enrich it, is normally plenty.

Libbie said:

This thread is going 'round and 'round in circles. You know what we need? A web comic. Start here, and click the right arrow at the top to read more of this story arc. It gets really good.

Click to expand...

If it ain't Axe Cop I don't give a rat's ass.

thethinker42 said:

If there's anything to be gained from writing more like one of those authors than the other, it shouldn't be the length or style of the scenes, it should be their purpose.

Click to expand...

I think we've already talked about the purpose of imagery: mood and theme (and Kuw said character, which to me is theme anyway). Theme can take pages to develop, but mood is a couple of paras at most.

I'm bored with this. More cartoons, Libbie!

scarletpeaches said:

If it ain't Axe Cop I don't give a rat's ass.

Click to expand...

You should give a rat's ass. It's "The New Kings of Sapphic Erotica."

Ruv Draba said:

More cartoons, Libbie!

Click to expand...

I think I have officially exceeded my allowed quota of thread derailings. I'm going to get banned if I don't step lively.

Libbie said:

I think I have officially exceeded my allowed quota of thread derailings. I'm going to get banned if I don't step lively.

Click to expand...

I just got done writing for the night (eight pages, including five manuscript pages of explicit character-illuminating sex in case anyone cares), and decided to check in and see if anyone had said anything new.

And this cartoon nearly made me wet my pants from laughing. Thank you for bringing the awesome to this thread.

KathleenD said:

And this cartoon nearly made me wet my pants from laughing. Thank you for bringing the awesome to this thread.

Click to expand...

QFT.

Oh for fuck's sake.

^^^see what I did thar?


If I want to write about boy parts going into girl parts in explicit detail for several thousand words and have character and plot development through the sex (and yes, even through the specific imagery and description of that sex!) and do it well, I'm damn well going to do it. Hey, in fact I have — and it was about sex, too! Oh, and on top of everything else, I'm going to call it literary erotica because it's totally deep. In more ways than one. God help anyone who reads it on a plane.

(Via Mammoth Gardens INKsters)

Bringing awesome to threads is what I do. That, and revise my book, apparently.

kuwisdelu said:

Eh, dialogue is one of my weaknesses. I can't exactly avoid it.

Click to expand...

... I supect you're just being difficult

But if not, bear in mind that there are a good number of novels with little to no dialogue. I've read a lot of YA survival novels, of the sort, in which characters are going up against the elements by themselves, like The Island of the Blue Dolphins, which won the Newberry. I'm sure there are adult novels as well, in all genres, which have sparce dialogue. So if you want to avoid it you can. By all means try to improve by practise. But if you're still struggling 2 years from now, maybe give the former tactic a whirl. Just my 2 cents, based on my own, individual experience.