So... why do you hide the sex in your stories?

Maxinquaye · Aug 26, 2010

I was merrily writing this in my latest novella project:

Caspian stepped forward, and when the sword slid to the side, the barbarian got a hold of Kael’s arm. He pulled Kael close to himself. Then he stretched out with his free hand, dug his finger into the heir’s throat, and ripped.

Kael’s dropped his sword to the ground, grasped at the hand whose fingers were digging into his throat, and even from here Faeron saw the blood welling out between Caspian's fingers.

Caspian turned his back as Kael dropped to his knees, still clutching his throat, and he could hear clearly when Caspian asked Teron: “Do I have to wait for him to die before I leave?”

Variations of this, even though this might be particularly brutal, happen all the time. Most of the stories we write are fairly violent things, and we think nothing of writing the violence. It's part of the course.

I've asked it before, but it got kind of to the point earlier tonight when I decided to drop the curtains on a bit of fellatio between two characters. Why did I do that?

Why do any of us think nothing of describing chopped off heads, flowing blood, dismemberment, disfiguration - but we drop the curtain when it comes to sex?

I put this here since it's a kind of 'peripheral' question. It would get a bit lost in the erotica subforum, and everyone there would say 'oh we don't do that'.

But what about the rest of you? If you do hide the sex, and if you do write the exciting violent action... why? Just curious.

Cyia · Aug 26, 2010

Maxinquaye said:
But what about the rest of you? If you do hide the sex, and if you do write the exciting violent action... why? Just curious.

American programming. (for those of us who are American, anyway.)

Violence is cool.
Sex is icky and should be hidden away.

Now, go to the cabbage patch and bring back a little brother or sister! You may kill the stork if he gets huffy, but remember to hide the evidence.

Marian Perera · Aug 26, 2010

Cyia said:
American programming. (for those of us who are American, anyway.)

Oh, it's not just Americans. I used to live in the Middle East and on all television programs, intimacy of any kind was censored. If people were torturing or killing each other, that was OK. But if people were kissing, there would be a little skip in the program and we would be spared the sight. Sex, of course, never happened even beneath the sheets.

Needless to say, there was a thriving black market for pornographic videos... so I've heard.

citymouse · Aug 26, 2010

Max, The simple answer is that here in the USA at least, sex outside of marriage is looked upon as a human frailty. It's immoral and certain kinds of sex are, if not deviant, kind of nasty, no matter who does it.
It gets more convoluted when age and gender factors get into the mix.The people who produce books are often fearful of market loss, and some are downright prigs. But I believe that it is $$$$ that drive censorship. Writers censor their own work for fear it won't see print.

It seems that immorality is almost always equated with sexual activity and yet, is not murder, thievery, enslavement, assault, self-abuse in its many forms, immoral? The writer who writes explicit sex is often regarded as a pornographer and smut peddler. I think many of us are uncomfortable with the reality that we all are the product of at least one messy encounter.
C

thothguard51 · Aug 26, 2010

Bloody horror happens every day, and we see it on the 6PM news, sometimes in graphic detail...

Sex happens every day too, but we don't see it on the 6PM news, not in graphic detail anyway.

For me, I tell people I don't write for the Harry Potter crowd, nor do I write for the Ann Rice or Penthouse Forum crowd, so I am somewhere in the middle. And I am comfortable with that...

CaroGirl · Aug 26, 2010

Maxinquaye said:
Variations of this, even though this might be particularly brutal, happen all the time. Most of the stories we write are fairly violent things, and we think nothing of writing the violence. It's part of the course.

I've asked it before, but it got kind of to the point earlier tonight when I decided to drop the curtains on a bit of fellatio between two characters. Why did I do that?

Why do any of us think nothing of describing chopped off heads, flowing blood, dismemberment, disfiguration - but we drop the curtain when it comes to sex?

I put this here since it's a kind of 'peripheral' question. It would get a bit lost in the erotica subforum, and everyone there would say 'oh we don't do that'.

But what about the rest of you? If you do hide the sex, and if you do write the exciting violent action... why? Just curious.

Since this is Roundtable, and not fantasy or horror or whatever, I'd like raise a hand to say I definitely DO NOT EVER describe chopped off heads, flowing blood, dismemberment or disfigurement. I'm far more likely to describe an intimate scene between two people (including S-E-X) than have anything get chopped off in a battle.

But that's just me, I guess.

kuwisdelu · Aug 26, 2010

Eh, before I ever started my erotic novel, I wrote plenty of sex and violence. Usually sex with violence. Or violence with sex.

Maybe I was reading too much Bret Easton Ellis at the time.

JemmaP · Aug 26, 2010

I admit to being a bit of a coward when it comes to writing sex between characters - but it's more about the intimacy of the moment than puritanism, I guess. Part of it's that my father reads my stories, which doesn't exactly make me keen on explicit text; part of it is that it's -hard- to write something so intimate between characters. Hard but good, I think, if you've got the right characters.

I wrote one between my main character (first person, too) and her boyfriend recently. It made it into the story because it was their first time. And I -still- dropped the curtain, because after a certain point it was body parts and autonomic responses. The intimacy in the moment for those two was the beginning and the point where the decision was made to continue. I pick up the next morning.

I'm not really writing romance -- where the emotional arc of the romantic story between the two is the focus of the novel -- so I figure I can get away with romantic moments that don't necessarily go into nitty-gritty detail about the bits and bobs. Maybe I'm just a coward for not going into detail, but. I figure as long as the drama works it should be okay. I haven't had this scene beta'd yet, so I don't know how my readers will react to me chickening out. I might get a nasty note from my primary beta reader with orders to expand that section, so.

Who knows. I still hope it works.

As for violence, I admit that doesn't bother me - but again I would be more interested in the emotional reactions it provokes than just guts for guts sake.

defcon6000 · Aug 26, 2010

I guess for me it's more out of embarrassment, if I read or try to write something erotic I feel awkward about it. I remember reading this scene in a steampunk/clockpunk what-have-you, where this guys stuck his tongue into this automatron's keyhole... if you get the reference. :e2brows:

And I dunno if it was because it came out from no where, but it kinda had me stunned. Not that I'm a prune, it's not like I've never seen nudity or heard about sexual acts before, but it just didn't register. Yet, I will gladly read and write about blood spraying everywhere and gore, maybe it's because of all the video games I play - some of the stuff today is like "wow." Yeah, it must be because we see it all the time so it becomes a normal thing to hear/see violence, but it's taboo to hear/see sexual content.

Maxinquaye · Aug 26, 2010

CaroGirl said:
Since this is Roundtable, and not fantasy or horror or whatever, I'd like raise a hand to say I definitely DO NOT EVER describe chopped off heads, flowing blood, dismemberment or disfigurement. I'm far more likely to describe an intimate scene between two people (including S-E-X) than have anything get chopped off in a battle.

But that's just me, I guess.

Well, I had hoped the last line of the post would ask those that do write violence stories about their opinion.

thothguard51 said:
Bloody horror happens every day, and we see it on the 6PM news, sometimes in graphic detail...

Sex happens every day too, but we don't see it on the 6PM news, not in graphic detail anyway.

For me, I tell people I don't write for the Harry Potter crowd, nor do I write for the Ann Rice or Penthouse Forum crowd, so I am somewhere in the middle. And I am comfortable with that...

I'm sorry if I interpret you the wrong way, but are you saying that sex between characters is porn?

JemmaP said:
I admit to being a bit of a coward when it comes to writing sex between characters - but it's more about the intimacy of the moment than puritanism, I guess. Part of it's that my father reads my stories, which doesn't exactly make me keen on explicit text; part of it is that it's -hard- to write something so intimate between characters. Hard but good, I think, if you've got the right characters.

I wrote one between my main character (first person, too) and her boyfriend recently. It made it into the story because it was their first time. And I -still- dropped the curtain, because after a certain point it was body parts and autonomic responses. The intimacy in the moment for those two was the beginning and the point where the decision was made to continue. I pick up the next morning.

I'm not really writing romance -- where the emotional arc of the romantic story between the two is the focus of the novel -- so I figure I can get away with romantic moments that don't necessarily go into nitty-gritty detail about the bits and bobs. Maybe I'm just a coward for not going into detail, but. I figure as long as the drama works it should be okay. I haven't had this scene beta'd yet, so I don't know how my readers will react to me chickening out. I might get a nasty note from my primary beta reader with orders to expand that section, so. Who knows. I still hope it works.

As for violence, I admit that doesn't bother me - but again I would be more interested in the emotional reactions it provokes than just guts for guts sake.

I've decided explicitly not pull the curtain, because thinking about it is - it seems to me - silly. I mean if I can write about someone dying, which is pretty intrusive, then I can write about someone making love.

backslashbaby · Aug 26, 2010

I am writing out the sex and the violence in my WIP, actually. But the sex is only because it's surprising this time.

Usually, in my stories the sex goes how you'd expect sex to go. There's no particular need to show much detail of the act. The violence is always surprising in my settings, OTOH. The readers have no idea how to fill in those blanks without me showing it.

I still don't give an exact play-by-play once the reader gets the gist of the kind of monster my MC is.

And sex can be important to the plot for its emotional impact, etc -- don't get me wrong. Mine just usually isn't so much

Not during, anyway.

Rhoda Nightingale · Aug 26, 2010

For me, personally? I find sex scenes agonizing difficult to write well. They always turn out too cheesy, or too graphic, or not intimate enough, or something's just plain off about them. I hate writing sex scenes. They can go badly in so many different ways. It's much easier to just throw in another beating or dismemberment, and "fade to black," if you will, with the sex or just deal with it "later." (This is why my WIP, "Dusty," is currently on hold, if anyone's curious.)

Ryan David Jahn · Aug 26, 2010

I write both sex and violence and have no problem with either, but my bet is that, from a practical standpoint, at least one reason violence appears more often than sex is that violence more often pushes story forward than does sex.

Even stories that focus on romantic relationships often build up to sex rather than there being much of it happening while the story progresses.

Sex can certainly push a story forward as well, but sex is a generally positive thing while violence has inherent conflict (one person inflicting injury upon another), so it takes less work. Sex is harder.

So, there's probably more violence than sex in fiction for the same reason there are more arguments than pleasant conversations about that great movie the characters saw the night before.

That's my guess, anyway, as someone who writes both.

COchick · Aug 26, 2010

defcon6000 said:
...Not that I'm a prune

lol.

And I agree with your entire post.

Polenth · Aug 26, 2010

I write violence. I don't write sex.

I don't like romance and relationships stories much. A brief sex scene is tolerable as a reader, but I start drifting very quickly. I'm not going to write something I find boring.

Violence doesn't interest me as violence, but it's more likely to be going on while non-romantic plot and character development happen. The blow-by-blow accounts some fantasy has doesn't interest me though, as it's more a guide to recreating the battle, than an event that impacts the characters.

shadowwalker · Aug 26, 2010

I just find it easier to write violent scenes than sex scenes. Not that I put a lot of gore into mine (just not that type of story). But it has nothing to do with being prudish or uncomfortable with sex - it's just so easy to make them cliche' or boring or just plain silly. And frankly, I skip reading most sex scenes in books for those reasons. When I have written them, I tried to focus on the emotions and thoughts rather than describing the physical actions.

katiemac · Aug 26, 2010

Sometimes it's not important how characters have sex, only that they do. Other times the how matters.

ishtar'sgate · Aug 26, 2010

I am reminded of something I heard years ago - that a woman looks far more sexy fully clothed than she does without her clothes. It's the mystique that's tantalizing, the suggestion of what lies beneath. For me it's the same with sex scenes. A closed door is intriguing and leaves something to the reader's imagination. They're never quite sure what's going on in there.

kuwisdelu · Aug 26, 2010

ishtar'sgate said:
I am reminded of something I heard years ago - that a woman looks far more sexy fully clothed than she does without her clothes. It's the mystique that's tantalizing, the suggestion of what lies beneath. For me it's the same with sex scenes. A closed door is intriguing and leaves something to the reader's imagination. They're never quite sure what's going on in there.

Depends on the clothes. Depends on what happens during the sex.

Explicit sex scenes need not always be there for the eroticism. They can be great for character or plot development.

LOG · Aug 26, 2010

Hmmm, I'm a coward when it comes to sex scenes. Although I read plenty of them. (Most of them quite that.)

Beyond that, I know of very few sex scenes (in my books or others) that actually progress the plot.

Michiru · Aug 26, 2010

To be fair, explicit violence is not okay with a lot of people, either. I remember writing a violent story for my creative writing class in high school, and everyone thought I was really messed up. Same for a friend of mine who wrote a violent story.

Torture is particularly not okay, and can get a movie an NC-17 rating (re: it will be censored) even without sex; that's why horror movies often have uncut versions even without any sex in them. Saw, for example, has a lot of fans, but it also has a lot of people screaming for its censorship.

Just like porn. :tongue

Mistress Elysia · Aug 26, 2010

Because I'm a coward...

Actually, no, that's not true. I can write scenes that have sexual content - I wrote a scene where one character was trying to seduce another (and would have succeeded, had they not been interrupted), but when it comes to full on 'and the choo choo train entered the tunnel' (obviously not indicative of my sex scenes, btw!), I tend to drop the curtain, simply because it's so hard to write a good scene and so very easy to write a bad one. Also, in an odd way, violence has a universal standard when it comes to ferocity: killing someone is, generally, seen as being violent. Yes, there are degrees of violence (shooting someone vs tearing their heart out of their chest with your bare hands, for example) and what shocks one person won't shock another, but still - violence is violence. Sex, on the other hand, is a wildly personal thing, and one (wo)man's pleasure is another man's pain, as they say! I have lost count the amount of times I have read a sex scene by a male author and rolled my eyes at it (women, on the whole, DO NOT orgasm after a couple of thrusts, especially when you've just basically said 'hey, baby - how about it?' and then buried her. As mighty as your wang might be, it ain't that mighty!)... I think where sex is something most of us experience on a regular basis, we have the ability to compare notes, so to speak. Whereas with violence, I don't know about you, but I haven't beaten a guy to a bloody pulp and then stuck a dagger into the side of his neck and watched as his last breath bubbled from his gore-streaked lips...

Saying that, I was challenged once by an all-female writing circle to write the porniest scene I could a couple of years ago (we were discussing things we found difficult to write and challenging each other to get over those obstacles) and mine was sex. I had to write the filthiest, hottest scene I could, whilst keeping good characterisation (they knew my characters well by then) and good writing generally. They would then read it and see how I had done. It took me three days (I kept blushing wildly and deleting stuff), but once it was done, it was one of the most liberating things I have ever done. I absolutely recommend the exercise to everyone who is a coward when it comes to writing sex!

Would I include something like that in a book? Probably not. Like JemmaP mentioned, my mum (not dad) reads my books (as does my mother in law), and I don't think they'd be able to cope with that!

DancingMaenid · Aug 27, 2010

I don't have any problem writing sex, really, but I try to temper it to the story. I also write erotica, and I have to be careful to keep the tone and amount of details appropriate depending on what I'm writing. If I'm writing something that's meant to be erotic, sure, fine. But I don't want one of my non-erotica stories to be chugging along and all of a sudden turn into a Skinemax flick. So I guess I make the sex a little less detailed/explicit sometimes, or change the focus of it.

For the project I'm planning now, I've decided I'll keep the sex kind of light/non explicit because the characters are teens.

kuwisdelu · Aug 27, 2010

DancingMaenid said:
But I don't want one of my non-erotica stories to be chugging along and all of a sudden turn into a Skinemax flick.

Prior to my current novel, most of my non-erotic sex scenes tended to be more explicit than my erotic ones.

Margarita Skies · Aug 27, 2010

I don't hide the sex in my stories. I've been writing hot sex scenes, even though my stories are not erotica, since I turned 21. I am 29 years old now. Whoever doesn't want to read this, they just don't read it and that's the end. If it doesn't bother the agent or the publisher and it's nothing illegal, ie sex between minors, necrophilia or something like that, then it's ok and que sera, sera.

So... why do you hide the sex in your stories?

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