Are books getting too graphic?

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Jason

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I’ve been on my reading and writing binge for almost 18 months now. In this process I’ve read a lot of classics (say more than 25 years old), and am starting to get into more current stuff. The Game of Thrones series is one and another titled Norwegian Wood I’ve noticed are very graphic and matter of fact in their narratives when it comes to sex.

I'm wondering- is this the new norm? Are books expected to have sexual themes that are so blatantly graphic? Not saying it bothers me, and granted, I’m not widely read in current fiction (under 5 current authors thus far) but...

It does seem that the current trend of writing has embraced a more extensive degree of graphic sexuality. Thoughts on this? Am I a prude for noticing this at all? Or has anyone else noticed this shift in writing?

I am naturally excluding genres like erotica here, as that would likely be expected to have a certain degree of...uh, explicitness. What’s the trend in other genres?
 
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Polenth

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Not all modern books are graphic and you don't have to write graphic content to get published. You can if you want, but it's not a requirement. I personally don't like grimdark, so I avoid books like that. There are still plenty of other things to read.
 

Ellis Clover

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Well, Norwegian Wood is 30 years old, so I don't know about 'the new norm'. Lots of books have contained lots of sex for a very long time, I think.
 

Lakey

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I am not widely read in current fiction either, but here are a few titles I’ve read in the last few years that have no graphic content at all:

A Man Called Ove, Frederick Backman
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
The Bone Clocks, David Mitchell (I don’t think there’s anything graphic in it)
Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (lots of distressing racism in various forms, but no graphic violence as I recall; there is a sexual assault in it but my recollection is that it is painted fairly obliquely)

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, because as I said I’m not very widely read in recent fiction.

The point, though, is that while the last 100 years have opened up room for a lot more graphic content, that hasn’t been to the exclusion of all the other kinds of stories humans can tell. (And it has been the last hundred years, not a new thing in the 21st century - read Joseph Heller or Henry Miller if you don’t believe me.)

If I can list half a dozen over breakfast and modern fiction isn’t even the bulk of what I read, I am sure that there are many others who can list dozens of titles. The range and diversity of fiction has broadened over the last century. That’s a very good thing. There is a public appetite for a certain kind of violence and sexuality, so it is not hard to find, but neither is it hard to avoid. You mention Norwegian Wood - Murakami is known for very graphic (and in my opinion very clinical and soulless) sexuality; I couldn’t get through Norwegian Wood but 1Q84 is full of it. But Murakami is just one author.

I can’t speak to fantasy as it’s a genre I know basically nothing about - the popularity of series like Game of Thrones presumably spawns many others in its mold, but I’d be surprised if there aren’t many skilled fantasy authors who haven’t gone down that road.
 

Harlequin

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Game of Thrones series isn't recent.

I picked those up 15 years ago and they weren't new then, either.


Edit, just checked. First book came out 1996. That's 18 years ago. Grimdark as a genre has grown but if anything I think the trend is moving away from graphic, particularly graphic rape. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong circles.
 
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Makeshift Bubbles

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I suppose it could be said that books in general are getting more graphic, but that's a result of society being more accepting of such explicitness. Like other have said, non-graphic stories are pretty easy to find anyway.

As to whether books are getting too graphic, it depends on who you're asking. Myself, on occasion I'll seek out books with reputations for being graphic, just out of morbid curiosity. It takes a lot to squick me out.
 

WeaselFire

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Never read Sylvia Plath, Erica Jong, Henry Miller, Pauline Reage, Vladimir Nabokov or Xaviera Hollander? :)

My guess is your reading tastes have changed. There are plenty of books published every year with little or no graphic sex or violence. Heck, the entire genre of cozy mysteries comes to mind.

Jeff
 

DanielSTJ

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Haven't books, in a sense, always been graphic?

Perhaps it just depends on where you look....?

Just a thought.
 

Syrup

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I feel like the proliferation of graphic content speaks to the lessening of taboos in certain cases. There is a long and colorful history of things being omitted from manuscripts during publication (abortions, homosexuality, etc.), or being kept "vague" because the book would have no hope of being published if they were outright about it. I think it's great that certain themes are allowed to be explored more fully these days. It helps break stigma in some cases. Just looking at the other side of the coin.
 

jjdebenedictis

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I feel like the proliferation of graphic content speaks to the lessening of taboos in certain cases. There is a long and colorful history of things being omitted from manuscripts during publication (abortions, homosexuality, etc.), or being kept "vague" because the book would have no hope of being published if they were outright about it.

Yes, Anna Karenina by Tolstoy has scenes that make it obvious that extra-marital sex just took place, or that the title character has gotten abortions in the past, without it ever being said outright that's what happened.
 

EmmaSohan

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My guess is that you tone down the sex for librarians, and ramp it up for other sales.

For me, I love the freedom, simply because sex can be an important part of the story. And when it isn't, I can skip over. But it's a part of life too, and it deserves to be written about.

I have a story. I wanted to analyze the grammar in a Hemingway sex scene. But I couldn't find it. It wasn't that important, so I gave up. Then -- light bulb goes off as I remember teen-age boys -- I go back to the book, let it open to whatever page it wants to open to . . . and there's the sex scene. But someone really did point out we maybe should make books more attractive to male teenagers.
 

BenPanced

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My guess is that you tone down the sex for librarians, and ramp it up for other sales.

Uh...no. Just no. Frankly, that's insulting to a rather intelligent group of people who have nothing but the best interests in ordering books for the reading public based on an outmoded and inaccurate stereotype librarians are stuffy, uptight people.
 

AW Admin

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My guess is that you tone down the sex for librarians, and ramp it up for other sales.

You might want to stop right there. Because that statement is both deeply offensive and deeply revelatory about your woeful ignorance regarding books, libraries and librarians.

Librarians are champions for the right to read and the right to know.

Here's a sample of the kinds of books librarians write for other librarians.

Regarding the topic in general, there's nothing new under the sun with respect to graphic depictions of sex.
 

EmmaSohan

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You might want to stop right there. Because that statement is both deeply offensive and deeply revelatory about your woeful ignorance regarding books, libraries and librarians.

Librarians are champions for the right to read and the right to know.

Here's a sample of the kinds of books librarians write for other librarians.

Regarding the topic in general, there's nothing new under the sun with respect to graphic depictions of sex.

Thanks. This is good to know. I had a sex scene in my Y/A book, describing sexual intercourse ("He cries out, then pushes violently into me", for example). I took it out for fear librarians would reject it. (Or, to be more precise, that agents would reject the book for that reason.) But it was important to my story. It's very useful to hear that I can leave it in and no one will object.

I didn't think Librarians were "uptight", I just thought of them as more cautious than they apparently are.
 

Dave.C.Robinson

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I'd argue that books aren't so much getting more graphic as that graphic works are becoming better known as they are getting adapted into other mediums some of which have become more graphic over the last couple of decades.

Take Game of Thrones: For a book published over 20 years ago, A Game of Thrones isn't too graphic at all; having said that, the television adaptation is definitely too graphic for even an HBO show from 1996. It's the greater spread and acceptance of graphic material in the wider public consciousness due to the widening range available on other media that's made things more noticeable, not that books themselves have become more graphic.
 

Jason

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I’d forgotten in my OP that GOT started 20 years ago as I am only recently reading it. (Just starting Book 4 today actually LOL - man I’m behind the times!) I also had no idea Norwegian Wood was that old. That said, when I compare GOT to LOTR, or even the Shannara series, it’s pretty much night and day difference in terms of sexual explicitness and frequency of sexual scenarios. Lots of forced sex too...I was a bit taken aback at first as it was not what I was expecting in this genre.
 

Harlequin

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They're different subgenres. Fantasy is very big - the biggest of all genres. I've met other fantasy fans who didn't have a book in common with me. We swim in different parts of an enormous pool, you might say.

Got helped kick off grimdark, which tends to favour gore and gallantry over the literary side. Tolkien is literary, epic fa. Shannara isn't literary but I believe Terry Brooks is christian and also he was sort of guilty of being a tolkien pastiche although I did enjoy some of his novels.
 

CJMatthewson

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I honestly believe that sex is just a lot less taboo than it was 20 years ago, especially in young adult fiction (I've noticed less romanticisation of sex, too. A lot of sex...is just sex, now.)

Of course, that's not to say sexual content is prevalent everywhere - I've read a lot of books recently which contain no sex at all, or at least the skip-to-morning-after kind of sex scene. Writers seem to have more freedom to write about sex and a lot of them are choosing to.
 

cornflake

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Thanks. This is good to know. I had a sex scene in my Y/A book, describing sexual intercourse ("He cries out, then pushes violently into me", for example). I took it out for fear librarians would reject it. (Or, to be more precise, that agents would reject the book for that reason.) But it was important to my story. It's very useful to hear that I can leave it in and no one will object.

I didn't think Librarians were "uptight", I just thought of them as more cautious than they apparently are.

Librarians? The ones who defend your right to watch porn in public?

Also, no agent in the world would reject a book they otherwise wanted to rep based on a scene they thought problematic -- they'd discuss it, ask you to change it, wait to see what editors thought... it's one scene. Also, agents who'd reject a book based on what librarians might think is putting the specific, teeny tiny cart so far before the horse I'd worry about them.

They're different subgenres. Fantasy is very big - the biggest of all genres. I've met other fantasy fans who didn't have a book in common with me. We swim in different parts of an enormous pool, you might say.

Got helped kick off grimdark, which tends to favour gore and gallantry over the literary side. Tolkien is literary, epic fa. Shannara isn't literary but I believe Terry Brooks is christian and also he was sort of guilty of being a tolkien pastiche although I did enjoy some of his novels.

Is there a statistic says that about fantasy? I don't mean it in the 'you made a claim; defend yourself!!' way at all, just I'd have guessed romance was the top dog, followed by mystery maybe, presuming we're talking about sales, so curious.
 

Harlequin

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Haha, well, I guess I mean it's theoretically larger, because it's not a narrative type and defined by setting elements, SFF ends up dominating. Write a crime novel... but it has clones, now it's SFF. Write a romance... but it has magic, now it's SFF. Write a thriller... but it has telepathy, now it's SFF.

I think fantasy in particular, dominates SFF by default for an extension of the same reason. Typically, if your SF has fantastical elements, it will get slotted in with fantasy. A lot of spec fic books (with light spec fic elements) are really fantasy by default.

I don't have any stats though!
 

cornflake

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Oooh, I thought you meant biggest like sells the most -- sorry!
 

Jason

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Wow, talk about a riveting Roundtable discussion :) Pardon me while I sit on the sidelines and learn: :popcorn:
 
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