The Sex Talk

There are some who say that writing is like having sex.  That while enthusiasm and creativity will serve you well, at some point you really need to know what you’re doing. Others might claim that sex is more like writing. There’s foreshadowing, rising action, falling action and if you’re doing it right, a climax.  Okay, I just made that part up, but as long as we’re on the subject, let’s talk about sex in stories.

     Since the vast majority of fanfics involve relationships of a romantic and/or sexual nature, knowing how to write those scenes in a way that enhances your story and moves the plot forwards without being tacky or gratuitous is a pretty important skillset to master.  If your intention is just to write “porn without plot” I think they call it these days then no problem, all you need are people, a place and a pretext as shallow as “X and Y are snowed in. What will they do all day?” If you’re writing an actual story with a plot and character arcs and dialogue and scene transitions, then you’re going to need to answer a few questions like “WHY are these people having sex? And “Why are THESE people having sex?” and “Why are these people having sex here and now?” and “What if anything might happen because these people had sex?” Was anything important happening that these people missed because they were busy having sex? What kind of sex were they having? Tender romantic, rug in front of the fireplace lovemaking or Full On Buffy and Spike knock the house down sex and why are they having that kind of sex and not the other? You can see there’s a lot to think about when the sex is part of the story arc, and not just thrown in like a Michael Bay action sequence.

     One thing that I would recommend is to not try to write sex into a story until you have the requisite real life experience under your belt to know what you’re talking about.  I know that a lot of fan fiction writers start young.   Somewhere between middle and high school they begin to feel confident enough with their writing skills and knowledge of their chosen Fandoms that they want to try their hands. They want to enjoy the benefits of being part of the creative community that exist around a given work.  So they write the stuff the bigger kids are writing without knowing what the bigger kids know. There is a reason most romance novels are written by women over 30.  They are old enough to have a certain amount of sexual experience and therefore a base of reality on which to build their fantasy encounters.  You will rarely  see the Viking Lord of Hawkfell Island having a 24 hour sexual marathon with the fiery and defiant daughter of the Earl of Wintershire, no matter how rugged and virile he is. Why? Chaffing.  30 year old women know about chaffing and they don’t like it. Also rug burn. And sleepiness. And sandwich breaks, and yes, even boredom. Even Cassanova would run out of moves after an hour or two. I’m joking here, but it’s sort of true. There are things about sex you are only going to learn through personal experience, and not just physically, but emotionally as well and those are even more important for writing your characters. Like how one feels the morning after having slept with someone that in the light of day they know they probably shouldn’t have.  Or how it feels to find out what you thought was love was just sex to the other person.  Or how having sex with someone you love differs from hooking up with someone you’re just attracted to. There are a lot of things that you’ll only learn through life experience, and until then, your writing will just be guesswork and imitation of other writers.

     This is beginning to run long, but I’d like to take a moment to talk about the overuse and misuse of rape in storytelling. Even professional writers in Hollywood use it badly, generally as a line bad guys cross to show the audience they’re really evil, or as a way to enrage the hero into taking the fight to the next level and beating the enemy. This takes a female character and turns her into a plot device instead of a person.  Within fan fiction, the use of rape has become very casual, and I can’t help thinking it’s because the writers don’t really know what it is. Maybe they don’t know someone it’s happened to. They don’t understand the damage it does both to the victim and the people who care about her.  

      It’s bad enough that so many writers use it to show how evil the rapist character is but the ones who use it to start a relationship? That is just so utterly, mind bogglingly wrong to me when I see descriptions like “What happens when Voldemort orders Snape, Draco and Lucius Malfoy, to teach Harry Potters Mudblood friend a lesson.  What will they do when she shows up on the doorstep of their Bachelor pad with a baby? Then it’s all “Three Deatheater’s and a Baby.” The fact that you had to use rape to get characters together should be your first clue and the only one necessary that two characters don’t belong together.  I’m of the opinion that if you take a woman by force or deceit, you’re a bad guy period. I don’t really care if you have other good qualities. You don’t get to be loved. You don’t get to have good things happen to you. You get to have Karma step on your neck. In fact, if you were to take the above scenario, have one of the Death Eaters defy Voldemorte and help Hermione escape, that would be your first indication that there was something of worth within them and they weren’t quite beyond redemption. Then maybe you could build a love story from there.

     Okay, as to the actual writing of the sex, I’m not going to really go into that except to say I would err on the side of romance novel sex over video that Uncle Jerry didn’t hide in his attic as well as he though he did, sex. Let’s face it, porn is tacky.  No one ever won an Oscar in the category of best adult film screenplay.  You can do better than that.