Territory

July 25, 2012 By in Poetry 39 Comments

I’ve been working my way through Writers on Writing, Collected Essays from The New York Times. I hit upon Barbara Kingsolver’s piece, “A Forbidden Territory Familiar to All” and found a kindred spirit:

For decent folk of any gender, the official and legal position of our culture is that sex takes place in private, and that’s surely part of the problem. Private things–newfound love, family disagreements and spiritual faith, to name a few–can quickly become banal or irritating when moved into the public arena. But new love, family squabbles and spirituality are rich ground for literature when they’re handled with care. Writers don’t avoid them on grounds of privacy, but rather take it as duty to draw insights from personal things and render them universal. Nothing could be more secret, after all, than the inside of another person’s mind, and that is just where a novel takes us, usually from page 1. No subject is too private for good fiction if it can be made beautiful and enlightening.

That may be the rub right there. Making it beautiful is no small trick. The language of coition has been stolen, or rather, I think, it has been divvied up like chips in a poker game among pornography, consumerism and the medical profession. None of these players are concerned with aesthetics, so the linguistic chips have become unpretty by association. Vagina is fatally paired with speculum. Any word you can name for the male sex organ or its, um, movement seems to be the property of Larry Flynt. Even a perfectly serviceable word like nut, when uttered by an adult, causes paroxysms in sixth-grade boys.

My word processing program’s thesaurus has washed its hands of the matter: it eschews any word remotely associated with making love. Coitus, for example, claims to be NOT FOUND, and the program coyly suggests as the nearest alternative coincide with? It also pleads ignorant on penis and suggests pen friend. A writer in work-avoidance mode could amuse herself all day.

* * *

To write about sex at all, we must first face down the polite pretense that it doesn’t really matter to us and acknowledge that in the grand scheme of things, nothing could matter more. In the quiet of our writing rooms we have to corral the beast and find a way to tell of its terror and beauty. We must own up to its gravity. We also must accept an uncomfortable intimacy with our readers in the admission that, yes, we’ve both done this. We must warn our mothers before the book comes out. We must accept the economic reality that this one won’t make the core English Lit curriculum.

Still, in spite of everything, I’m determined to write about the biological exigencies of human life, and where can I start the journey except through this mined harbor? It’s a risk I’ll have to take.

* * *

When do you close the door on a sex scene in your work, and what influences that decision?

39 Responses

  1. It’s a really interesting question, one I don’t have answer to, but I know when I feel like I’m being treated well as a reader and when I’m not. Not sure I can put my finger on the distinction but it’s a distinction I do make.

    • “I know when I feel like I’m being treated well as a reader and when I’m not.”

      Well said. I think we all have a sense of the writer’s intention when we read a piece of work, and yes, it does matter.

  2. At this point it’s more about when I open the door. When sex found it’s way into my (so far) secondary WIP, it came in sideways. When I leaned back and thought about it, I realized the language of the sexual act is clumsy in my hands right now, but when my characters need to talk about it, my skills work just fine.

    Writing sex scenes is something I need to practice. I think the novel I’m referring to will need at least two. Sometime after autumn begins, you may be receiving a plaintive email from me begging for guidance.

    • I do think that writing about sex–especially when you have every intention of shredding the pages when you’re finished–can be freeing. Once you’ve written something really racy, you may find it easier to write about everything else.

      And you know I’m right here with whips and chains ready to go whenever you are.

  3. I don’t find myself with many ideas that would involve sex really. My current idea deals with molestation, and it will be dealt with in a nonspeculative way because the story is one of redemption, not exploitation.

    I do love this article! Thanks for putting it here. I think I see her point in terms of religion/spirituality more so than sex. Even hearing my own beliefs written into a story sounds corny to me. I can’t stand most Christian fiction.

      • Haha – it really may also be that I don’t trust myself with the writing of it too! I’m on a memoir kick and I have found some authors I admire for their ability to handle the scenes well – not too much, not too little.

        But, I also see a difference between writing sex in fiction and nonfiction. So maybe that’s it. My ideas have mostly been nonfiction based so far. Once I get this memoir “out of the way,” who knows?

  4. A great question. I hate to admit it, but I have a tendency to reflect the parochial values I was raised with. When it comes to sex in my fiction, I usually pull a “fade to black” before the scene becomes too graphic. Interesting to me, because otherwise I have no big boundaries to what I will write, or write about. Time for me to examine that practice, perhaps. Thanks for getting me to think about it.

    • I have always found it interesting that men, who allegedly spend a lot of time thinking about sex, are the least likely to write about it in any serious way. I wonder if this has to do with the way men separate emotion from sexuality; for women, those elements are intertwined (heh-heh) and therefore seem to offer more dramatic possibilities.

  5. I don’t close that door, I open it. You can find examples on my website in my Previously Published Stories, most notably in “Karen and the Dropout.” I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read that one.

    Twenty years ago I wrote a book that was sexually explicit–I would prefer to think it sexually frank–without being erotic and without being pornographic. It wasn’t clinical, either. It was an exploration of the compelling power of sex and the desperate grief that can accompany it. It was in first person and a little overwrought. I called it a novel. There was absolutely no market for it. I have since rewritten it as a third person short story cycle and toned the language down (third person POV helps with that). Some of its stories have been rejected with love, but no part of it has yet been published.

    Sex scenes can be difficult to write well. The above-referenced novel had over two dozen scenes or instances or episodes of sexual intercourse. Late in the composing of the work I remember thinking, I cannot do another fuck-scene–what can I do to this next one so it’s not just another fuck-scene, without jumping the shark?

    Three years ago I wrote a story that has explicit sex in it. For a number of reasons the story wasn’t working right. One of the reasons was that the sex scenes weren’t setting well. The past two weeks I’ve been working on a rewrite. I turned that story round and round and round to try to find the best way in. I finally hit upon it the other night–writing from the woman character’s POV in third person has given the piece a focus and an emotional power, particularly with regard to the sex scenes.

    And I almost forgot, I have another sex book, The Case Histories, Vol. I, which is also largely unpublished. It’s a collection of poems derived from Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis. Three of them have been published. They’re on my website and you’ve read them.

    Most literary editors have allergic reactions to explicit sex. I don’t blame them. We’re brought up in this country with strange and twisted messages regarding sexual repression and sexual expression. And the plain aesthetic fact is, sex scenes are hard to write. They require a mature, sober balance, a keen intuition, and a relaxed openness–not unlike what is necessary for sex itself.

    Sex is too important for artistic doors to be closed upon it. It’s too important to be trivialized. It’s too important to be all tricked up in gaudy language.

    • Just so we’re clear, I’ve read everything you’ve written that’s available to me. Most of it more than once.

      “A mature, sober balance, a keen intuition, and a relaxed openness” are elements of sex and sex-writing I have never mastered. I write sex as though I’m describing a battle scene. Very little romance or sobriety about it, scads of conflict. Writing about sex that isn’t dark and somewhat deviant will be a step up the evolutionary ladder for me, but when I get there I hope to be following your lead.

      • “Just so we’re clear, I’ve read everything you’ve written that’s available to me. Most of it more than once.”

        Averil, I hardly know what to say, except thank you, and thank you again, very much.

  6. I pretty much just set the scene, with a bit of unambiguous language, then go on to say the two people “loved each other.” Anything more explicit than that would be out of tone with my stories anyway.

    • Yes, I think you’re right. But I’ll be cackling maniacally when you start dropping f-bombs at my place: another serious writer, smutted up in the den of iniquity.

      Come on, Paul. You know you want to.

  7. I wrote my first for-public-viewing love scene for my current WIP. It ends just before they have sex and picks up a scene or so later during the afterglow—and names no body parts I couldn’t list in front of my MIL (it does mention condoms). . . but it isn’t meant to be graphically sizzling, it was meant to be two people finally figuring out that they’re wanted by the one they want. My next story is probably going to be more graphic, because as far as I know right now, at least two of the characters will be in it for the physical feelings more than the connection.

    As a reader. I think that closing the door on emotional description—intimacy and longing, anger and fear, boredom, etc.—in a love/lust/sex scene is more of a problem than keeping it open to view a detailed act of sex. All I ask is that it’s not mechanical, unless that’s the point.

    Averil, am I making any sense at all? It’s been a long, damn day.

  8. Similar to dialog, I’ve found sex in scene to be a tricky mix of character defining action and psychological foreshadowing–best to keep the attributions simple and the voice true to plot. Very hard to do. I’ve spent the last three days on 10 pages. Changed POV from 1st to close 3rd, but kept to a driving beat.

    • POV is always tricky. I’ve written a couple of books in close third, and a novel plus several short stories in first person present, with the idea that the sex would be most intimate from that perspective. I was not wrong. But I think I’ll be stepping back to third for the next book and we’ll see how it goes.

      And dialog? Oof. That’s another blog post or three.

  9. That’s a great quote, and she makes an excellent point. It is hard to write about sex beautifully because there aren’t beautiful words to describe sexual body parts. And that is really too bad. I’ve encountered that problem–as everyone who has written a sex scene has.

    As for when I close the door on a sex scene, it depends on the general content of the book. For instance, in books 1 and 3 of my series, while my protag does have sex, there aren’t any full fledged sex scenes, but in books 2 and 4, there are. In my opinion, the stories in two of the books needed the full scene and the stories in the others didn’t: to put sex scenes in those books would have been to put them in just to have a sex scene, and I try not to have any type of scene, sex or otherwise, just to have it.

    • Yeah, the names for genitalia are awful. I can hardly type ‘penis’ and I don’t believe I’ve ever said the word out loud. It’s ugly and ridiculous all at the same time.

      The word, I mean, not the, um . . . Oh, never mind.

      • I don’t have penises in my sex scenes, so I can’t comment on that one. The one that’s hardest for me to deal with is actually “butt.” “Butt” sounds like something pre-teen would say. “Buttocks” sounds ridiculous. “Ass” sounds too crass for a “beautiful” sex scene (although okay for some tones). So I end up with grabbing hips and thighs.

        • Come on, ‘ass’ is a sexy word. I read a story in which an American writer repeatedly referenced the ‘derriere’ and I thought, This is so uncomfortable. Stop being coy and say the fucking word.

          Or go for the work-around and make use of hips and thighs. It’s a good strategy.

  10. I close the door when the writing starts to suck. And that, for me, is coming a long way.

    I heard Barbara Kingsolver read when “Prodigal Summer” came out. There is a sex scene in the first chapter and she told us (in her southern English teacher sort of way) how her father used to read grown-up books to her when she was a child and how sometimes he would say “hm” and “um” and read a few pages to himself, and she never knew why. And then (in her delightful southern English teacher sort of way) she said “Here’s where I ‘hm’ and ‘um’ and skip a few pages.”

  11. Great insight here and very true. In my stories I sometimes write down all the sex and dirty sweatiness, leave it awhile, and then come back and prune away. It’s quite challenging to describe these things as – yes – penis and vagina just make you laugh!

  12. Ah, I’m just about to tinker with the sex scenes I’ve written for my current wip – it’s depressingly difficult. I can do scenic description, but getting a character to interact with another is always a little tricky, and couple that with the nerves I have about writing sexual content in general (all but for that one time with the political slash fiction I wrote for my MA) this is going to be one of the biggest challenges. It’s also supposed to be awkward, some of it, and clumsy and mixed with the skewed perspectives of the main character. I’ll be off doing this for months. Ouff.

    • You’re unbelievably lyrical with scenic descriptions, Helen. I don’t have that in my bag of tricks at all, but my next story has a really strange and important setting that I need to nail. So I’ll be hacking away too. For months.

  14. I tend to close the door. Funny that. I’m more out there with my personal life than that of my characters. Do I believe they deserve their privacy or am I afraid I can’t do the scene justice?

    • Right? It does feel oddly voyeuristic to write those scenes. (Okay, so maybe that part’s okay with me.) I say you get in there and report back, Lisa. Bet you could do it justice.

  15. You’re all into loathing today, so I’m a bit later for the party. But I wrote a sex scene today.

    22 words. But still.

    • Look out, E.L. James! Please oh please, tell me the 22 words were a summary of events and not a detailed account. It takes my characters longer than that to slide down a bra strap.

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