Gah!! How explicit should a story about child abuse/pornography be?

The key here is you create this world of iniquity. You can use elements of history or psychology, but your writing draws the reader in. There's no need to justify the validity of a scene, just sell the concept to the reader inside the story. You can describe actions such as bending over and the reader will fill in that anatomy is exposed, or spread to accommodate X while tied up will certainly generate an image that the reader will see at their own level of intensity and react with their own level of emotion. It's not immoral to make a reader think their own thoughts, which leaves you a bit shinier.
Scumbags usually start out in a scumbag world, their morality is usually established by the time they do scumbag things. Their mentality is usually to get whatever they can get while they can get away with it, and get out of trouble any way they can when they get caught. Your masturmind may find his humanity after he turns 'states evidence' to get out of a jam, but he is what he is. I think it's up to you alone to decide how much ugly you want to show for effect.
You might consider exposing all of this by having masturmind start when he creates a porno 'stable' while he's still in high school. It's in a time of moral rebellion, anyway. He learns to stay 'under the radar' from the start and develops skills of manipulation? Maybe later it slowly spirals out of control like things usually do.

 

On this you need to go with your gut is all I can say because you didn't mention what the goal of this book is. Is it more about the business and informing the world to try and stir up some change? If so it needs to show that world as realistically as possible. It is simply about the unfortunate circumstances of the parents and their children and how they cope? Is it more of a crime novel that follows the bringing down of the monsters in this business? I'm not sure so it's hard to suggest it. Figure out what you want to tell then go with your gut.

When it comes to beta readers make it clear what your intentions were and ask them to tell you if you delivered that or if it got too graphic.

 

Honest opinion- unless you are a survivor of abuse and it’s your story you stay clear of this subject. Don’t see an agent touching it

 

Like most traumatic subjects, there are plenty of books published on this sort of abuse by authors who weren't victims themselves. Research and tone are both key, and level of severity in content could make or break a book like this. That doesn't mean it's not worth attempting; it just means it's delicate.

 

Part of the issue is that I have competing goals. Maybe the thing to do is to look at it as three, four separate stories? Still trying to figure this out.

But, yes, I do want to raise awareness of this issue. I want to explore why someone would do this and the money that's involved in the industry, the lives it affects, how victims/survivors get out of this situation, etc.

I have multiple main characters. For example, the beginning of the book, the pornographer is the main character. The victims/survivors take centre stage briefly, then the investigators take the centre stage, back to the pornographer who has made his pile and is now stepping back, so a new pornographer moves in, a more violent one, the investigation goes back to centre stage, the customers of the product make an appearance.....the end, the pornographer goes to jail. The victims/survivors get compensation. The customers get their comeuppance. The investigators, some can't cope and become drunks/addicts, quit, or re-dedicate themselves to battling this evil.

V.C. Andrews has tons of uncomfortable (to me) sexual content and she's being published - after her death! I don't think just having the content itself is an issue. If it was, true crime books about Paul Bernado for example would not have been published.

Why is it you can't self publish? If you have the money, any printer should print up copies of your book and then you can sell it however.

I *WILL* write the book. I'll print it up myself and send copies to law enforcement's special victims units or whomever and say, if this helps.....I doubt I'm smart enough to have a proposed solution they haven't thought of but who knows? Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Maybe I'll say/write something that sparks an idea.

For example, rapists and murders are now being solved via investigators tracing DNA through ancestry websites. This is a new investigative tool that has only recently shown its potential. Do any of my investigative ideas have merit? I'd like to think so but who knows.

Of course, I'd love to be on the New York Times best seller list as well and have the entire world reading my words.

Thankfully, no it isn't my personal experience. I do understand I may not have the moral authority to do such a story justice but I do want to write it.

Yah, I agree. One person I ran a description of a child pornographic image past got back to me and said, "Scott, that's not child porn."?? What?! It's a naked child - how much more pornographic can you get?? I'm going to stay with what I have - it's graphic enough, making it more graphic would be too much.

My method for showing the graphic nature of the photos is to concentrate on the sheer volume of images, not the content of each individual photo. " Naked kid sitting on a swing/bench/sandy beach/etc" is sufficient description for me - the scene is at a nudist camp where some abusers meet potential victims/survivors. I could go into more detail but someone above - DK3654 I think - said basically that less is more and I find myself agreeing as I write.

If it helps, there are four scenes where I need description.

1. **this is the very beginning, in the 1960s. The pornographer is talking to a mom about how he wants her daughter to pose, he's showing her a skin magazine and saying, "I want Suzie to pose like this, then like that..." etc. When 'Suzie' is done, he pays the mom her $200 and says,"Next!" - that works, right? I can include a line about 10, 12, 16 whatever # of girls waiting in line for photos with their dad/mom/caregiver. Maybe pornographer can overhear one saying, "Daddy, I don't want to take my clothes of in front of him!" And daddy's reply, "You have to honey, we need the money." before snapping away photos.

2. There's a scene at a nudist camp where the pornographer is looking for more kids and he makes contact with a parent(s) and has to beat around the bush about taking pictures of their child and he keeps getting more and more explicit and the parents are ok with it all. He can't start with, "I want a photo of little Tommy or Veronica posing like...." - he has to work up to it. I am debating if he should use the magazine trick - "Can you ask Veronica to stand like this? Sit like that?" but I don't know.....still working on this. I can get away with some public photos because they're at a nudist camp but explicit photos would need to be in privacy of a tent/cabin/vehicle.

3. A more graphic/explicit scene which I will use three or more times - the initial video, the investigators discussing the video, and then the video being shown in court. This is the video that has an older child being directed to hurt a younger child on camera under the threat of physical violence to both children.

4. This scene, I am very conflicted about. I have a babysitter who is directing a younger sibling (female) to molest another sibling (male) while she films it. I was leaning towards having the younger female sibling grow up to become an investigator in an attempt to make up for her past, maybe finding video of her molesting her brother during an investigation? Still trying to feel this out. I do have a very graphic description of how this plays out which is *NOT* being printed - I only went into this level of detail because I want the three characters to have flashbacks and I needed to work out how each of them saw/experienced the same situation.

I think I've gotten the gist of where I am going to go. I'll go through multiple re-writes.

Thanks again, all!

 

making the link you do above is just weird frankly.

we are talking about the abuse of children.

I’m a lawyer and deal with a lot of these claims. The idea that someone might enjoy writing and reading this stuff is something I can’t understand - but that’s just me.

 

there is art in paedophilia?

I don’t believe in censorship but my point is that I don’t see a market for this. What agent is going to think this is a good fit?

 

This is a hard question-in part because it's not something I really want to put much thought into trying to describe. My one piece of advice would be to just tell enough to hint and let the readers imagine on their own. By describing your characters reactions to the photo's, not the photos themselves you can lead the reader towards imagining the content themselves. If the photo's contents make the normally stoic, emotionless character break down in tears and have to be held back from pummeling the person responsible to death, I think the reader can guess at what it shows.

 

Too many false positives. What happens to children's photographers who take pictures of a baby at the parent's behest? Or medical photographers who need to take pictures for multiple purposes?

It's like pornography filters. Breast cancer sites were accidentally blocked by at least one company's filtering software here.

 

I think it depends what your intention is so far.
Are they explaining the conflict and overcoming it? How is it being explained?

It's hard to give an exact answer because I'm obviously not the one writing the story, but it should basically be heavily implied. If you're reliving it detail after detail, depending on the context (kinda like if someone is sitting in a court room having to share their story) then your story will be only snuff.

Discussion and having a character reliving the moment for progressive purposes is fine. Actually letting the reader experience the moment as it takes place in explicit detail is just distasteful and edgy.

People that read about these subjects recoil in horror and disgust and that's the appropriate reaction. You don't like it and that's okay. But it would be foolish to say it doesn't happen at all and tell the world no one is allowed to write about anything remotely negative or traumatizing.

If your story is about solving crimes with the technology they have, it should be focused on such. If one episode has to do with child abuse, that is fine, but make the situation believable. Make the reader believe they had no other alternative and that no one would help them at all, or perhaps leave indication that the parents were some kind of lazy assholes that would allow this to happen.

 

Wow...take a break and get a bunch more replies. I should go on breaks more often. I wanted to show my appreciation with all the comments so I pretty much like all of them.


As I have written in this thread, one issue that I am experiencing is that I have multiple, competing and possibly contradictory goals. I wanted a crime story that could spotlight the role that technology could play in preventing/solving a crime and I wanted a crime nobody had (to my knowledge) written a book about so far. My background is in social work so I am aware of the general situation involving child abuse. I wanted to marry the two - the crime and the technology to prevent/solve a crime.

Part of the issue is that I didn't really start from that premise. I started with the idea that someone got involved in this business and it took off from there.

I should probably emphasis that at the start of the book, child pornography was NOT considered a crime. It did eventually get labelled a crime but that took place in the 70s I think.

I was initially being a bit sarcastic, my apologies, I wanted the nudity of the children to imply at the pornographic nature of the images. The person I was discussing it with is a victim/survivor of this industry and has a very explicit idea of what child pornography is. I won't be going anywhere near such a detailed description. I think someone mentioned testimony in court? That might be something I could work into the story - I'm a long way from that part, I only have three chapters written and now I need to re-write the first one again.

Ahh, I get it now. Ok, if you specifically want a book on a site that forbids the content you have written, there is a problem. If you want the book to go ahead as you've written it, you might have to drop Amazon and the other digital channels. Or you can perhaps change the book to what you want, then include a link at the end of the book to the original content on your personal author website and interested readers can head over there.

I agree that child pornography is child abuse.

Part of the problem with this discussion - as a lot of people have commented - is they don't know what I'm trying to accomplish, this goes to the fact that I didn't flesh this out very well myself before starting this thread. Back at the start of this post, I wrote:

"As I have written in this thread, one issue that I am experiencing is that I have multiple, competing and possibly contradictory goals. I wanted a crime story that could spotlight the role that technology could play in preventing/solving a crime and I wanted a crime nobody had (to my knowledge) written a book about so far. My background is in social work so I am aware of the general situation involving child abuse. I wanted to marry the two - the crime and the technology to prevent/solve a crime.

Part of the issue is that I didn't really start from that premise. I started with the idea that someone got involved in this business and it took off from there.

I should probably emphasis that at the start of the book, child pornography was NOT considered a crime. It did eventually get labelled a crime but that took place in the 70s I think. "

The other issue that has come up repeatedly is - "who's my audience?" - my ideal audience would be child abuse investigators who could read this and automatically (I hope) see exactly what I am talking about when I try and sound out ideas for preventing/solving this crime. Really, the big issue I keep running into is that I keep solving yesterday's crimes with today's technology! I wrote a whole chapter around how the investigator found a film processing centre and had to toss it when I realized that this wasn't a crime at the time period I had the investigation happening. Gah!!! It would be funny....except it's the third time I've made this error!!

(I've made the errors over about three, four years. It's not something I screwed up three times in a row.)

I am heading in this direction. I struggle with the pornographic scenes at the beginning. The pornographer is ok with it. The parents that brought their children to the pornographer for the money are ok with it. The eventual customers of the product are ok with it. There's no "WTF?!" reaction from anyone because this is not on anyone's radar. These types of photos were sold in .....(I'm not sure what the right word is?)......fringe magazines that would only be bought by people with an interest in this material and these magazines were publicly available at newsstands in New York prior to 1970. After 1970, when the laws started to change, they went under the counter but they were still available. I will double check with one of the advisors I am using for the name of one of the boy's magazine. It was some type of naturalist magazine.

The problem is the POV possibly - the pornographer, the parents, the customers, etc. The children and the investigators' POV are not shown in the first three, four chapters - so far.

I am planning a scene where the pornographer goes to jail and the victims are awarded compensation in civil court from the customers of this product. This is at the end though. I'm thinking the judge can make an order that anyone who the district attorney proves viewed images of child X has to pay child X (now adult X) financial damages for the crime they committed against child/adult X by viewing those images.

At the start, yes, but surely as time goes on, there will be more awareness around child pornography and what exactly makes it. There needs to be a human involved at some point to make that critical judgement.

That said, I seriously doubt we will ever get to that point - too much time and money needed, plus you'd need people that can look at some of the most vile and evil images it is possible to view and make a judgement about whether it is pornographic or not, all while staying sane. I don't think that's possible - the only possible idea I had was that perhaps you could ask a gay man to judge if a photo of a girl is pornographic, a lesbian woman to judge if a photo of a boy is pornographic but this only removes the component of sexual attractiveness from the equaltion. They still have to look at disturbing and violent images, so that won't work either.

****I am aware that's not politically correct, it just happens to be the only viable idea I thought of. The other idea was to recruit a convicted child molester to judge the photos and I can't see that happening.******

As I said above:

"I am heading in this direction. I struggle with the pornographic scenes at the beginning. The pornographer is ok with it. The parents that brought their children to the pornographer for the money are ok with it. The eventual customers of the product are ok with it. There's no "WTF?!" reaction from anyone because this is not on anyone's radar. These types of photos were sold in .....(I'm not sure what the right word is?)......fringe magazines that would only be bought by people with an interest in this material and these magazines were publicly available at newsstands in New York prior to 1970. After 1970, when the laws started to change, they went under the counter but they were still available. I will double check with one of the advisors I am using for the name of one of the boy's magazine. It was some type of naturalist magazine.


The problem is the POV possibly - the pornographer, the parents, the customers, etc. The children and the investigators' POV do not appear in the first three or four chapters of the book - so far."



I sort of have a set-up that I'd like to get through before I make changes but perhaps I can (should) have time jumps where I have the original pornographic photo shoot in the story and then parallel to that story, I have a former victim/survivor alongside the same story having a flashback as to what she experienced? I have seen this done, I'm not sure if I have the ability to pull it off myself but it might be a good contrast to the evil I am showing in the story, to show the consequences of that evil on a former victim/survivor.


The solutions that I currently have in the book,

1. The pornographer has adult pornographic photos and shows them to the parents and their children, "I want 'lil Suzie to stand like this, sit like that, etc."

2. The pornographer barks out commands to the child - "Move your arm up!" "Bend your leg!"

Other than the fact that the child is nude, the reader has to imagine what is being photographed. I didn't want to have a series of conversations so I was thinking something like,

After 8 hours Moe had a huge supply of nude shots to market to the magazines that were always hungry for fresh faces. He thought he had shot photos of 13 girls....or was it 15? Frankly they all blurred together. Hopefully Grace had kept track of the order.

Later on, he can count out the photos he develops and cross reference it to the money he paid out - he paid the parents $200 each. So if it comes to $2,600, that would be 13 kids.

 

At this point you should probably just go ahead and write it as a first draft. Sort things out afterwards, when you can see what you've got.

 

Wow, no replies after this last break?

Just a quick update and to answer a question I posted earlier in one of my replies.

I have a couple of new approaches to the child pornography so that I am not constantly writing the same dialogue over and over.

1. My weakness seems to be research. I did find some online reports of people being arrested for child pornography and the descriptions given of the photos that the offenders were caught with are what I will be using when necessary.......perhaps "cheating" but if said description has been published in a public newspaper, it should be ok. I need some variation in the descriptions, enough so the flashback scenes are "real" - no two people will recall it exactly the same way so....

2. Someone I was discussing this with, I was brainstorming what reasons parents would have - I need more than poverty - and how someone mentioned reality show obsessed parents, I can have this show up in the 80s but in the 60s, we got to talking and talking and it clicked - ART!!! Parents can justify this by telling themselves it's in the name of ART. It's not something I really thought of but it does work. It just has to be plausible - and the fact the parents are getting money for it is another "push" in the direction of doing it.


Also I did check with the people that have self identified as being victims/survivors of this crime, the magazine(s) were named a variation of "Boy" or "Boys" and apparently went through multiple name changes over time in an attempt to stay underground. The one magazine that I have seen discussed in a social work textbook is "Screw" magazine and the specific thing is that people were placing ads in this magazine requesting nude photos of children. I actually have used the ad part as a plot device for my story.

Now back to writing.....