Actually, I felt the same worry about my own writing at first ...but then thought 'what the hey.' If anything has surprised me more than people's reactions to my sex scenes I can't think what it is. Surprisingly ...most people don't seem surprised! And some of the people whom I feared would over-react actually praised my efforts. Some didn't like the amount of sex, and some don't like to read about sex at all. And a fair number thought I'd done it all pretty well. I think it all boils down to whether the reader likes/accepts sex scenes as part of a story. Sex is actually part of life, and a part that is hugely important to many people for a long time. Finding a sexual partner-for-life is the focus of many fictional stories. So why dither around about it when it comes to depicting it? It's an intimate encounter between two people, and has huge potential for developing relationships and characters within your story. If readers are always squeamish or bored by sex in stories, then it doesn't matter who has written them. What did surprise me was how NONE of my readers seemed to relate the sex in my story to me and my own sex life—which is the correct approach. Obviously I've had some experience, but I didn't write about my own experiences. I wrote sex as I imagined it for my imaginary characters, not as I experienced it myself. I am making stuff up. That is why I write fiction.
The bit in bold is my only reservation. Good to hear your readers didn't take it that way. I'm not worried about people thinking the sex scenes are inappropriate, too explicit, not explicit enough, whatever - it's part of the story, not gratuitous, so I don't care. All I'm worried about is people who know me thinking I'm writing out my own sex fantasies!
I heard people that write about sex tend to masturbate before/during/after the creative process... xD
What I wouldn't be caught dead writing about: Any depiction of rape (every gender and age.) Sorry but even if one of my characters were sick enough to do just that, I don't think I have or ever will have the skills to do this properly so it won't just be SURPRISE RAPE FOR SHOCK VALUE!! Anything that involves complications in pregnancy including miscarriages. It's just way too personal. Any depiction of harm on animals, the elderly, or children. If the protagonist is a kid/elder that can clearly fight back it's one thing, but a story where arthritic Granny is murdered in her nursing home? Hell to the goddamned no. I'm also not going to go the Game of Thrones (TV show) way and depict burning children at the stake. What I'm iffy about: Women getting hurt. I know, I made a thread discussing this a few months back so I'm just gonna say it here as well. Women getting hurt. Badly. It may be a double-standard since I'm perfectly OK if a male character got the crap kicked out of him, and it's especially odd since most of my protagonists are women and they are expected to go into danger and confront the bad guy. I'm slowly getting past this with the help of said female protagonists. Writing about other cultures vastly different from mine because I'm afraid of getting it wrong or assuming they're all the way I write them in my book. I'm slowly learning to teach myself to get over that fear and just research what I don't know and treat the characters like...y'know...people, but still, as a white, heterosexual, Christian, American male, you can see where I might be afraid of writing about a different group because I don't want to offend them by depicting them as one way or another. Thing is, I love diversity so this is an odd little stump for me. Sex. C'mon, it's natural and it's where babies come from. If it's important for the story, then have your characters do some sweet, sweet lovin'!!
I agree with most of you in such a way that I don't really know where I stand anymore. It all looks gray right now. I think I may use some violence in my next project, but I may keep it to the very end. Then I may go crazy and offer the reader something incredibly violent to finish the story. It should work! Regarding children and animal suffering... I haven't done it (yet) but I may consider doing it if the story demands it. Ironically, what I am more reluctant to do is: - Zombies. - Sex. - Romance. - Vampires. - Dragons & Magic. - Belic. - Detectives. - Aliens. Reason would be that I don't think I can do anything decent in those areas, and that I consider those elements way too abused. I'm pondering a few ideas that involve some of those elements tho, and I've been thinking about it for about 3 years. Never completely disregarding the possibility...
There is a difference between reluctance to write a topic because you don't know enough to depict it correctly, and being reluctant to write a topic because you fear somebody will think a certain way about you. The first is a legitimate concern—although if the topic is important to your story you can certainly educate yourself. I think the second is understandable, but I also think it's a hurdle any writer needs to get over. If you're constantly running your story through the Omigod meter, then you're hamstringing yourself. I made the decision early on in my writing to be honest at all times, and to not pull punches. I think it was the right decision, for me at least.
...and so? If this thought keeps you from writing honestly (or reading with an open mind) I feel you're shortchanging yourself. Let people think whatever they will about what happens before, during or after you write any scene. This reflects on them. A nudgy-nudgy-wink-wink or oh icky poo attitude towards all sex scenes suggests immaturity. An immature person or a prudish person will think this way. Don't pander to them. Do they think everybody who writes a scene containing a swordfight goes out and slashes at people to get themselves in the mood? Good grief.
I agree. The thing I'm learning now more than ever is that not everyone's going to like what you write. Hell, there's a poster here that talks of his/her heroine doing things (ie, torturing a baby) I would never write about but that's definitely not gonna stop him/her, nor should it. Be true to your story. If it demands that your characters strip and have hot, sweaty sex, so be it. If my sci-fi demands that my protagonist, a black Scottish female, be Jewish and come from a Jewish background, so be it. The beauty of the modern world is that all the information we have is available at our fingertips. We just need to get to them.
Here's a thought for a writing prompt. Pick a topic you think you could never write ...and write it! See what happens.
I actually never heard authors masturbate writing about sex. I just gave it a shoot at writing a novel trying to use popular formulas, including sex; and I masturbated a lot while writing the sex scenes. It's been months since I left that project to rot. I cannot bring myself to write "popular" literature. I despised the few pages I got... maybe I'll resume working on it some day tho, but right now I can say I felt really forced, and my feelings reflected in the quality of the whole thing, so it was also poorly written, stupid and flat.
I'm thinking E.L james had a great time writing Fifty Shades... considering it was her sexual fantasy of twilight.
I would think so as well (lol/gross). Actually she was the one who inspired me to try something along those lines. My approach was as follows: a psychopath kidnaps a teenager girl to torture and murder her in his basement. So the girl is naked and chained but the psycho discovers she is a virgin, and aditionally she says she is willing to do anything to remain alive, including murdering someone else. This causes the psycho to seek for someone else: a chatolic priest, who is algo chained in the basement. The idea was to avoid including sex scenes, to focus in the horror (somehow) and in the sensuality of the girl, while also discussing a little bit about religion. At the end, the girl is supposed to kill the father and the destiny of the girl remains unknown. You don't know if she was spared or killed too. As you can see, the formula consisted in mixing elements of sex, horror, suspense and religion. Supposedly a commercial hit that could spawn at least two more sequels. However all I got from it was a lot of semen and boredom, since I felt I wasn't being truthful to myself. I may consider revisiting this project in the following months, tho. It is kind of sound nevertheless, so... more semen ahead...!
If you find this^ sort of thing arousing, I strongly and seriously suggest you seek professional help.
A few more from moi: - Chosen Ones and Prophecies. - Abusive aunt-and-uncle combo or an abusive caretaker of the orphaned main character. First off, if they don't like the kid, why are they keeping the orphaned shrimp?! Second off, it's kind of offensive to all aunts and uncles, and general caretakers everywhere. Not all of them desire to abuse small orphaned children. One of my protagonists is an orphan who lives with his aunt and uncle. And yes, they love him just as if he were their biological son. - The underdog football player who, through his quirky antics, win the respect of the football team, the coach, his cheerleader love interest and the entire frickin' school. He also wins them a hard game because he's just so gosh darn special!! No. Just...just no. - The disabled or people of color serving as nothing more than 'Wise Mentor Figures' or 'Inspirational' to the non-disabled white character. Look, nothing wrong with having a disabled person/person of color serve as a mentor, but don't make this the entire reason for their existence!! If I, a disabled person, inspire you, good. Go for it my young Padawan Learner, but my disability isn't all that I am. - The mentally ill character that serves as nothing more than 'Please pity me!' or 'LOL I FUNNY CAUSE MY BRAIN BE BROKE!' or 'The voices in my head are telling me to kill you.' Just please don't even fucking go there. I'll throw your book away if you do. Same with the previous one. Especially when their mental handicap/disorder is cured by a song-and-dance routine, a sudden epiphany, or a good time with a harden badass in a grungy leather jacket riding a motorcycle. People are much, much more than just the color of their skin or the fact that their brain/a certain body part doesn't work right. - A 'coming-of-age' story where the villains are clear-cut obvious symbolisms for what's wrong with the world.
- The evil guy who just awoke after being sleep for a millenia (I'll close the book) - The evil guy who is so evil that he laughs while he is being evil (Palpatine, anyone?) - The good guy with empty ideals of justice and freedom (just for kids). - The good guy who gets the girl (fuck this plot, seriously...!) - The girl who can also be brave and gets in love (Disney) - The whatever guy who sacrifices himself with a smile on his face (it's cool, but still)
I don't think I have many limits, but I most certainly wouldn't ever go into the 'under age' aspect of things which many have already mentioned. At the end of the day, the world is a pretty dark and brutal place at times, so if you want your story to be authentic then there are some places you have to venture, in both mind and prose.
Yeah. Tread with caution, Regent. You might find yourself fighting huge battles you didn't foresee coming. You're braver than I am in that regard.
- The asian guy who talks about honor. - The mother/wife/son/uncle Ben who dies to give the hero a reason. - The son of a great king who became evil and is challenged by his brother. - The... Every time I ponder an idea I try to stay away from the over used ones as much as possible. It's not easy and it kind of doesn't mean anything because this kind of stuff is used all the time with great success, but there's something in me that wants to do "something else". Also if we count the plots: - The big evil menace that must be destroyed by a team of five people. - The awesome item that will turn the weak main character into a hero. - The dream/prophecy that tells you what's going to happen in a confusing way. - The... On top of this, whenever one find an original idea, it usually sucks, so it's kind of a big deal whenever inspiration arrives.
I've known so many damaged people in my life that their life stories, some pretty horrible, became part of everyday conversation. After a while you get so blunted like you've heard it all. So much so that most of my characters have ugly backgrounds that are treated as 'normal.' Not really horrible. Sometimes I worry that matter-of-factness will/does backfire. Places I won't go - animal cruelty. I had one scene that I wrote, didn't like and removed it. Imbalanced views - I try not to scapegoat types, religions, political views by making them my bad guys. And if I do have a person of a certain type as a bad guy, I try to balance out the view by showing a good character of the same type. Altered of course to show it's the thinking, anger, hurt, or his past causing the evil not the faction.
I feel like labeling things into the category of "won't write about" is just a terrible idea and something no good writer should do. Yeah, as I have seen people talking about, there are some tropes and just overused things in writing but that doesn't mean you have to stay a giant space away from it. Sometimes those tropes could help. And you'd have a pretty bad time if you're a person who will not write about sex scenes when that is just what your story needs. I'm pretty much willing to write anything if it pertains to my book but I will not just shove random shit into it. If a kid needs to die in my book for some reason then I will put it in. Like many people I have seen on here I too feel like the book uses me to write it. So if my book needs sex scenes then so be it. And if it needs some random person to get their ass kicked (girl or boy) then so be it.
