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What's today?
Dec. 19th, 2006 10:42 amI'm functioning on about three hours of sleep. I wasn't going to. When I drug myself to bed last night, I was going to say "frell it" and call in sick today. Then I got up at 6:00 with Mark, and was surprisingly functioningly awake. Three hours is my window for that, actually. At 4-6 hours I'm groggy and bleh all day. Three gives me this kind of euphoric belief that I am just fine, even though I'm doomed to crash horribly after about hour four of wakefulness.
Which is right about now. Ye Gods, I don't think I'm going to make it the full eight today.
Yesterday, a bunch of people posted really interesting thoughts on writing sex all over LJ. As I was actually in the midst of writing a sex scene at the time, I found the posts even more relavent and thought provoking than usual. Writing sex isn't easy. Writing it well is even more of a challenge. I'm not always convinced I do, but I give it my best shot. As![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mallory_blog states, it's one of those important scenes for your characters, emotionally (she equates it very interestingly with survival, the kind of scenes where you're character's life hangs by a thread) so it's important to get it right and not just go through the motions, as it were.
Someone else stated (eithercommodorified or Lois McMaster Bujold, I'm not sure which, now) that how much detail you go into changes for each specific scene and the characters involved. The exact analogy used was that of a murder victim in a mystery - sometimes you use excruciating detail, and sometimes there's just a body, and that's pretty much all you say as the writer. I feel this is YES, ABSOLUTELY true.
Reading all this made me really stop and examine my current WIP, and (obviously) the sex I'm currently writing in it. Does it need to be there? Is it important to the story? To my characters? How important? I've got two protagonists, one male, one female. I've been telling the book from alternating viewpoints, depending on the scene. The first sex scene I wrote is from my male protags POV, and thus is a bit more immediate and crude (I don't mean in an ew, gross way, just in a language choice, voice way. The words fuck and cock are used frequently, but hopefully not too much. Though like Sam Starett, Parr tends to use 'fuck' pretty liberally even when he's not actually doing it. That's part of his mental voice.) Anyway, men view sex differently than women, and Parr was coming at it from the perspective of a guy who hasn't actually had any in a few decades. These were all things I had to consider when writing the scene. If I'd told it from Elysia's POV, it would have been a different story, a completely different scene.
Here's a brief snippet that gives a good example of Parr's voice in the scene. As background, Parr's trying to be a good guy here for one of the few times in his life, and not take advantage of an innocent girl who's literally just been mind frelled by, we'll say an incubus, for ease of explanation:
( Snippet #1 )
That's pretty much how the whole scene is written. Several chapters later, I have the scene I just finished (er, and for anyone reading *cough*kistha *cough*, I have 2 chapters going up today, as soon as I finish about 1500 more words) which is written from Elysia's POV. It's their second time having sex, and it's an entirely different situation, different voice, different POV, yet same characters. The feel, the tone, everything about the second scene is different from the first, even though it is just as detailed. I'll pick an example where something sort of similar is happening:
( Snippet #2 )
Yes, these are short samplings, but you should still get the idea of how vastly different both scenes are from one another. Since both characters are my protags, and I'm using both POVs in the book, I decided early on that if I was going to write one detailed sex scene, I'd have to write two - one from each POV. Because yes, they are important. They're not just in the book so I can have my characters have sex. As in a real life relationship, the sex here is part of what develops Parr and Elysia as a couple. In the book, the first time they have sex is a catalyst that literally changes Elysia's life and everything she thought she would have in it forever. There are serious consequences for both her and Parr, and it changes them. The second time is more of a bonding experience. By that point, they have to start leanring how to function as a couple, as a unit, and the sex is literally the first (maybe second) step down that road. These are pivotal, important moments in the book as a whole and specific to the characters, and I had to consider that when writing the scenes. I'm fairly certain that these will be the only detailed scenes in the book. Oh, I'm sure they'll have sex again, but it will be like that example above - instead of describing every detail of the murder, there will just be a body. A short paragraph, one or two lines, and the story will move on. Yes, those first two scenes need to be there, but I don't think I need to be LKH and write half the book as sex, LOL.
Which is right about now. Ye Gods, I don't think I'm going to make it the full eight today.
Yesterday, a bunch of people posted really interesting thoughts on writing sex all over LJ. As I was actually in the midst of writing a sex scene at the time, I found the posts even more relavent and thought provoking than usual. Writing sex isn't easy. Writing it well is even more of a challenge. I'm not always convinced I do, but I give it my best shot. As
mallory_blog states, it's one of those important scenes for your characters, emotionally (she equates it very interestingly with survival, the kind of scenes where you're character's life hangs by a thread) so it's important to get it right and not just go through the motions, as it were. Someone else stated (either
commodorified or Lois McMaster Bujold, I'm not sure which, now) that how much detail you go into changes for each specific scene and the characters involved. The exact analogy used was that of a murder victim in a mystery - sometimes you use excruciating detail, and sometimes there's just a body, and that's pretty much all you say as the writer. I feel this is YES, ABSOLUTELY true.Reading all this made me really stop and examine my current WIP, and (obviously) the sex I'm currently writing in it. Does it need to be there? Is it important to the story? To my characters? How important? I've got two protagonists, one male, one female. I've been telling the book from alternating viewpoints, depending on the scene. The first sex scene I wrote is from my male protags POV, and thus is a bit more immediate and crude (I don't mean in an ew, gross way, just in a language choice, voice way. The words fuck and cock are used frequently, but hopefully not too much. Though like Sam Starett, Parr tends to use 'fuck' pretty liberally even when he's not actually doing it. That's part of his mental voice.) Anyway, men view sex differently than women, and Parr was coming at it from the perspective of a guy who hasn't actually had any in a few decades. These were all things I had to consider when writing the scene. If I'd told it from Elysia's POV, it would have been a different story, a completely different scene.
Here's a brief snippet that gives a good example of Parr's voice in the scene. As background, Parr's trying to be a good guy here for one of the few times in his life, and not take advantage of an innocent girl who's literally just been mind frelled by, we'll say an incubus, for ease of explanation:
( Snippet #1 )
That's pretty much how the whole scene is written. Several chapters later, I have the scene I just finished (er, and for anyone reading *cough*
kistha *cough*, I have 2 chapters going up today, as soon as I finish about 1500 more words) which is written from Elysia's POV. It's their second time having sex, and it's an entirely different situation, different voice, different POV, yet same characters. The feel, the tone, everything about the second scene is different from the first, even though it is just as detailed. I'll pick an example where something sort of similar is happening:( Snippet #2 )
Yes, these are short samplings, but you should still get the idea of how vastly different both scenes are from one another. Since both characters are my protags, and I'm using both POVs in the book, I decided early on that if I was going to write one detailed sex scene, I'd have to write two - one from each POV. Because yes, they are important. They're not just in the book so I can have my characters have sex. As in a real life relationship, the sex here is part of what develops Parr and Elysia as a couple. In the book, the first time they have sex is a catalyst that literally changes Elysia's life and everything she thought she would have in it forever. There are serious consequences for both her and Parr, and it changes them. The second time is more of a bonding experience. By that point, they have to start leanring how to function as a couple, as a unit, and the sex is literally the first (maybe second) step down that road. These are pivotal, important moments in the book as a whole and specific to the characters, and I had to consider that when writing the scenes. I'm fairly certain that these will be the only detailed scenes in the book. Oh, I'm sure they'll have sex again, but it will be like that example above - instead of describing every detail of the murder, there will just be a body. A short paragraph, one or two lines, and the story will move on. Yes, those first two scenes need to be there, but I don't think I need to be LKH and write half the book as sex, LOL.
