Sex on a Seesaw
Jul. 12th, 2004 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonNow that I've gotten your attention, I'm going to talk about writing.
I slogged through chapter 10 of The Rewrite by the end of the week. C10 needed the most revision of any of the chapters so far, but not too bad, really. There will definitely be rougher waters ahead. This pass through I'm correcting all the things that need correcting, cutting the stuff that obviously doesn't fit anymore, generally cleaning up. After I've finished that phase I'll let the ms. sit for a couple of weeks then do a concentrated "reader" reading: read the whole damned thing in a concentrated period of time as if I'm nothing but a reader. No corrections allowed! Just reading and reaction to what I'm reading. I'm hoping that will give me a better idea of what else needs to be chucked or punched up or whatever.
Since the critical consensus on C10 was that the Power Sex segment needed to be made more sensual even if the subtext was about power, I set about spicing it up. Now it remains to be seen if I went too far in the other direction. I'm no longer intimidated by sex scenes, but that doesn't mean they're easy to get right. It doesn't mean I don't struggle with them. It's always a bit of a seesaw. (Hmm. Sex on a seesaw... Some great visual and comic potential there, but the mechanics might get a little rough. Still...) I've come to see sex scenes as just another aspect of writing emotion because the best ones are not about mechanics but about the way the participants feel. Sometimes graphic is not as sexy as less graphic—again, it comes down to how the participants' emotions are conveyed, how the act makes them feel, how that makes the reader respond.
Let's face it, all highly charged emotional scenes are difficult to write. I firmly believe in the old saw, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." The writer, I believe, has to get down and dirty with whatever strong emotions h/she is trying to convey, and that's a difficult leap of faith to make sometimes. Absolutely necessary in the long run. Maybe not in the first draft if you can't face it right away, but somewhere down the line I think the writer has to strip off, get emotionally naked, and go deep. Or you'll never be able to pull your reader into that place, never be able to make them feel what they need to feel.
At least in my opinion. Maybe there are writers out there who can make you feel intensely without feeling it themselves, but I kind of doubt it. I think you can tell when a writer is skimming the surface of the emotions, playing the clever game rather than acting it out on the page. I may admire a "clever game" writer's prose style and plotting and structure and themes, but if h/she can't make me feel, I'm never going to love their work.
Not that they give a s**t, I'm sure.
I slogged through chapter 10 of The Rewrite by the end of the week. C10 needed the most revision of any of the chapters so far, but not too bad, really. There will definitely be rougher waters ahead. This pass through I'm correcting all the things that need correcting, cutting the stuff that obviously doesn't fit anymore, generally cleaning up. After I've finished that phase I'll let the ms. sit for a couple of weeks then do a concentrated "reader" reading: read the whole damned thing in a concentrated period of time as if I'm nothing but a reader. No corrections allowed! Just reading and reaction to what I'm reading. I'm hoping that will give me a better idea of what else needs to be chucked or punched up or whatever.
Since the critical consensus on C10 was that the Power Sex segment needed to be made more sensual even if the subtext was about power, I set about spicing it up. Now it remains to be seen if I went too far in the other direction. I'm no longer intimidated by sex scenes, but that doesn't mean they're easy to get right. It doesn't mean I don't struggle with them. It's always a bit of a seesaw. (Hmm. Sex on a seesaw... Some great visual and comic potential there, but the mechanics might get a little rough. Still...) I've come to see sex scenes as just another aspect of writing emotion because the best ones are not about mechanics but about the way the participants feel. Sometimes graphic is not as sexy as less graphic—again, it comes down to how the participants' emotions are conveyed, how the act makes them feel, how that makes the reader respond.
Let's face it, all highly charged emotional scenes are difficult to write. I firmly believe in the old saw, "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader." The writer, I believe, has to get down and dirty with whatever strong emotions h/she is trying to convey, and that's a difficult leap of faith to make sometimes. Absolutely necessary in the long run. Maybe not in the first draft if you can't face it right away, but somewhere down the line I think the writer has to strip off, get emotionally naked, and go deep. Or you'll never be able to pull your reader into that place, never be able to make them feel what they need to feel.
At least in my opinion. Maybe there are writers out there who can make you feel intensely without feeling it themselves, but I kind of doubt it. I think you can tell when a writer is skimming the surface of the emotions, playing the clever game rather than acting it out on the page. I may admire a "clever game" writer's prose style and plotting and structure and themes, but if h/she can't make me feel, I'm never going to love their work.
Not that they give a s**t, I'm sure.