Let’s talk about sex in books.
Coming from the viewpoint of someone born in the previous century, I’m fine with it. A little spice is fine. But like garlic and tequila, a little goes a long way.
We’ve never been further from the social constraints of our Victorian predecessors who were scandalized by the accidental reveal of a booted ankle. Sex is pretty much everywhere, and we’re pretty much blasé about it. Things that would have given my grandparents heart attacks barely earn a raised eyebrow in today’s society.
But I am a graduate of the School of Less Is More.
As I sat at my keyboard, telling the story of two old-enough-to-know-better, young-enough-to-do-it-anyway, slightly messed-up people who fall into friendship before realizing they want to be more than friends, I drank a lot of coffee while trying to decide how much more-than-friendly they were going to get on the page. I concluded that I enjoyed developing their relationship more than spying on them while they consummated it. Click. That's the bedroom door closing.
Avid readers encounter couples coupling in genres from romance to mystery. Good for them (the characters). They can do whatever they want to one another, as many times as they want, in as many places as they want. But after they make their intention clear, please, someone shut the door. I’m perfectly happy knowing they are enjoying one another to their mutual satisfaction without explicit descriptions of things that are bulging, throbbing, thrusting, or doing anything else that ends with -ing. I wonder if those authors’ grandmothers read their books. I am this many years old, but the thought of writing explicit, intimate scenes that my family members would read gives me the heebie-jeebies. Christmas dinner would never be the same.
Color me old-fashioned. Romances, by their very nature, are about two people falling in love and a natural extension of that means they end up in the bedroom (or shower or on the kitchen counter or beach or whatever surface is handy). I don’t care where they go. But I’m over having it described in detail. Page after page. Multiple times. We’re all adults here. We understand the mechanics.
I chose this topic because I’ve encountered a run of audiobooks lately that had well-developed characters and interesting storylines but waaaaaaaaay too much shagging. There was so much sex in one book, I was like, “We’re doing this again? I thought we just did this. Can't you keep it in your pants?”
No judgement, honestly (she said, while judging). A little consensual something-something can create a whole lot of conflict between characters who something-something’d with the wrong person and now their lives are total chaos OR took a tumble with the right person and now their lives are a different kind of chaos.
There’s a market for stories that embrace, well, embracing and a whole lot more. I just felt a little blindsided by all the panting, moaning, grinding, etc. that have popped up, unsuspected, in a couple of books marketed generically as romances. These are not the sort of thing you want to be listening to when your husband is in the car with you. After a few of those, I’ve wised up and started avoiding books described as steamy, spicy or sizzling. That translates to “clothes are coming off and body parts are going to do things that I suspect are not physically possible in real life but the author is determined to prove me wrong.” It's just not my gig. If it's yours, you're welcome to it.
Sometimes those R rated scenes are important to the story’s progress but hey, I heard you the first time. I also nearly drove into a ditch so please, you’ve made your point. Can we move on? How many times are you going to describe decadent cupcakes in a book that isn’t about cupcakes?
As I wrote “Ghost,” I struggled constantly to juggle character development, plot advancement, conflict building and all those other writerly priorities. There were lots of scenes (not involving sex) that I wrote just because they were fun—until I realized they did nothing to move the story forward, and they got cut in the name of word count.
With that in mind, when I read/listen to a book with a seemingly gratuitous amount of time spent getting nekkid, I wonder if the author felt it was really necessary or just word candy? Done well, intimate scenes are, um, well done. Diana Gabaldon’s “Outlander” series is a five-star example of putting sex on the page and making it an integral part of the storyline. Done badly, the cringe potential is staggering and makes me avoid that author in the future.
IN OTHER NEWS
My designer sent me the initial cover mock-up for “Ghost” this week! It’s still a work in progress, but I’m excited to have a foundation to build from as he and I fine-tune art concepts.
Cover design is not for the faint of heart. Think about a favorite book—now think about what you’d want on the cover if you’d written that book—then think about how you’d convey those ideas to an artist who hasn’t read the book. That’s kinda where we are right now.
As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page: https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author.
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