In this day and age modern women don’t have sex and immediately fall in love, right? Okay, I will allow that there are some boiling-rabbits-on-the-stove women still around that associate sex with L-O-V-E, but come on. The generation of today’s youth could give a hippie commune a run for its money.
‘Debbie Does Dallas’ was once a just porn flick I heard about in high school. Turns out Debbie, Ryder, Kendra – and any other name you can think of – not only does Dallas, but then moves on to Ft. Worth and when them pickens are lean…let’s not go there.
Sex in the City says it all. Women are strong. Financially stable. Self confident. And the word SLUT just doesn’t have the same connotation that it once carried. Unless you live in a small town, and like Miranda Lambert says: “everybody dies famous in a small town,” so you have to earn a rep somehow.
Here’s the deal. I’m reading through a work in progress and I’m struggling to write anything. Just staring at the blinking cursor and wishing like hell my enter key was missing and my shift button was stuck – because it would give me something to do. I’m reading a love scene. Wait, is that old fashioned? EEEK!!! I mean SEX, sex scene. And it occurs to me that perhaps this is why I pull my hair out, screech and moan when it comes to writing the end of a manuscript.
I know I’m not making sense but just hang in there a second. In the world of romance novels, once a woman has sex with a man she is either destined to be one of three things:
1. The horribly killed off ex-wife
2. The incredibly bitter ex-wife, girlfriend, etc…etc…
3. The heroine
It occurs to me as I’m moving my eyes over the text I have written that perhaps that’s why I am so incredibly horrid when it comes to closing a book. Because in my tiny little brain when the sex is happening – that’s it.
They’re together.
Sure, you can throw in some twists and turns, stage the HUGE BLACK moment when they are ripped apart – but guess what? They get back together. Because that’s how it works in novels of the romantic nature.
Sex. Fight. Confess Love. The End.
And sometimes you get an epilogue that shows the reader how splendidly happy they are five years down the road with devishly handsome twin boys and a house with a white picket fence.
I feel so cynical. Like I’m taking something away from the hours we are slaves to the keyboard clicking out those intricate plots and character flaws. But I’m not trying to be. Just sharing a conflict that is becoming increasingly difficult for me to overcome.
I’ve been aware of it for a while, talked about it at some of our meetings but I don’t know what to do about it. I discovered tonight that it takes away from the emotional attachment I feel toward my characters. Oh great, they went and did it. FUBAR’d the whole shebang with the having of the sex.
Perhaps I’ll just go back to the days of “Insert Sex Scene Here” and move along knowing that they had sealed the deal but convincing myself that since I hadn’t really written the scene – it hadn’t actually happened.
Right. And Debbie decided she liked Dallas and didn’t have the energy to take on Fort Sill.
Sorry. I can’t keep the military references out…it’s an annoying new habit. Along with the thumbs up thing.
3 comments:
I understand what you're saying. I think writers wear two hats - a writer one and a reader one. When you're wearing the writer hat, you have to think of all the things we're "supposed" to include and it becomes so dang scientific that sometimes it's easy to lose sight of the flow. But, when you're wearing the reader hat, the sex scene is what draws the reader in, and as long as there is a good conflict, the reader will stay. It's like 6 something in the morning - on Saturday, so I'm not even sure what I just wrote. If it's stupid, ignore it. I always have to work through writer things in my head, so keep plugging on and don't stop writing.
If you want to borrow the laptop with the missing enter key and the sticky shift key, let me know. :)
And it seems like once they have sex, you immediately have to drive a wedge between them to create more conflict and hold the reader's interest.
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