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odd_buttonsHrm . . . "porno-euphemistic." Heck of a term, that.
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The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Sex
Love and sexual relationships have long been central subjects for writers. But in serious fiction, graphic descriptions of sexual contact have been pretty much absent until fairly recently. Writers of the early twentieth century, like James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Anaïs Nin, established that all human activity was an appropriate subject, and liberated fiction from prudery and false modesty.
The liberations form censorship produced a huge popular literature and generated a vast swarm of sexual clichés to describe beautiful women, beautiful men, sexual activities, and physical responses. Breasts stood erect, male organs throbbed, lips quivered, and nipples hardened like diamonds. Anyone writing today is aware of the difficulties of avoiding such clichés. Also you have your own reticence and modesties to contend with. When you write about sexual activity, you become acutely aware of your own ambivalence about making private intimacies public.
A particularly vexing problem is what words to use. Sexual activities have a vocabulary range from lyric to coarse and from polite to obscene, so there usually is appropriate language. Characters can want to make love, mess around, play house, or get laid. Sexual parts, however, have names that sound either clinical (penis), childish (wee-wee), vulgar (cock), or porno-euphemistic (tower of power). Often nothing sounds right. This is probably the best rule: If the description is in the narrative voice, use the term that the narrator would use. If it's a character thinking or talking, the character's vocabulary is what you should stay with. That gives a chance to show the character's directness or squeamishness, sophistication or remoteness.
You might keep in mind that you're trying to create your character's feelings and experience. This is no time to be an intrusive narrator providing clinical description. Tell what your character is thinking, is worrying about, is feeling. The most effective details are those most unexpected. If she notices a small line of clogged follicles along his thigh, that's part of her experience. If he's remembering a girl he kissed in the seventh grade, that's part of his. If he feels a delirium of pleasure, render those sensations. Is your character distracted, uneasy, guilty, or transported? What thoughts are really occurring? Paradoxically the most telling aspect of sexual activity is what goes on in the characters' heads.
See Character, Negative Positive Knowledge, Profanity / Obscenity.
*
The following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Sex
Love and sexual relationships have long been central subjects for writers. But in serious fiction, graphic descriptions of sexual contact have been pretty much absent until fairly recently. Writers of the early twentieth century, like James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, and Anaïs Nin, established that all human activity was an appropriate subject, and liberated fiction from prudery and false modesty.
The liberations form censorship produced a huge popular literature and generated a vast swarm of sexual clichés to describe beautiful women, beautiful men, sexual activities, and physical responses. Breasts stood erect, male organs throbbed, lips quivered, and nipples hardened like diamonds. Anyone writing today is aware of the difficulties of avoiding such clichés. Also you have your own reticence and modesties to contend with. When you write about sexual activity, you become acutely aware of your own ambivalence about making private intimacies public.
A particularly vexing problem is what words to use. Sexual activities have a vocabulary range from lyric to coarse and from polite to obscene, so there usually is appropriate language. Characters can want to make love, mess around, play house, or get laid. Sexual parts, however, have names that sound either clinical (penis), childish (wee-wee), vulgar (cock), or porno-euphemistic (tower of power). Often nothing sounds right. This is probably the best rule: If the description is in the narrative voice, use the term that the narrator would use. If it's a character thinking or talking, the character's vocabulary is what you should stay with. That gives a chance to show the character's directness or squeamishness, sophistication or remoteness.
You might keep in mind that you're trying to create your character's feelings and experience. This is no time to be an intrusive narrator providing clinical description. Tell what your character is thinking, is worrying about, is feeling. The most effective details are those most unexpected. If she notices a small line of clogged follicles along his thigh, that's part of her experience. If he's remembering a girl he kissed in the seventh grade, that's part of his. If he feels a delirium of pleasure, render those sensations. Is your character distracted, uneasy, guilty, or transported? What thoughts are really occurring? Paradoxically the most telling aspect of sexual activity is what goes on in the characters' heads.
See Character, Negative Positive Knowledge, Profanity / Obscenity.