Juho Pohjalainen's Blog: Pankarp - Posts Tagged "sympathy"
Sex scenes - what are they good for?
I haven't written very many instances of two characters hotly and sweatily getting it on, and in the few instances that I have, I've always ended up cutting them off the stories by the next draft. I think I have a fairly good idea why.
It has no plot-relevance, almost ever. There's no reason to actually show any of it. All the demonstration of the characters loving one another can be shown before and after, with kisses and cuddles and other such stuff. Any notion of someone getting pregnant - an eminently plot-crucial event - can be assumed to have happened off-screen. Sometimes a character might be a different sort of a lover than you'd think, either rougher or more gentle or less experienced or whatever than would have been expected, but this too is rarely crucial enough to be given any more attention than someone off-handedly mentioning it afterwards.
The act itself serves not the story, but the audience. It's here to titillate us, or to show us how hot and daring the author is, or what an amazing lover the main character is. Things to get a reaction out of us. To keep us turning the pages even though the story at this moment is paper-thin, purely by appealing to our basest urges. It feels rather a low-hanging fruit to me.
But as with every rule, there's exceptions. And the one I can think of here is bad sex.
Bad sex can actually drive the plot. It will bring forth new character flaws to overcome, unexpected conflict between two people that at this point should rather like one another, a small story arc with a real pay off. It'll get the reader's sympathy - something I always felt was more important than wish-fulfillment. It can even tie to the greater story, to demonstrate a character's rising (ha!) confidence and getting through their personal issues. Then you can even show the good sex, as a bit of contrast and as demonstration that they're getting better.
I guess there's a scene such as this in my mind that I'd get to writing sooner or later, but mostly I bring it up now because certain revelations in the video gaming community have prompted me. If you follow the gaming news, perhaps you know what I'm talking about.
It has no plot-relevance, almost ever. There's no reason to actually show any of it. All the demonstration of the characters loving one another can be shown before and after, with kisses and cuddles and other such stuff. Any notion of someone getting pregnant - an eminently plot-crucial event - can be assumed to have happened off-screen. Sometimes a character might be a different sort of a lover than you'd think, either rougher or more gentle or less experienced or whatever than would have been expected, but this too is rarely crucial enough to be given any more attention than someone off-handedly mentioning it afterwards.
The act itself serves not the story, but the audience. It's here to titillate us, or to show us how hot and daring the author is, or what an amazing lover the main character is. Things to get a reaction out of us. To keep us turning the pages even though the story at this moment is paper-thin, purely by appealing to our basest urges. It feels rather a low-hanging fruit to me.
But as with every rule, there's exceptions. And the one I can think of here is bad sex.
Bad sex can actually drive the plot. It will bring forth new character flaws to overcome, unexpected conflict between two people that at this point should rather like one another, a small story arc with a real pay off. It'll get the reader's sympathy - something I always felt was more important than wish-fulfillment. It can even tie to the greater story, to demonstrate a character's rising (ha!) confidence and getting through their personal issues. Then you can even show the good sex, as a bit of contrast and as demonstration that they're getting better.
I guess there's a scene such as this in my mind that I'd get to writing sooner or later, but mostly I bring it up now because certain revelations in the video gaming community have prompted me. If you follow the gaming news, perhaps you know what I'm talking about.
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