- Joined
- Jun 13, 2006
- Messages
- 6,381
There has been a bit of talk around here recently on the nature of violence and its use - whether it can be too viceral, and it led me to the partner in crime, sex.
I've quietly (ish) been working away on something that centres around six teenagers, three girls and three boys, and to start with sex was not an issue. As an all powerful writing god I could do what I wanted with them.
But as I have started to get to know them, they've started to come to life a bit more and they've started to remind me that they are thriteen year olds whose hormones are starting to rage away which means sexual feeling, if not physical sex would start to sway around in the mix.
The story, as it stands in narrated by one of the characters, but from a future veiw point and I've been using that to give a bit more detail on each of the characters allowing us to come to know them a little more fully than if we just had them as teenagers.
While I was doing this it occurred to me that if you had these six friends, all who had been very close growing up, it would have been odd if there was not some kind of flirtation between two of them (or more).
I've already got a vague idea of what happens there now (these characters start to tell you all their secrets as you get to know them, don't they know I'm writing it down?)
But it has made me think is sex really needed (obviously yes), but in what level of detail?
No matter what can you get away with just the obvious fact that people have sex. Even Tolkien does that, but it is so much part of life that we probably don't even see it as anything other than part of the story - Sam and Rosie have countless kids so unless there is some form of Hobbit immaculate conception sex happened. We don't need to see it though.
So at what point does the description becomes too much?
Is there any point where even the most detailed description can be justified?
Is it better to just do a vague reference?
I've quietly (ish) been working away on something that centres around six teenagers, three girls and three boys, and to start with sex was not an issue. As an all powerful writing god I could do what I wanted with them.
But as I have started to get to know them, they've started to come to life a bit more and they've started to remind me that they are thriteen year olds whose hormones are starting to rage away which means sexual feeling, if not physical sex would start to sway around in the mix.
The story, as it stands in narrated by one of the characters, but from a future veiw point and I've been using that to give a bit more detail on each of the characters allowing us to come to know them a little more fully than if we just had them as teenagers.
While I was doing this it occurred to me that if you had these six friends, all who had been very close growing up, it would have been odd if there was not some kind of flirtation between two of them (or more).
I've already got a vague idea of what happens there now (these characters start to tell you all their secrets as you get to know them, don't they know I'm writing it down?)
But it has made me think is sex really needed (obviously yes), but in what level of detail?
No matter what can you get away with just the obvious fact that people have sex. Even Tolkien does that, but it is so much part of life that we probably don't even see it as anything other than part of the story - Sam and Rosie have countless kids so unless there is some form of Hobbit immaculate conception sex happened. We don't need to see it though.
So at what point does the description becomes too much?
Is there any point where even the most detailed description can be justified?
Is it better to just do a vague reference?