(For those of you who came looking for the weekly installment of Witchfinder, I posted it yesterday. You see, I thought it was Friday yesterday. Stupid time machine is on the blink again. Page down or click here for chapters five and six — a double posting.)
As a lot of you know, I don’t read my Amazon reviews. Why don’t I read my Amazon reviews? Don’t I want to know what readers think?
Yes, I do want to know what readers think. No, it’s not that I think I’m so wonderful that I can’t take criticism. I do take criticism from chosen beta readers, in controlled circumstances. From the public at large and without my knowing their background? The problem is that I have this unerring ability to take 100 good reviews in stride and then believe the one awful review I get. It’s a gift. I have the same issue with comments on snippets, which I suspect sometimes causes me to come across as defensive or cranky. Because I have a way of obsessing on the stuff someone hated/didn’t get and then proceed to turn the entire book into hamburger by trying to avoid whatever they saw. Which nine times out of ten no one else saw.
To level with you, the successful author with 20 novels traditionally published and a few more under contract, not counting the indies and experiments, is someone who shows up at cons and occasionally at readings or signings. The rest of the time I feel much like I did when I first moved into the area where I now live: almost thirty, read a lot, wrote a lot, couldn’t give my stuff away for love or money. When I’m walking along the streets where I pushed a baby carriage around here twenty years ago, I feel like exactly the same person, and still don’t know if I’ll ever be “good enough” to be a writer.
Negative reviews go into that huge crater of lack of confidence and do nasty things that often end with me blocked for three or four months.
So, I don’t read Amazon reviews. I pretend they don’t exist. I can’t afford the silence.
Which is why I was probably the last to know there were comments on A Touch Of Night complaining of homophobia. I heard about it when several people bragged of defending me (thank you guys, you’re all nuts but I love you.) I’ll confess I haven’t read the comments yet, and don’t intend to, so what I have is at a remove.
However, the “homophobic” comment bothered me. It bothered me a) because it’s the sort of mud that sticks. b) because it’s so far from the truth it’s almost insane. c) because I don’t remember what language I used in that book, and when I’m being period-accurate it can get bad.
The background on the piece – it’s Pride and Prejudice set in the world of the Magical British Empire. This means it’s Regency England with dragons and other shape shifters and some magic. Shape shifters are illegal and will get executed on sight if found out.
We wrote it, my friend Sofie Skapski and I, because we wanted to write something together for the Derbyshire Writers Guild website and because at the time we started it looked like my MBE would never sell. (It took eight years from first proposal to placing it.) Because we were both very busy writing/posting on it was irregular and it took us years to finish. Then, years after we finished, I kept running into reviews of it, talking about how they wished someone would edit and bring it out properly. So, we did, with Naked Reader Press, and it’s selling very well for us (or it was, until we took it free, which it might still be.) (Yeah, the cover is appalling. I designed a new one for it yesterday.)
As a minor plot point one of the characters – trying not to do spoilers – a delicately brought up young girl, finds two male characters naked in the rhubarb patch, and thinks they were engaging in a bit of snogging. She is horribly shocked and thinks it revolting, etc. (To be honest, she probably would have thought the same were it hetero snogging in the rubharb. It was the spirit of the time.) It never occurs to her that they were shifters and had just shifted back to human.
Now, part of this was that I was in the spirit of the times and I wanted to show how scary/shocking/revolting she found the snogging, because I wanted to emphasize that with all that, she still thought it was better and easier to accept than shifting. Even though she, herself, feels sympathetic to shifters, she has acquired prejudice through her upbringing, which make that idea unthinkable to her. Beyond the pale.
When I’m in that sort of “building the world through language” mode, I can forget that I’m writing for modern readers. I understand one of the reviewers objected SPECIFICALLY to homophobic language though because I haven’t read the comments, I don’t know if this means that there’s anything stronger than “unnatural.”
Sigh.
So, is this where I defend myself? Bah. No. It is however where I give some context.
For better or worse, I am not homophobic. Yes, my religion has opinions on it. My religion also has opinions on judging others, a prerogative not reserved for mere humans. I do have any number of gay friends of both genders and, what’s more important because more personal and closer to ME, I have any number of gay characters.
Not on purpose in either case. I pick my friends for their minds, and who they sleep with is a matter of profound and complete indifference, except in the sense of figuring out whom we need to invite for dinner or in the sense of worrying about those of them of any orientation (you know who you are) who pick boyfriends/girlfriends like saner people play Russian roulette.
The character thing is a little more complex. Those of you who have followed my blog for a while know that characters are the part of my writing I get for “free.” I.e. I don’t work on them consciously, and they only work if I leave them alone. I have colleagues who base characters on people they know. I have others who build them from blocks, or audition them for parts. I can’t do that. The characters are as though they were hired by another department (Subconscious inc. the subcontractor.) A cranky contractor who will only give me a choice, and if I tamper with it, that’s it, I have to cancel that job. If I go with it, I end up finding that the characteristics that drove me nuts were the ones I need for the story.
Unfortunately SI has a very aggressive affirmative action policy for gay characters. I get them all out of proportion with population. And before you think that “unfortunately” means I have something against gay characters (rolls eyes) no. I’m just always afraid that they’re not marketable. This doesn’t seem to be true, btw. At least even very conservative people don’t seem to be put off by my gay characters. The fear everyone will hate books with gay characters seems to be an obsession of traditional publishing. As I said publishers get in my mind. It’s a problem. Not all the bleach in the world can clean up afterwards.
And I hope that traditional publishing is wrong on that, because I find myself in the middle of a novel with a gay main character. (No, not Witchfinder. Seraphim is straight, his indifference to Honoria notwithstanding.) I believe they are indeed wrong. So far no one has complained about the fact that Ben is the only grown up in the Elise Hyatt books. Or that Nat, for all his faults, is a true hero in Darkship Thieves. And I found Billy Blacklock rather endearing in Soul Of Fire, and no one, not even my most conservative readers, have complained about him. Even though that’s as close as it comes to my having written snogging on screen/page.
The thing is, I don’t write my gay characters as walking agendas. They come to me and I write them as people. Some of them are unbearable (Ben’s boyfriend in Dipped, Stripped and Dead) and a lot of them are very decent people. A few are even heroes, often despite themselves.
And I write the other characters as people too. Which means they often have the prejudices of their time and place. More so when I need it to emphasize world building.
Am I suddenly afraid that my gay friends will read the book and find it offensive? Oh, heck, yes, particularly since I know one of my straight friends sent one of them a copy (Yes, we’re very bad in my group of friends. No proper apartheid observed by orientation and color and all.) On hearing it had been sent my first reaction was to be afraid the language (which I don’t remember, so in my head it’s very bad indeed) that the character uses to think of homosexuality will hurt my friend. Oh, this is not rational on my part. He’s an intelligent man with a good grasp of history and he’s more likely to be offended by my raping of Austen than by some stray slurs. On the other hand I know that after a while one can get over sensitized (hey, kids, I went through middle school as a ‘brainy’ girl whose eczema – back then mostly on my face – often made her look hideous. I know from slurs. And from oversensitization) and it hurts even when we know it’s not supposed to, particularly when it comes from someone we know is a friend.
I don’t like hurting my friends. I don’t like hurting people I don’t know, much less people I know and like and much, much less the people I like enough to let into my (largely unprotected) inner circle, where they get to know the insecure newby inside, and not just the multipublished author who shows up at cons.
So, if I were writing it now and had thought of this, would I change what I wrote? I don’t know. If I’d known that people would flinch from it, I might have softened the language or put in a contrary thought about how they can’t help it or something. (Though she obviously thinks they can’t help it from the conversation she misinterprets. Very forward for her time.) I will note that though she’s shocked and reacts weirdly, she doesn’t denounce them to the authorities. I will also note later on she’s very concerned for the feelings of one of them should his supposed lover marry. As an added explanation, she got her information on homosexuality from stories about the decadence of Rome, which is plausible for the time, and also would be not the best light.
But it never occurred to me that people would take the words/thoughts out of context and be hurt by them. And I didn’t think of the oversensitization aspect. If anything, over at the fan group, I got dinged because a) she shouldn’t know what homosexuality was (yeah, raised in the country and all) and b) she wasn’t shocked ENOUGH. (I figured if her father let her read about Greece and Rome she was a tad more broadminded than your normal Regency miss.)
But though I might have “softened” or soft lighted her reaction – and I might have. Again, I hate hurting people without need or purpose – there is only so much one can do. She WAS a Regency Miss. One can’t backward-rewrite history and in fact, in my dipping a toe into reading romance, I’ve found that nothing gets the book thrown across the room so fast as regency characters with shockingly modern attitudes – about women, about orientation, about the poor, etc. Now, there were more tolerant opinions, for the time, but for the record, even the do-gooders who lived to improve the lot of the children of the poor didn’t train the little ones to be lawyers or doctors, and made sure they worked for their keep, just as they would in a working class house. To have the character bridle at the idea of having children work makes book take flying lessons. And the same, I suppose, if a REGENCY character thought “Hey, gay people should be allowed to marry.” Or the like.
I honestly don’t remember how strong the language I used was. I presume it wasn’t terrible because neither the fans who answered on the unedited novel, nor the editors called me on it. (Of course, it’s entirely possible they were immersed in the time period.) And I doubt I’d soften it much if I went back now. I certainly can’t/won’t soften the historical attitudes. It’s important we know how fraught things were back then, because otherwise we start imagining it’s all bunnies and butterflies and everyone always agrees on everything.
On the other hand, might I have softened it by having the character have a wee flash of understanding? Probably.
But here’s the thing – you never know how people will react to your book. Some of the controversial things you put in, people never notice. And then they’ll get offended because your young girl character wore blue and “Studies show that girls don’t like blue.”
What do I do about the “homophobic” charge? Nothing. I take a deep breath and trust in my collection of work and, more importantly, in how I live to defend me or not. I apologize to my friends, if I make them flinch. Because I LIKE them and don’t like hurting them. But to the public, at large? I will not let them in my head any more than I intend to let editors in, ever again.
If I wrote books guaranteed not to offend anyone ever, they wouldn’t even have words. Or any pictures, either. Or color.
I write the best I can. You take me as I am, or you don’t take me at all. But you don’t get to dictate my thought process or my opinions. If it ever comes to that, I’ll go and dig ditches for a living.
According To Hoyt 
SCroooom. That’s like the nincompoops who want to Bowdlerize all the references to “Nigger Jim” in Huckleberry Finn. Or Bowdler’s “Out, crimson spot!” in the Scottish play.
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Homophobic? Nah, somebody have too thin of skin. [Sad Smile]
In any case, I thought her reaction was just fine especially since she was starting to like him and IMO subconciously thinking of him as a possible husband.
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In 1895 Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for 2 years for “gross indecency”. If Regency England features a similar or earlier culture, then it seems likely that a “delicately brought up young girl” would have had the sort of reaction you wrote. Heck, even in the 1960s that sort of activity was generally looked down on (Bill Moyers was part of LBJ’s 1964 campaign, and he put in a lot of effort to establish that a Goldwater aide “swung that way” with the intent of damaging Goldwater’s campaign)
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My view? Those idiot reviewers are utterly patronizing to the very people they claim they’re trying to protect.
Gee, right now you don’t have to travel all that far to end up somewhere where being homosexual will get you killed. Intelligent people know this. Wrapping them in cotton-wool and denying them an accurate view of history is patronizing them. It’s like going easy on me because I’m [insert victim group of choice]. Hell no. Either I’m capable of doing the job, or I’m not. If I’m not, I don’t want or need special consideration.
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If you utter thoughtful and sincere thoughts about gays or homosexuality, you are likely to be called “homophobic” by activists holding scripted opinions simply as a way of silencing you. Of course, if they keep using the word that way, it will have about as much meaning as “racist.”
Earlier I read about J. Michael Bailey, whose book (The Man Who Would Be Queen: The Science of Gender-Bending and Transsexualism”) won the Lambda Literary Award, which was later retracted. The book was initially well-received but eventually ruined his professional life.
His real crime was “violating intellectual taboos.”
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As I remember RAH was accused of being a communist, a fascist, an anarchist, a libertarian, a pedophile, a militarist, a promoter of incest, rape, dictatorship, robbery, confidence games, filial, maternal, paternal desertion, murder, assassination, burglary, tax evasion, government regulation of commerce, capitalism, and cheap beer. All at the same time from the same book. You are in good company. Screw’em if they can’t take a joke. Keep on writing and I’ll keep on buying.
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Somehow I managed to get Amazon to *delete* my answer to the twit who pointed and screamed “homophobic!”. Probably because I called her a twit and told her not to read historicals if she wasn’t prepared for period phrases. ::sigh::
People who want today’s sensibilities and inane “political correctness” grafted into a previous period of history really do give me heartburn.
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I think they’re so used to authors carefully trying to teach their readers proper ways of thinking that they expect every fictional character to preach.
But I don’t know if I’d let it stand–this is the sort of nasty slander that becomes a meme in the easily-led community.
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Not so much accustomed to authors doing that as they think that the entire raison d’etre of allowing authors to publish is the instruction of impressionable minds in the ways of enlightened thought. Oddly, these are generally the same people who denounce C. S. Lewis’s Narnia tales for proselytizing.
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As Harry Turtledove said “there is a technical, literary term for someone who mistakes the attitudes of a character in a book for the attitudes of the author. That term is ‘Idiot.'”
On a side note Lin, I called her a twit too but they haven’t deleted mine, maybe I wasn’t strong enough?
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Love the Turtledove quote. I have *no* idea why mine was deleted. I recall I *did* say something to the effect of “if you can’t read historicals without wanting present day political correctness grafted in, you should confine your reading to Smurfs” — maybe the Smurf Police are out in force? :-) I’m not going to sweat it. Amanda said it better, anyway :-) And you!
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Much as I love Turtledove’s work (“The Guns of the South” is probably my secondmost favorite SF book of all time), according to S.M. Stirling (and probably others) that quote is indeed “Niven’s Law”.
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Could be, I stole it from the preface to one of Stirling’s books, one of my favorite’s of his actually Conquistador, accurate explanation regardless.
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I saw a Smurf comment — there are a couple of “ohs noes, a Regency character thinks this Greek Romance is turrable!” reviews, and one had the Smurfs and one didn’t. (That didn’t come out well, but there’s a cat distracting me…)
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Beth, if you have trouble commenting with a cat bothering you, you aren’t qualified to use the Internet :-)
I currently have three…
Regards,
Ric
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This strikes me as related to the same issues you recognized in Darkship Thieves: that making Athena male would likely have made the book unpublishable. Any book that deals honestly with homosexuality (that is to say: presents homosexuals as anything but admirable and admired, or those opposed to it as other than stock melodramatic villains) is prone to be denounced by people who aren’t interested in nuance, complexity or truth; they merely wish their prejudices affirmed. Such criticisms are not informed, are not to be given credence, are not to be taken to heart. They are to be denounced or ignored as the bigotry of those who prefer polemics over art and truth.
When troubled by such complaints please refer to the following of “Niven’s Laws”:
Well, pooh! Whilst I was carefully sourcing the quote I see somebody else tossed it up there. So either I am redundant or the advice is doubleplusgood … I choose the latter.
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I too write, and currently publish, fiction based on the characters of Jane Austen. (Aside, I started at DWG and remember seeing your work there Sarah.) It’s a constant battle to keep myself from dumbing down and doing the modern re-imaging that those critical readers seem to want. Though, I get away with Captain Wentworth referring to “papists” and no one peeps. The comments are not derogatory, but I’ve seen it used in period writing. I have not used the “N” word, though that was used in the period. Just because there is only so much gas I’m willing to throw on any particular fire.
Love your blog, Sarah.
Take care–Susan Kaye
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Always good to see a fellow DWGer
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Sarah, my response to this sort of nonsense starts with “blithering idiots!” and goes on from there.
Lin is right. Kate is right. (Everyone in this thread is right.) Historically, what you said is accurate. I read this book, reviewed it (favorably, of course, telling the absolute truth), and said that it reads so well, it sounds like Jane Austen meant to put this all in there herself but left it out, fearing to shock people (or something like that; I can’t recall the exact words I used at SBR).
I have many GLBT friends. I know that they come in all shapes, all sizes, and all attitudes. I don’t try to hide my reactions, and I don’t think they want me to hide them; doing so cheapens what they’re going through, and as far as historical novels go (with or without fantasy)? If someone can’t handle that, with the period language that goes with it, I’m afraid I have nothing good to say about that whatsoever.
Rest assured I will keep recommending your novels to people, and if they cannot handle your period accuracy, that is _their_ problem. Not yours.
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“The fear everyone will hate books with gay characters seems to be an obsession of traditional publishing. As I said publishers get in my mind.”
Interesting, I would have guessed the opposite (guessed because I have never actually dealt with ‘traditional publishers’) simply because at least in SF/fantasy gay characters seem to appear in much greater ratio to straights than they do in general population. I don’t have a problem with that, the problem I have is how they all seem have to be on the side of good, for whatever reason, I believe fear of charges of ‘homophobia’, you can’t seem to have an evil character that is gay. Which of course throws realism out the window since gays have approximately the same ratio of evil/good people as straights do.
By the way I agree that historical characters having shockingly modern attitudes is one of the best ways there is to cause books to take flying lessons. ;)
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I have an evil character who is gay in Witchfinder. Well… he gets redeemed on the evil part by the end of the book — a lot of my evil people do — but until then he will appear as the MOST repulsive of my villains.
Actually it’s rather bizarre, but there’s been a dual attitude towards lesbians vs. gay males. I don’t know if they still do but at least ten years ago, NY publishing believed that “everyone wants to read about lesbians, even women find that hot. But two guys, that’s just icky.” And I’m quoting, VERBATIM an editor I had a knock out, drag out argument with. (He still bought me, so… very decent of him.) No, I have NO clue why. (shrugs.) Lack of self-awareness would be my guess.
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I am assuming the editor was a heterosexual male, as one myself tend to agree with the “two guys, that’s just icky.” On the other hand if it has a purpose in the storyline I don’t have a problem with it, as long as it has some bearing on the story and isn’t added simply to make it rated R or X.
If all the parts that could be deemed ‘icky’ were taken out of a story, you would end up with a really boring story.
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Eh. My characters don’t have sex in the story, unless an editor forces me. Though it’s interesting. In case you haven’t read this, about … eight years ago, I fell and gave myself concussion. Apparently I lost a lot more than I thought. Recently I was itemizing the “inventory” I have for possible indie publishing and came across a medieval romance with sex. I have no memory of writing it, but it has one of my pen names on it, it’s in my computer, and it’s my KIND of character. So I have to assume I wrote it. WHY I no longer know. Perhaps I went insane for a month? It’s about two chapters short of an ending, and the last date is the week I hit my head. I don’t know whether to finish it, or even if I can, but it’s weird. It’s not NORMALLY the type of thing I’d write.
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Sorry by “don’t have sex in the story” I mean, left to my own devices I deploy what my husband calls “the pink veil of decency.” They go into the room, they emerge the next morning. What happens in there is no one’s business. All adults can guess, and the kids don’t NEED to know.
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Sarah, IMO for most stories, that’s the best sex. It is very rare that we need to witness the sex play.
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Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt, and want to burn the damned thing. My church has opinions on LGBT issues too. Weird opinions. Add that about a quarter of my friends are LGBT and you end up with a strange situation.
As a Lay Priest in the church, it is my responsibility to delivery a blessing to anyone who asks, whether they are a church member or not. I’ve often given blessings to LGBT friends, including those who are married (legal in Canada). I’m fine with this. When asked if I obey my priesthood responsibilities, I say yes.
I feel that some of my superiors would disagree with my understanding of their instructions, however if they can’t be bothered to be specific, well, that is their problem.
Wayne
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There is a movement or common intention among the self-declared elite, especially academics and the media, to legitimize homosexuality as against previously-existing derogatory attitudes. It primarily consists of an attempt to impose social sanctions against those whose attitude toward homosexuals is derogatory or dismissive. From the standpoint of egalitarianism it is hard to argue that this isn’t a good thing.
Unfortunately there is a trait in the American character, shared to some extent with our English cousins, that tends to crank everything to 11 and go looking for a bigger amp. In the case of the attempt to legitimize homosexuality, this tendency has manifested in an attempt to declare homosexuality superior. In fiction, any GLBT (I have probably left out a capital letter or two) must be depicted as morally better than the other characters, and any character who reacts negatively to the “gay” person must be ostracized and dismissed — this regardless of the basis of the reaction. Your gay villain will get extremely negative notice because of that.
Fortunately the extreme version is found primarily on college campuses and in some branches of the media. The commenter you mention is almost certainly a University student or professor who is attempting to gain personal notice by being an outspoken “gay advocate”.
One of the aspects of self-publishing that is seldom noted is that it is an aspect of free speech. When everything had to pass through the narrow window of the NYC publishing establishment, which sees itself as an extension of the elitist University environment, such extremist attitudes were relatively easy to maintain. Self-publishing allows an author to place a work before the public, who do not in general hold the extreme attitude and may in fact find it as villainous as the derogation it attempts to combat (raises hand). Expressions of the extreme attitude may, in fact, serve as positive publicity for the work.
In other words, get the d*d thing out there. As RAH noted, the single most heartwarming compliment in the English language is “Pay To The Order Of:” Gibbering fits thrown by an Associate Assistant Adjunct Professor of Gender Studies over some aspect of the Current Narrative are irrelevant and may very well gain you more heartwarming compliments.
Regards,
Ric
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” . . . there is a trait in the American character . . . that tends to crank everything to 11 and go looking for a bigger amp.”
Too true. Or as Mr. Dooley* told the Brits over a century ago, if you see a cloud of dust over the Atlantic, don’t worry, it’s just the Americans beating the rug. We do everything with oversized vigor, including confessing our sins in the public square and doing repentance until even the people we harmed are sick of it. Outsiders–such as professors of gender studies and people who run independent media centers–have never understood this, and believe that all our wailing must mean we’re uniquely evil in the history of humankind.
* allegedly, because I can’t find the source of the quote.
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eh. There’s also the way we teach other cultures in school. Don’t get me started on that, but there was a wee explosion on this blog back then. And yeh gods, you gave me an idea for a post for CV.
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Ric,
The funny thing is that the self declared elite shot down anything with a gay character, even in mystery which, never having had a Jim Baen, is considerably to the left of the spectrum of sf/f. They shot it down because “people will not buy it.” And “People are more conservative than we think” — I think this is a manifestation of the other side of it. I.e., “those rubes out there we’re trying to educate.” The establishment sees the big middle as caring about all sorts of things we couldn’t give a hang about, including orientation and color of skin (by and large.) Because of this, they recently have made a rule of no GLBT (yes, there are other letters. Deal.) in YA, which is jaw-droppingly stupid, since the kids care even less than we do. Older boy has had several gay friends (he was in theater for a while in highschool) , and there’s not even segregation as there was in my generation. A friend-group will include all sorts.
Eh. I’m not worried about the gay villain in this book, except from the extreme extreme, because this book also has a gay hero, and in fact, the villain is most villainous to him. (As well as being all around slimy.)
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Two things to add to something that is already overlong: If you depict a woman who longs to be rescued by, and spend her life making babies and dinner for, a strongly masculine character you will get the same reaction in some quarters. A black villain is likely to also get a rise out of those who see themselves as Intrepid Defenders, although that version of crank-it-to-eleven may have run its course. There are other Causes.
One of the most popular and remunerative series of books in the recent past is the “Left Behind” series. Its relevance here is that its publisher, Tyndale Press, is most emphatically not a member of the NYC publishing establishment and shares mutual contempt with that group, and the distribution channels it feeds have little in common with those accessed by, e.g., Simon & Schuster. There probably aren’t many indie authors who share Tyndale’s religious convictions, but its success does demonstrate that success is possible without passing through an office on Fifth Avenue.
Regards,
Ric
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A few decades back (I’m thinking early 80s, but didn’t keep notes) the music biz underwent considerable upheaval when they expanded the range of music stores that were surveyed to determine record sales. Apparently the NY & LA record buyers were less representative of national musical tastes than the record companies had realized. Who’d a thunk??! Suddenly C&W (as it was then known) became a major profit center for the music publishers.
Accountants (such as moi) and scientists have long recognized that what and how you measure does much to configure the results. Come to think of it, that is the philosophical realization at the core of the (book and) film Moneyball. And it is a point repeatedly addressed in Sarah’s posts about the traditional publishers.
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Another case in point: Star Trek was cancelled because it wasn’t pulling enough viewers. The next year or so later, they started checking demographics, and found out that Star Trek would have actually been off the charts for the 18 to 25 group that everybody wanted. As you say, you have to realize what it is that’s being measured :-)
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I wasn’t really being specific to your books in my reply, I realise that you don’t describe all the gritty details of sex. I read books by other authors that do go into explicit detail and don’t generally care (although extremely explicit homosexual sex might cause a different reaction) but it certainly doesn’t sell books to me, and does cause me not to recommend such books to certain other people.
My problem has always been the obligatory sex scenes that are added just so the book has a sex scene, with absolutely no relation to the story. Much like the obligatory black person or gay person considered necessary in TV shows, regardless of wether they realistically should be there or not, and regardless of wether they add anything to the storyline or detract from it.
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One justification I’ve heard for detailed sex scenes is “But sex is a part of life, so we MUST include blow-by-blow (no pun intended) descriptions of it!”
Cool. You know what else is a part of life? Pooping! In fact, most people poop more often than they have sex. So let’s have detailed descriptions of THAT activity to achieve truly “gritty” realism!
“After sitting down, Freddy realized this would be a long session, so he grabbed the latest issue of ‘Popular Mechanics’ from the magazine holder which his wife had thoughtfully procured from Goodwill.”
(I’d add more if I was a real writer)
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Calvin,
Don’t EVEN. when I ran a small press mag, early nineties, they’d decided that bathroom scenes were needed for “gritty realism” so that at one time EVERY story we got in started with the character on the John. Ew. Yuck. And gah.
As for sex, no. NYC publishers have realized women (who are mostly who they’re selling to at this time, having long since chased men readers out with beating them about the face and head) prefer reading to pictures for well stimulus (Millions of sex drives created or saved!) and while they won’t go out and buy porno story mags because that would be admitting to themselves it’s what they want, feel perfectly justified if there’s sex in a STORY. Detailed sex. So, in the face of falling circulation, sex has been amped up to 11 as well. The first time we went from zero to full anal penetration (hetero) in a regency, the book went against the wall SO HARD. (no pun intended.) Perhaps I’m odd in that sex, for me, is NOT a spectator sport. I’m as fond of it as the next woman, and the next woman is Nanny Ogg, but not in books.
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“they’d decided that bathroom scenes were needed for “gritty realism””
I’m speechless! Well, not quite, but I have some inkling of how Jonathan Swift would have felt if the English had actually started eating Irish babies.
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The thing is, art consists of NOT representing reality in compleat and perfect detail but in highlighting the particular aspects which the artist wants to emphasize. Art is choice (or, as fans of Hepburn & Tracy know, cherce.)
When sex (or defecation) are necessary to reveal character descriptions ought be included, otherwise they are as irrelevant to story-telling as any other element. Of course, as most contemporary literature is opposed to telling a story …
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YES!. I had to do this with Heart Of Light and it almost broke me. The sex wasn’t needed, the characters weren’t right for it yet and gah. Honestly, it was part of the series of things that has soured me on all my publishers but Baen.
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When you get the rights back, can you fix it?
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WHEN? WHEN? G-d you’re optimistic. I think bantam is squatting on those till the heat death of the universe, even though they’re supposedly not selling at all :/
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Odd. I didn’t think anything about that scene, come to think of it. I’ll have to go back and see what’s so offensive about it.
I agree with Bearcat, though: the obligatory black guy or gay guy or bitchy female in every television show is stupid. I don’t watch South Park often, but they have a kid on the show named Token. He’s the black kid. A lot of people were offended by calling the only black kid Token, but the point was made. Every other show on TV does something similar, just aren’t blatant and in your face about it.
Too bad people put on blinders about something so stupid. A little bit of common sense would clear everything right up.
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warpcordova,
“Common sense” is an oxymoron. If sense were common, the world would be a vastly different place.
Regards,
Ric
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