Category: sex

When was the last time you read something that was going along great and then, out of nowhere, two of the characters started professing their mad love for each other? We jump to the last few pages and suddenly Wakko and Phoebe are getting married. It makes people roll their eyes while reading books and it makes movie audiences laugh. Nothing sinks a story faster than a fake, pasted-on love interest, because nobody likes to see love being toyed with.

On the flipside, everyone loves a good romance. Yeah, even the tough guys. Because we all love the idea that there’s someone out there who’s an absolute, 100% perfect match for us. Even more so, we love the idea that we could meet this person while escaping government agents who’ve mistaken us for a team of ruthless assassins or fighting zombie pirates cursed by Aztec gold. Because, hey… think of the stories you could tell your friends about how the two of you met.

And that’s what we all want, right? To have a better story to tell.

So, here are some simple rules to help you avoid bad relationships. On paper, of course. I’m not offering anyone dating advice with my past track record…

The First Rule of Love — You can’t have real emotions without real people. And real people, oddly enough, act in realistic ways. I’m not saying rational ways, because love is one of the most irrational things most of us will ever encounter in our lives. If your characters are real, though, they’re going to have needs, desires, plans, and tastes. And it’ll stand out if they’re making choices that go against all those traits. Is that backstabbing, career-minded office bitch really going to see something she likes in the guy who details her car? Will a European billionaire really find himself fascinated with an inner-city waitress? What the heck are a Peace Corps volunteer and a professional mercenary going to talk about?

Yeah, opposites attract. They even have a lot of fun together. But if we’re talking about real emotions, they’re going to have a lot in common. The mean-girl cheerleader isn’t going to make a move on the scrawny honor student kid unless she needs a book report done or maybe some help with her science fair project.

Then again, maybe she’s a closet sci-fi/ action fan who desperately wants to talk to someone about last night’s episode of Chuck. Dirty secrets can make a character real, too. Could be that she’s a lot smarter than she lets on, but she’s scared of not being popular. Or perhaps she was the ugly duckling until her second year of puberty and used to be friends with a lot of the AV club kids.

Even then, how far and how fast they take things should be consistent. Some folks live for the moment. Others like to wait and plan. People can be confident or nervous, experienced or awkward. Some people are tearing clothes off half an hour after they meet, for others the huge moment might be holding hands on the third date. If your characters are real, their reactions should be, too.

The Second Rule of Love — People get together because they want to get together, not because other people think they should be together. If you’ve ever been in a situation where friends are offering advice and pushing you to say something, you know the real result is it makes you want to get away from the object of your potential affection. Nobody likes feeling forced into something, and we don’t like to see other people forced into things. That’s just human nature.

Now, for the record, “other people” includes the writer. Characters need their own motivations. They can’t just do things for the convenience of the story. If you’ve based your whole story around the computer geek and the cheerleader hooking up at a frat party, then you need a real reason for them to get together (see above).

And no, the reason can’t be “because they need to battle the ninja overlord as a couple in chapter eleven.” Nor should it be “we want the actress topless in act three.” If you’ve ever started a relationship for reasons like that… well, you’re probably single right now, aren’t you?

The Third Rule of Love — As silly as it sounds, don’t confuse sex with love. There are lots of times where it might be completely acceptable for two characters to have sex. It’s fun. It’s a stress-reliever. It lets you not think about other things. Heck, it can even keep you warm. Again, we’re all mature adults here (well except for you) and I’m willing to bet most of us have had sex with someone we weren’t madly in love with at the time or at any point later.

Sex doesn’t always translate to a relationship in stories any more than in the real world, though. If two characters fall into bed (or onto a couch, or against a wall, or into the back seat of a car…), make sure you’re clear what it means for both of them. Forcing something casual into something serious will just read as forced.

The Fourth Rule of Love— This is the tough one, because Hollywood development has tried to teach us otherwise. How often have you watched a movie where you can immediately spot “the love interest” as soon as he/ she is introduced? Doesn’t matter what kind of film it is, it’s easy to pick out him or her from the first time we see them.

Y’see, Timmy, love doesn’t always fit in a story. There are times romance just isn’t going to happen. Someone could be starving, terrified, or in a blind fury fighting for their life. At moments like these, it’s not terribly realistic they’d be noticing what pretty eyes their companion has. When Archer does it, he gets shot in the foot. If you’re writing an action/ horror/ sci-fi/ heist story, is there really time for an extensive relationship?

Or maybe it’s just not appropriate for the characters. There’s a show on television right now about a man on the run who’s hanging out with a group of criminals while he tries to clear his name. One of said criminals is a wide-eyed blonde who happens to be a gymnast/contortionist. No, seriously. So he’s spending a good chunk of his time lamenting the fact that he’s separated from his loving wife and son… and a fair amount of time having awkward, physical moments with the blonde gymnast. One of these plot threads really doesn’t need to be there, and all it’s doing is eating up pages that could be used on good threads.

So there are the rules. Now go forth and spread the love.

Where it’s appropriate, of course.

Next week, I wanted to talk about structure. Which is kind of a big topic, so it may take a few weeks.

Until then, go write.

So, in honor of Valentine’s Day, it’s what you’ve all been hoping for. The all sex and nudity rant!

No, there won’t be any pictures.

A while back I mentioned a simple definition my friend Brad once told me. Porn is when you show everything. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing sex scenes, murder investigations, or high school reunions. What we don’t see is always far more interesting than what we do.

Let me explain this with a little set of stories.

I once had a friend who liked asking people “moral” questions. If you remember the brief fad of The Book of Questions, you know what I’m talking about. Would you rather have a year of no money or a year with no friends? If you had to give up one sense forever, what would it be? That sort of thing.

So one happy hour, over drinks and sushi, she asked me if I would strip to my underwear on the bar and dance for a thousand dollars. I laughed and said probably. Then she rephrased the hypothetical–would I be willing to strip naked and dance for $10,000 if all my friends were there in the bar?

“For ten grand? Absolutely.”

“With all your friends there?” And she rattled off the names of a few of our female friends to make it clear who would be seeing me naked.

I pointed out that $10,000 (at that time) was serious life-changing money for me. Plus our friends were all experienced adults and we’d all hung out at the pool and the hot tub several times. Most of them could probably figure out what I looked like naked without too much trouble. So what was the difference?

To prove how flawed and masculine my decision was, she called one of our female friends. Said friend also agreed she would strip naked for the cash. She even pointed out the same logic–that most anyone could figure out what she looked like naked, so what’s the big deal?

We’re all grown ups. While there is a titillation element in seeing–or reading about–someone naked, at the end of the day most of us all look the same without clothes on. Yeah, there’s some variety in sizes and skin tones, but it rarely involves a lot of surprises. So spending a lot of time describing her boobs, his ass, or their genitals is going to get old pretty quick.

Not only that, but we all have different standards of what’s attractive. We notice different things about each other. So spending too much time describing nudity in prose runs the danger of describing stuff the reader has no interest in. And like any bit of character description it brings the story to a grinding halt while the writer describes how firm Chad’s glutes are.

Plus… well, sex scenes have the same challenge as any action scene. Quite often things happen faster than it would take to describe. So too much detail slows things down–and not necessarily in the good way.

Story two. This one’s for the screenwriters, but everyone can follow along.

A few years back a friend asked me to look at a script he was writing. It was a low-budget horror idea involving a group of friends at an isolated cabin by a lake, deep in the woods, but past that it went in some pretty clever directions. The writer (we’ll call him Rex) knew that simple, ugly truth of moviemaking–sex sells. He’d told me ahead of time that he’d tossed in a bit of nudity and the like to appeal to investors.

So I was paging through the script a few nights later and discovered Rex had randomly inserted (no pun intended) a hardcore lesbian sex scene right around the end of act one. Three solid, fairly graphic pages of boobs, toys, and a little bit of bondage. It was so graphic, in fact, it would’ve been a dealbreaker for late night Cinemax. maybe even Vivid Video. Sex sells, yes, but not everyone wants to invest in pornography. And the scene on the page was hardcore pornography plain and simple (by both the definition above and internet standards).

By Rex’s personal standards, his sex scene wasn’t that explicit. He actually thought it was a bit tame. And, yeah, in some ways, for some people, it probably was. We all have own likes and dislikes in the sack. Going into too much detail can handicap you there as well. I could find this attractive, but it might freak you out. Likewise, you could be all for trying that, which might make me cringe in fear. As I’ve said before, the trick is knowing how your intended audience is going to react to something, not how you and your close friends are.

Y’see, Timmy, bringing up gratuitous sex and nudity in screenplays can be risky, because it immediately slots your story one way or the other. If it’s not what a reader’s been told to look for, you’re done right there. So when it comes down to it, you should be writing scenes that could have graphic sex and nudity… but don’t require it.

Yeah, yeah– Joe Eszterhas made a fortune writing nothing but explicit sex in the early ’90s. Keep that last part in mind–he was doing it twenty years ago during the spec boom and on the tail end of the sexploitation decade.

A great example of writing a scene with the potential for nudity–but not requiring it–is a shower scene. There are plenty of cheesecake shower scenes in hundreds of films, but there are also lots of low-key G-rated ones. If the script just says “Phoebe is lathered up in the shower,” it’s open for interpretation and people will picture what they want to see. If it’s two paragraphs of Phoebe slowly rubbing liquid soap all over her body, the range of possible interpretations shrinks a bit. So why reduce your options if you don’t have to?

Same thing with someone changing their clothes. We don’t need details to overcomplicate it. Although you may want to consider your character’s motive for changing, too. Maybe showing everything is the whole point of that moment…

In closing, sex always makes things more complicated. So think twice before diving into it.

Next time, we return to our regular, prudish rants, and I’ll tell any screenwriters following along a few ways you can make sure a reader will groan on page one.

Until then, go write.

Well, as the weekend approached I had great plans to get a piece done on writing romances. Then I was reminded that screenwriting contest season is coming up, and I had a few critical ideas…

Ahhhh, I’m a romantic at heart. Let’s go with that.

When was the last time you read something that was going along great and suddenly, out of nowhere, two characters started kissing and professing their love for each other? Or maybe a movie where the characters suddenly make dinner plans or randomly fall into bed? It makes people roll their eyes while reading books and it makes movie audiences laugh. Nothing sinks a story faster than a pasted-on love interest.

We all love a good romance. Yeah, even the guys. Because we all love the idea that there’s someone out there who’s an absolute, 100% perfect match for us. Even more so, we love the idea that we could meet this person while disarming warheads set by mad computers, fighting zombie pirates cursed by Aztec gold, or fleeing ninjas. Because, hey… think of the stories you could tell your friends. And that’s what we all want, right? To have a better story to tell.

So, what are some of the ways you can avoid that horrible relationship trap?

Okay, first and most important thing to remember. People get together because they want to get together, not because other people think they should be together. And “other people” includes the writer. If you’ve based your whole story around the computer geek and the cheerleader hooking up at a frat party, then you need a real reason for them to get together. And no, the reason can’t be “because they need to battle the dark overlord as a couple in chapter eleven.” Nor should it be “we want the actress topless in act three.”

This leads nicely into my second point. They’re almost one and the same. You can’t have real emotions without real people. And real people, oddly enough, act in realistic ways. I’m not saying rational ways, because love is one of the most irrational things most of us will ever encounter in our lives. If your characters are real, they’re going to have needs, desires, plans, and tastes. And it’ll stand out if they’re making choices that go against all those traits. Is that backstabbing, career-minded office bitch really going to see something she likes in the guy who cleans her pool? Will a blue-blood, British noble really find himself fascinated with a toothless hillbilly girl? What the heck are a professional mercenary and a Peace Corps worker going to talk about?

Yeah, opposites attract. They even have a lot of fun together. But if we’re talking about real emotions, the opposites will tend to have a lot in common. The mean-girl cheerleader isn’t going to make a move for the scrawny honor student kid. Unless she needs a book report done.

Or maybe, unless she’s a closet sci-fi/ action fan who desperately wants to talk to someone about last night’s episode of Chuck. Could be that she’s a lot smarter than she lets on, but is scared of not being popular. Or perhaps she was the ugly duckling until her second year of puberty and used to be friends with a lot of the AV club kids.

Even then, how far and how fast they take things should be consistent. Some folks live for the moment. Others like to wait and plan. People can be confident or nervous, experienced or awkward. Some relationships are established with a wild half-hour in a hotel room, others when two people hold hands for the first time. If your characters are real, their reactions should be, too.

My third tip would be this– hard as it may be to believe, there are just times when romance isn’t appropriate. As the man likes to say, there’s a time and a place for everything. Someone could be starving, terrified, or in a blind fury fighting for their life. At moments like these, it’s not terribly realistic they’d be noticing what pretty eyes their new partner has. If you’re writing an action/ sci-fi/ horror story, is there really time for an extensive relationship? It might be better to plant the subtle seeds of one and let your audience fill in the rest, much like James Cameron did between Ripley and Hicks in Aliens.

A quick story…

Late least year a friend of mine let me read the fantasy novel he’d been working on. There was a lot of good stuff, but one part lost me just a few chapters in. The main character, in the midst of looking for his abducted son, starts getting starry-eyed and bashful around a pretty elf he’s just met.

“Wait a minute,” I told my friend. “Jayme’s son has been kidnapped, missing less than a day, and he’s taking a time out to flirt wildly with some elf he’s just met?”

This bothered me far more than the fact Jayme had grown a set of functioning butterfly wings since arriving in the fae realm. It was, as I told my friend, the point I would toss the manuscript on the big pile to my left.

The last point, as silly and motherly as it sounds, is not to confuse sex with love. There are lots of times where it might be completely acceptable for two characters to have sex. It’s fun. It’s a stress-reliever. It lets you not think about other things. Heck, it can even keep you warm.

Sex doesn’t always translate to a relationship, though, in stories any more than in the real world. If two characters fall into bed (or onto a couch, or against a wall, or into the back seat of a car), make sure you’re clear what it means for both of them. Forcing something casual into something serious will just read as forced.

So go and spread the love among your characters.

Where it’s appropriate, of course.

Next week, some criticism for you.