Guest Post - Writing Love and Sex Scenes in Crime Novels - Lanny Larcinese
Writing Love and Sex
Scenes in Crime Novels
Who cannot be aware of the well-deserved
ruckus concerning cultural appropriation?
It is no longer acceptable to ape features
or stereotypes of another gender, race, ethnicity, or any demographic we do not
personally occupy. Each such group in its own way has been culturally,
economically, or otherwise deprived, and now demands its place in the sun.
What is the fiction writer to do? We create
all kinds of characters, and though it is wise to consider submitting certain
of our work to “sensitivity readers,” some of us are loath to do that for a
variety of reasons, mine being I don’t want anybody besides a professional
editor telling me how to write. Yet, there is peril.
My own response is to write characters
within the confines of universal responses and feelings. It’s safe to say we all feel threatened when
our lives are in danger or to be robbed; or we all want our children to do
well; or we want earn a good living, be independent, etc. Eighty percent of
what we are is universally shared. But there also are responses to events or
images or representations unique to certain classes of people different from
the one I occupy.
Take women. I as a man don’t know the kind
of vulnerability women must feel knowing that half of the world’s population
could physically overpower them if it wanted and not constrained; or as a black
person what it’s like to be followed around a store on the assumption I am
suspect, as they commonly experience. So, of course there are matters which
groups are sensitive to and must be respected in our depictions.
The once-rigid silos our respective groups
occupied have evolved into cyclone fences: They still contain us but make us
more visible to one another. If I as a white male write a female character
through the sole prism of my masculinity, I may distort the presentation of
her, whereupon my story’s verisimilitude for female readers goes poof. On the
other hand, I can no more suspend my male-ness and have every right to possess
and express it as she her female-ness. Nor
do I want to try to become female. I couldn’t do it with any honesty.
The obvious answer is to hear her hopes, fears, aspirations and respect them
and her. On the other hand, what do I, as a male writer, do with the bad
boy-as-lust-object phenomenon which makes no damned sense to me? Writing sex is
no less complicated than real life sex.
Then how do I write a heterosexual love
scene? Submit it to a female sensitivity reader to make sure I got her part
right? What then happens to the exquisite dance of fantasy, power, control and
submission integral to real life sex? In real life, those things get acted out
in subtle ways which sexual partners make known and accede to, even crave. When
asked if sex was dirty, Woody Allen said, “If you’re doing it right.” What does
that mean to a woman? Sex at midnight on the Spanish Steps in Rome? And when? Always?
Sometimes? What does it mean to men? Silly costumes?
Death in the Family contains three passages
involving sex. Each is different. One is a power play; one is lovemaking; one
is lustful. The story is written in the first person, its protagonist, Donny
Lentini. In writing each scene I was ultimately guided by the scene’s purpose
and motivations of the couple. I was also aware that just as there is no one
way to do sex, there is no one way to write it. Further, I gave up on the idea
that anything I’ve read or heard or discussed about women’s sexuality and
constellation of feelings surrounding love, lust, and sex would enable me to,
as Woody Allen suggested, do it right. I had no choice but to write those
scenes as a man and hope that my deep respect for women and Donny’s respect and
need and love for Pepper would render the writing true. I also can’t deny, it
was kicks writing them. You don’t write a scene without visualizing the action
and breaking it down second by second and act by act as if under a strobe
light.
In my novel, I Detest All My Sins, the sex
was not between two consenting lovers, but violent, perverse, controlling,
unwanted, and by a despicable character written for the reader to hate. It is a
case in point regarding my argument about (some) sensitivity readers. Bad guy
Deadly Eddie Matthews takes a woman captive and sexually abuses her. Although
thoroughly distasteful, it was written to establish a moral lesson concerning
justice, power, and righteous vengeance. In many ways, writing wrong sex is
easier than writing right sex. In that book, the female character metes out
vengeance in an especially delicious way.
And a final consideration: No two people
are alike and they change from moment to moment, depending on the stimulus.
Life is dynamic that way. A sex scene in a crime novel is a snapshot of two
characters under specific circumstances in a particular moment in time.
If the writer’s heart and mind are in the
right place to begin with, he is much more apt to get the scene right.
Lanny Larcinese – Author
Death in the Family
I Detest All My Sins
Women: One Man’s Journey
lannylarcinese.com
Thanks for hosting!
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