Writing Sexuality

Writing sexuality is a rigorous and important endeavor for literary writers. There is not a single human who exists without an individualized sense of sexual identity. Even asexual adults are aware of their sexuality and how this juxtaposes to their social group, and yet, many writers will no more than glance at the sexual foundations and arc of their characters. A brilliant example of sexual exploration in literary aesthetic is Cris Mazza’s hybrid memoir, Something Wrong with Her. In this memoir, the author speaks candidly and vulnerably about her sexuality. The work not only belongs in the artistic canon, it is an excellent resource for literary writers exploring voice and sexuality.

Essentially, every character has a sexual arc from birth to adulthood and everywhere in between. Ask yourself. How much time have you given to the isolation and study of your characters’ sexual arcs both on and off the page?

A lack of time and isolation with this sexual foundation and arc is a common flaw in a writer’s process and craft. Sometimes it is because the writer is writing merely to titillate. Sometimes, the writer believes their sexual preferences should be those of their character (which is a ridiculous notion. If Nabokov had written Humbert Humbert’s sexual identity from personal preference,… I’ll let you finish that sentence). Sometimes, the writer is too uncomfortable with sex to truly analyze and explore it in any genuine and unique way. It is as important for the writer to explore the character’s sexual preferences both individually and as is essential to the narrative (apart from the writer’s personal preferences), as it is for the writer to explore the character’s experience hunting big game in Africa or getting her period at eight years of age or dying and then narrating from beyond the grave. A literary writer cannot always call specifically on personal preference and experience when writing characters. At some point, the character will transcend the writer and become an individual. Writing sex and sexual identity of this character must do the same. Especially if you are a man writing a female character. Or a woman writing a male character. Or a heterosexually identifying writer writing a homosexually identifying character… The imagination and depth of character exploration must take precedent.

Reading

Writing Exercise: Excavating Sexuality

Choose a character from a narrative on which you are currently working. Open a separate document and begin a new narrative in which you explore this character’s sexuality as organic and a-typical to the character. Some things to explore:

    • First awareness of self as a sexual being;
    • First sexual encounter without intercourse;
    • First intercourse;
    • First sexual violence (this might or might not be consensual violence);
    • A sexual anomally….;
    • What other sexual excavations might you explore?

Forget the original narrative, throw away any preconceptions you may have had regarding this character’s identity of self, body awareness and sexual history. Allow the character’s sexuality to grow independently within this “safe space.” 

You might find that very little or quite a bit of this sexual excavation finds its way back into the original narrative. Or none at all. No worries. What you’ve excavated about this character’s sexuality will inform the character both on and off the page. 

Contributing Faculty

Rae BryantRae Bryant is the author of the short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals. Her fiction, prose-poetry and essays have appeared in print and online at The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Diagram, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, New World Writing, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, &NOW Award and Pushcart Prize. She has won awards in fiction from Whidbey Writers and The Johns Hopkins University. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins where she continues to teach creative writing and is editor in chief of The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review. She has also taught in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. She is represented by Jennifer Carlson of Dunow, Carlson and Lerner.

One on One Creative Writing Workshop

If you would like to share your narrative, post it to the discussion board below and share it with your course peers. If you end up expanding this narrative into a fuller work and would like written, individualized feedback on it, we invite you to join us for a One on One Creative Writing Workshop.

The Antagonist’s Character Arc

I always use an aftershave lotion with little or no alcohol because alcohol dries your face out and makes you look older. Then moisturizer. Then an anti-aging eye balm followed by final moisturizing protective lotion.

There is an idea of a Patrick Bateman. Some kind of abstraction. But there is no real me. Only an entity. Something illusory. And though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there.

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis

Antagonists often make the most interesting characters. In this lesson, we will explore the protagonist/antagonist, the moral antagonist and the immoral antagonist. Keep in mind that all antagonists are a combination of both moral and immoral, just as all humans are a combination of both moral and immoral. 

Patrick Bateman, the protagonist in American Psycho, exemplifies what many have come to know as the antagonist. In literary terms, he would be considered too evil to be a good literary antagonist. If there is an evil in the world, Patrick Bateman is this.  What makes him exceptional is that for one, he functions as the protagonist/antagonist. He is our focus. We are pulled into the motivations of his satirical representation of a morally destitute demographic. Two, Patrick Bateman is physically and socially beautiful. He is the mirage of beauty. He is a Manhattan success by day and a sociopathic serial killer freshly birthed to his craft at night. Third, Patrick’s story is told through dark humor and irony. The understatement of his overstatement creates a constant rub and makes the narrative voice interesting, fresh. You are laughing when you shouldn’t be laughing. 

Patrick Bateman is the epitome of what is seductive and treacherous about New York success and what is seductive and treacherous about basic human drives. Ellis has taken a profession, lifestyle and the id and has personified it all in a single socially satirical character. 

So, if Patrick Bateman is too evil to be a good literary antagonist, how is it that his character works? 

Ellis gives Bateman a sense of physical normalcy based on vanity, yes, but still a vanity to which all readers can relate on some level. For instance, not many readers will do 1000 stomach crunches and apply five different facial cleansers every morning, but all readers can relate to a driving sense of morality and aging.

What is an antagonist?

In a literary narrative, the antagonist will be complicated and not all “bad” but rather a person in a situation where his or her motivations compete with that of the protagonist. The best antagonists are empathetic to some degree and often act as a foil to the protagonist. (A foil would be a character that is very different or similar to another character and acts as a point of definition of the other character).

A good antagonist is not sympathetic but rather empathetic. It is easy to write a sympathetic antagonist with a bad childhood that would result in the antagonist making bad choices later in life. This sort of sympathetic characterization might briefly describe an abusive parent, tough neighborhood, early childhood trauma. These are all good starts, but to write the better antagonist, it is important to spend as much time creating the antagonist’s presence and history as you would spend on the protagonist’s presence and history so to move beyond sympathy and into empathy. You do not want your reader to look down on this character. You want your reader to empathize with and “fear” this character because the character’s motivations are familiar in some manner. Keep in mind that it doesn’t take an axe wielding serial killer to evoke fear. Fear can be evoked by an innocent child too vulnerable to protect him or herself, when that child reminds you of your former self.

Remember: Not all antagonists are “bad.” Some antagonists are actually “good.” We will study an example of the “moral antagonist” below.

The Secretary: Bateman’s Moral Antagonist & Foil

One of the most interesting critical elements to American Psycho, is that it is filled with morally destitute characters. In this story, there really are no sympathetic or “good” characters but for one, perhaps. Bateman’s secretary, Jean. We don’t know much about Jean, though, we do want her to survive. Jean provides a competing motivation to Bateman’s id. Jean embodies hard work, loyalty and a search for romance. She is the moral compass to Bateman’s lack of moral compass. In the below excerpt, Jean unknowingly pushes Bateman’s patience. As you watch the scene, consider how Jean is not all “good.”

Paul Allen & His Business Cards: Bateman’s Professional/ Social Antagonist & Foil

Another antagonist is Paul Allen, Bateman’s nemesis. Allen is not a morally rich man. He is smug and vain. Throughout the course of the novel, he is in some ways less charming than Bateman and in some ways more empathetic. Allen is very much a mirror and foil to Bateman. By the end of this scene, we are very aware that Paul Allen is Bateman’s main immoral antagonist. We both fear and anticipate what Bateman will do about it. As you watch, consider how Allen is not all “bad.” 

Assignments 

Assignment 1: Schematics

Download and complete The Character Arc: Antagonist. 

You’ll see that the above character arc is the same for both protagonist and antagonist. There is a craft reason for this. Often, our best protagonists would be great antagonists, too, and vice versa. Whether your character is a protagonist or antagonist, he or she must be fully fleshed so that he or she could play either role. The role you choose for this character is merely a personal choice based on situation and perspective.

Click on the above link and open the document. Save the document to your hard drive. Follow the directions and the writing assignment (also copied below) as given, step by step, in this document. Take one section at a time. Try not to skip forward to a later section. Let your discovery process build. We are focusing only on the antagonist for this week. We will focus on a supporting character next week. Please submit both your completed Character Arc and following Narrative Exploration by the Sunday due date.

Assignment 2: Narrative Exploration

Write a 1000 word or less scene/story about your character, making your antagonist a protagonist of his or her own scene or story.

You might find that this character narrative will become part of the longer work, or you may find it will not. Either way, writing this character narrative is essential to knowing your character better in narrative form, and this will help you write your character with more feeling and interest in the longer work. 1000 words. This word count is firm. 

Lesson No. 8: Punctuation and Grammar

Writing Goal: Punctuation and Grammar

  • Demonstrate a highly effective use and command of the standard written English language (punctuation and grammar) and is free or virtually free of errors.

 

An Actual SAT Essay Response That Scored an 8

In the article “Foreign News at a Crisis Point,” Peter S. Goodman eloquently argues the ‘point’ that news organizations should increase the amount of professional foreign news coverage provided to people in the United States. Goodman builds his argument by using facts and evidence, addressing the counterarguments, and couching it all in persuasive and compelling language. 

          Goodman begins the article by bombarding the reader with facts and statistics. He states that, according to a census conducted by the American Journalism Review, the number of full-time foreign news correspondents in the United States dropped from 307 in 2003 to 234 in 2011. In addition, the AJR survey also discovered that “the space devoted to foreign news [in American papers] had shrunk by 53 percent” in the last 25 years. 

          Beginning the article with all of these facts and figures has a couple of strengthe[n]ing effects on Goodman’s argument. First, by starting out [omit unnecessary words] with hard evidence, Goodman lays the groundwork of [establishes (replace wordiness with a single higher level word] his own credibility. He’s not just writing an opinion piece — his opinion is backed by the truth. This will bring the readers onboard and make them more likely to trust everything else he says. Second,  because Goodman presents these facts without much explaining/interpreting, the reader is forced to do the math herself. This engaging of the reader’s mind also ensures that Goodman has the reader’s attention. When the reader does the math to find a drop of 73 full-time foreign news correspondents employed by US papers in just 8 short years,  she will find herself predisposed to agree with Goodman’s call for more professional foreign news reporting.

          In addition to employing facts to his argument’s advantage, Goodman also cunningly discusses the counterargument to his position. By writing about how social media and man-on-the-ground reporting has had some positive impact on the state of foreign news reporting, Goodman heads off naysayers at the pass. It would have been very easy for Goodman to elide over the whole issue of citizen reporting, but the resultant [resulting] one-sided argument would have been much less convincing. Instead, Goodman acknowledges things like “the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances.” As a result, when he partially refutes this counterargument, stating the “unease” many longtime profession [professional] correspondents feel over the trend of ‘citizen journalism’ [“citizen journalism”] feel, the reader is much more likely to believe him. After all, Goodman acknowledges that social media does have some power. Knowing that Goodman takes the power of social media seriously will make the reader more inclined, in turn, to take Goodman’s concern about the limits of social media seriously.

          The final piece that helps bolster Goodman’s argument that US news organizations should have more professional foreign correspondents is Goodman’s linguistic + [and] stylistic choices. Goodman uses contrasts to draw the reader deeper into his mindset. By setting up the contrast between professional reporters as “informational filters” that discriminate good from bad and amateur, man-on-the-spot reporters as undiscriminating “funnels,” Goodman forces the reader to view the two in opposition and admit that professional filters are to be preferred over funnels that add “speculatio[n], propaganda, and other white noise” to their reporting. In addition, Goodman drives the reader along toward agreeing with his conclusion in the penultimate paragraph of the article with the repetition of the phrase “We need.” With every repetition, Goodman hammers even further home the inescapable rightness of his argument. The use of “We” more generally through the article serves to make the readers feel sympathetic towards Goodman and identify with him. 

          By employing the rhetorical techniques of presenting facts, acknowledging the other side, and using persuasive language, Goodman convinces the reader of his claim. 

 

*There are many more copy edits that might be made to this writer’s response; however, as you can see, the SAT scorers gave this response a perfect score. The scorers do understand that a 50 minute timed written response will be limited in its edits. The above response is not a well-written piece by any editor’s standards. It is riddled with errors. It is wordy. Even some of the logic has holes; however, remember, this is essentially a first draft that has been polished as best the writer can polish it within 50 minutes. In a professional writing scenario, this first draft would be put aside for a day or two and the writer would return to further explore her ideas and developments. It would be put aside, again… This process of writing can take several days or even weeks. A professional journalist has trained for years to complete this writing process within a matter of hours. A high school student is not expected to have the same journalist/writing process training that a professional writer has; however, a high school student can evidence the beginnings of this training.

Your job is to minimize as many editing errors as possible. Make sure that the response is clear, regardless of any possible remaining errors, all while following the prompt exactly. The more you train for this formulaic response now, the stronger your muscle memory will be during testing time. The training you do for the SAT Essay test now will also help you in the critical reading sections of the SAT. Stick with it and let your mind develop the habit over time. It takes at least three weeks to build a new habit. Make sure you give yourself enough training time before test day.

 

Source Material 

 

Adapted from Peter S. Goodman’s, “Foreign News at a Crisis Point.” ©2013 by eHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. Originally published September 25, 2013. Peter Goodman is the executive business and global news editor at eHuffingtonPost.com.

1. Back in 2003, American Journalism Review produced a census of foreign correspondents then employed by newspapers based in the United States, and found 307 full-time people. When AJR repeated the exercise in the summer of 2011, the count had dropped to 234. And even that number was significantly inflated by the inclusion of contract writers who had replaced full-time staffers.

2. In the intervening eight years, 20 American news organizations had entirely eliminated their foreign bureaus.

3. The same AJR survey zeroed in on a representative sampling of American papers from across the country and found that the space devoted to foreign news had shrunk by 53 percent over the previous quarter-century.

4. All of this decline was playing out at a time when the U.S. was embroiled in two overseas wars, with hundreds of thousands of Americans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was happening as domestic politics grappled with the merits and consequences of a global war on terror, as a Great Recession was blamed in part on global imbalances in savings, and as world leaders debated a global trade treaty and pacts aimed at addressing climate change. It unfolded as American workers heard increasingly that their wages and job security were under assault by competition from counterparts on the other side of oceans.

5. In short, news of the world is becoming palpably more relevant to the day-to-day experiences of American readers, and it is rapidly disappearing.

6. Yet the same forces that have assailed print media, eroding foreign news along the way, may be fashioning a useful response. Several nonprofit outlets have popped up to finance foreign reporting, and a for-profit outfit, GlobalPost, has dispatched a team of 18 senior correspondents into the field, supplemented by dozens of stringers and freelancers….

7. We are intent on forging fresh platforms for user-generated content: testimonials, snapshots and video clips from readers documenting issues in need of attention. Too often these sorts of efforts wind up feeling marginal or even patronizing: “Dear peasant, here’s your chance to speak to the pros about what’s happening in your tiny little corner of the world.” We see user-generated content as a genuine reporting tool, one that operates on the premise that we can only be in so many places at once. Crowd-sourcing is a fundamental advantage of the web, so why not embrace it as a means of piecing together a broader and more textured understanding of events?

8. We all know the power of Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media to connect readers in one place with images and impressions from situations unfolding far away. We know the force of social media during the Arab Spring, as activists convened and reacted to changing circumstances…. Facts and insights reside on social media, waiting to be harvested by the digitally literate contemporary correspondent.

9. And yet those of us who have been engaged in foreign reporting for many years will confess to unease over many of the developments unfolding online, even as we recognize the trends are as unstoppable as globalization or the weather. Too often it seems as if professional foreign correspondents, the people paid to use their expertise while serving as informational filters, are being replaced by citizen journalists who function largely as funnels, pouring insight along with speculation, propaganda and other white noise into the mix.

10. We can celebrate the democratization of media, the breakdown of monopolies, the rise of innovative means of telling stories, and the inclusion of a diversity of voices, and still ask whether the results are making us better informed. Indeed, we have a professional responsibility to continually ask that question while seeking to engineer new models that can channel the web in the interest of better informing readers….

11. We need to embrace the present and gear for the future. These are days in which newsrooms simply must be entrepreneurial and creative in pursuit of new means of reporting and paying for it. That makes this a particularly interesting time to be doing the work, but it also requires forthright attention to a central demand: We need to put back what the Internet has taken away. We need to turn the void into something fresh and compelling. We need to re-examine and update how we gather information and how we engage readers, while retaining the core values of serious-minded journalism.

12. This will not be easy…. But the alternative—accepting ignorance and parochialism—is simply not an option.

—2003 US papers cut foreign corr. In 8 years, 20 papers eliminated. Threatens “ignorance” + “parochialism” 

—Iraq, Afghanistan, soldiers in war zones without enough new coverage can create additional dangers and issues.

—Americanized news taking over hard core global coverage

—GlobalPost is righting the wrong, but is this “crowd-sourcing a good thing?

—Social networking, Arab Spring (need to know what this is about)

—Uh oh. Can Facebook posts replace expert journalism? speculation, propaganda, white noise

—democratization of media is good, but not enough. We still need professional journalists who will cut through propaganda and speculation and give the news and facts.

—cautiously optimistic view of the future of journalism. Excellent repetitive rhetorical/persuasive strategy here. “We need to…” is an effective closure and summation strategy. It expresses strong emotion the same way your mother repeating herself about cleaning your room expresses her strong emotion about cleaning your room. Use this repetition/persuasive/rhetorical strategy in your response as both a point of discussion and as a way to write the last paragraph of the response.

Here it is! This is the meat of the article. The body paragraphs are all about supporting Goodman’s caution of “ignorance” and  “parochialism” in “democratized” journalism.

Now your job is easy. Locate the  most important details Goodman uses to support his claim. You don’t even really have to think too hard. Goodman has done all the work of you. . Think of this essay as playing a game of telephone. Imagine that you, Goodman and the SAT scorers are all sitting in a circle on the floor. Goodman has whispered his statement to you. Now, all you have to do is whisper what he said to the scorers while convincing them that you paid attention in English class. Make sure you are whispering the most important underlined and circled words! 

*As you notate, do not worry about grammar, spelling punctuation. Save that for your actual essay response.