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.

Sexual Violence

Course Materials

SUGGESTED MATERIALS

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.

Sexual Language

Sexual Language

The sexual tag words. Use them or not? When writing sex, there is no formula for this. It depends upon the voice and the narrative. Overt sexual language can work very well. For instance, in Requiem for a Dream or American Psycho, the language can be abrupt and coarse. In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman’s voice and aesthetic are a mix of raw sexuality and snobbery that is both ironic and darkly hilarious and completely misogynistic, and yet, it is self aware, socially satirical:

The next question I ask, after another long silence, is, “Did either of you go to college, and if so, where?”

The response to this question consists of a barely contained glare from each of them, and so I decide to take this as an opportunity to lead them into the bedroom, where I make Sabrina dance a little before taking off her clothes in front of Christie and me while every halogen bulb in the bedroom burns. I have her put on a Christian Dior lace and charmeuse teddy and then I take off all my clothes— except for a pair of Nike all-sport sneakers— and Christie eventually takes off the Ralph Lauren robe and is buck naked except for an Angela Cummings silk and latex scarf, which I knot carefully around her neck, and suede gloves by Gloria Jose from Bergdorf Goodman that I bought on sale.

Now the three of us are on the futon. Christie is on all fours facing the headboard, her ass raised high in the air, and I’m straddling her back as if I was riding a dog or something, but backward, my knees resting on the mattress, my dick half hard, and I’m facing Sabrina, who is staring into Christie’s spread-open ass with a determined expression. Her smile seems tortured and she’s wetting her own lips by fingering herself and tracing her glistening index finger across them, like she’s applying lip gloss…. (American Pyscho)

The language Ellis uses is jarring, aggressive, and yet, the juxtaposition of this language with Bateman’s suave and snobby persona presents a dark humor that builds satisfactorily. Does the sex scene titillate? Sure. It would probably titillate many readers. It would also turn off a number of readers for both its raw language and misogynistic portrayal of prostitution. But more importantly, the primary intentions of the scene are not to titillate. They are to reveal a satirical study of a psychopath and his use of women and how the women are complicit in this. Even when Bateman begins to cut and hurt them, they stay until he has paid them their money. The scene is sexual and aggressive and raw, but it is about so much more than the sex. Through writing sex, Ellis tells a framed satire of gender and violence.

On the flip side, Munro and Nabokov use a more subtle rendering of sex often marinated in ironies and charm.  

Sexual Language and Voice

Both minimalism and overtness in sexual language can work. It is all about the voice of the work and the individual characters. If you are writing sex with overt and raw language without the ironic scene arc and internal sexual conflicts, your sex scene may likely become gratuitous, just as a violent horror scene without the ironies and internal conflicts can become gratuitous. Write essential and character-focused sex scenes. Your readers will thank you.

Course Materials

SUGGESTED MATERIALS

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.