How To Isolate the Sexual Arc of the Character

When writing sex, excavate the sexual arc, identity and preferences of your character the same way you would excavate any other character details and attributes. Mary Gaitskill’s short story, “Secretary,” is a good example.

When writing sex, excavate your character’s sexuality by asking questions (and actually drafting out answers to questions) such as:

  • At what age and in what circumstance did the character first recognize sexual identity?
  • What has happened in the character’s sexual development that makes sexuality a necessary character focus? (This is an essential question for any narrative that will include an overt sexual presence. The more sexually present a character is, the more digging you must do in the character’s sexual development. And if you can’t come up with something unique and essential, then the sexuality of that character would be common and less important. In this case, it should not be a main plot focus within the work. In this case, and say this with me, the sexuality might very well end up being gratuitous. In this case, cut it back, tread subtly. For those writers who believe that they are writing the first ever sexually confident female, please for the sake of all that is worthy, read more. You are not the first.)
  • What is the most vulnerable and embarrassing sexual moment the character can remember?
  • How does the character view self as sexual being? (This might seem an easy answer, but dig deeper. It’s rather complex.)
  • If this character were a different gender identity than the current, what would this be and how would it feel?
  • What parts of the character’s body, other than the genitalia and breasts, are sensitive and intimate to her/him/hir?
  • There are so many individualized questions you might ask your character. Until you come up with your unique questions and answers for your character, you have not made the character’s sexuality essential within the narrative.

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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 Moral Implications of Reading and Writing Sex

What Will My Parents Think?

Many writers struggle with the moral implications of writing sex. What is appropriate? What is okay? Over the years, writing students, especially female writing students, have voiced concerns over what their “parents will think.” There is no doubt that the gender expectations of women, mothers, daughters… extend into the artistic hinderances writers put upon themselves. When my students ask this question—adults, writers—I ask them if their parents are writers. Then I ask who the students’ favorite writers are, and what those writers “would think.”

As we develop into adults, we find that our biological parents fulfill certain developmental and emotional needs but cease to fulfill other needs. It is not only an important but necessary and healthy life milestone to let your parents off the hook of knowing it all. Simply put, if your parents do not read the same narratives that you read, why would you expect to find adult, aesthetic mentorship from your parents? 

Forming Accomplices

Difficult narratives that excel will often turn their readers into accomplices. Take Nabokov’s Lolita, for example. We are disgusted with ourselves with reading and watching the sexualized and pedophiliac narrative. Yet, like a train wreck, we can’t pull our eyes away. Nabokov makes us accomplices in a pedophile’s narrative. We are disgusted that we are reading it, and yet, early in the narrative, Nabokov connects us to a very young Humbert Humbert, when he loses his first love at fourteen. She has died. His psyche is forever stunted and we mourn with this young H.H. By the time we witness his crimes as a man, we are already connected to his inner, tragic child, giving us an early view of the “real and human and vulnerable.” will allow the writer many sexual liberties later in the narrative, regardless of how the reader might relate sexuality to a sense of personal morality or ethics.  

Moral Implications of Writing Sex Exercise

Choose a scene you’ve already written. You’re going to write two more drafts of this scene and we’re going to have some fun.

Step One: Sexual Minimalist

First, rewrite this same scene, but this time, without genitalia. For instance, if the characters are in bed, having sex, minimize the language and the intimacy so that the scene progresses exactly as originally written but without any mention of sex parts. No mention of genitalia. No euphemisms for genitalia. Remove the genitalia from the interaction. Instead, focus purely on the “sexual politics” of the scene. Allow the dark humor and awkwardness to evolve. Keep in mind that every adult reading your sex scene already knows what a penis, vagina, breast and nipple is. Unless your character has three nipples or a distended vagina like a female hyena, you’ll not likely offer interesting genitalia within the scene. With this understanding, ask yourself why the sex scene is essential to the overall narrative. Certainly, sex is essential to human nature. It drives us. It continues our bloodlines. It creates great tension, conflict and joy. But, and this is the narrative test, after so many years of sexual narratives and scenes, what is essential about your sex scene for your character(s)? Please understand, I’m not suggesting that the sex scene be removed. I’m merely pushing you to excavate the sex scene for its full strategic and narrative potential.

Step Two: Porn-Stash

Now, rewrite the scene as if you are writing for a low-budget Seventies pornographic film. No apologies, no holds barred. Go for it. Give it all the genitalia. Have fun. Laugh. Enjoy. This draft will not be read, so give yourself permission to go full on porn-stash. (If the humor aligns, you might find that this will be a hilarious addition to the narrative, after all, but most likely, this will merely be a writing exercise. If you enjoy this exercise, you could write several more drafts: Hell-Raiser, Vanilla, Master-Slave….) 

*This draft is to help you to excise the puritanical hindrances imposed upon your craft when you are alone at your desk, drafting and exploring. Conventional hindrances can be problematic for the writer’s creativity. If the character or characters share the writer’s conventional experiences then it’s not a problem, but if all the characters in all your narratives share the same conventions, histories, cultures, etc., your true calling is memoirist. Sexual conventions, sexual histories, sexual cultures are as much a part of your characters’ narratives as their family trees.

After you’ve written both “extremes,” set them aside for a few days or weeks. Then re-read them. This read is your true judge, not your parents, priest, spouse, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend. You.  

Now go read a few sex scenes from your favorite writers and let this marinate into your own scenes. Take your time. Don’t rush.  

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.