Sex! (There now that I have your attention?)

There has been a bit of talk around here recently on the nature of violence and its use - whether it can be too viceral, and it led me to the partner in crime, sex.

I've quietly (ish) been working away on something that centres around six teenagers, three girls and three boys, and to start with sex was not an issue. As an all powerful writing god I could do what I wanted with them.

But as I have started to get to know them, they've started to come to life a bit more and they've started to remind me that they are thriteen year olds whose hormones are starting to rage away which means sexual feeling, if not physical sex would start to sway around in the mix.

The story, as it stands in narrated by one of the characters, but from a future veiw point and I've been using that to give a bit more detail on each of the characters allowing us to come to know them a little more fully than if we just had them as teenagers.

While I was doing this it occurred to me that if you had these six friends, all who had been very close growing up, it would have been odd if there was not some kind of flirtation between two of them (or more).

I've already got a vague idea of what happens there now (these characters start to tell you all their secrets as you get to know them, don't they know I'm writing it down?)

But it has made me think is sex really needed (obviously yes), but in what level of detail?

No matter what can you get away with just the obvious fact that people have sex. Even Tolkien does that, but it is so much part of life that we probably don't even see it as anything other than part of the story - Sam and Rosie have countless kids so unless there is some form of Hobbit immaculate conception sex happened. We don't need to see it though.

So at what point does the description becomes too much?

Is there any point where even the most detailed description can be justified?

Is it better to just do a vague reference?

Perpetual Man said:

it would have been odd if there was not some kind of flirtation between two of them

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No, not really.
Nor does 13 year old Flirtation lead to sex.

Lots of teens are not like some sort of Daily Mirror article or TV soap.

Perpetual Man said:

But it has made me think is sex really needed (obviously yes)

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Why? Very many Teen books are brilliant and don't even have implied sex

Perpetual Man said:

We don't need to see it though.

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Depends if you are writing a Teen Adventure or porn.


Don't ask just write what you think is right. You'll get a whole spectrum of opinion, for wildly different motivations.

Ray McCarthy said:

No, not really.
Nor does 13 year old Flirtation lead to sex.

Lots of teens are not like some sort of Daily Mirror article or TV soap.


Depends if you are writing a Teen Adventure or porn.

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13 yo flirtation can lead to sex. But it's not a given. If the book is YA probably graphic depiction is risky.

Yes it can, but not automatically is what I meant.

Of course, I hope I did not imply that my thirteen year old would start flirting and end up in each others sleeping bags because that is what happens. On the contrary I'd give them s litewrary clip around the ear if they tried that.

They are good (read as: how the majority of kids probablyare).

The biggest issue of the main time line that some of them are facing is that friends they have grown up with all their life, and have always been just friends are suddenly girls as well. And that other friends might actually fancy them and what does it all mean!!!!

The actualy encounter that they keep telling me about as I am writing is something that happens in later years. Perhaps.

Don't you remember?

I refuse to answer on the grounds I might incriminate my characters.)

Umm, I'm currently writing just for me. I had no intention of starting to writie anything longer than 300 words ( ) over the coming months, but this just popped into my head and I went with it. (I could say a little more but will leave it for a few days yet.)

I'm also wondering about when description becomes too much. Can you get away if it is proved neccessary to the plot?

I remember reading, I think, Heretics or Chapter House Dune by Frank Herbert years ago (so I was an impressionable youngster) and after the original books barely touched on sex there was just suddenly a very descriptive passage of a sexual act. It completely threw me at the time, probably more graphic than anything I had read before.

But the reason it was there did serve a purpose, not just shock value.

Perpetual Man said:

But the reason it was there did serve a purpose, not just shock value.

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Perhaps in the author's mind. But IMO the series gradually deteriorated. I liked Dune. I didn't much like Chapter House or many of the others.

Some people say you can do anything if it's "necessary to the plot". Personally I don't agree. I never yet read any descriptive sex in a novel where it was needed or improved the story. It's different for people that want to read descriptions of sex, but that's not why I read books.

Oh the series definitely deteriorated, I'm in the minority who thought they held up until God Emperor which I enjoyed, but then just seemed to be treading water for the final book which was meant to follow Chapter House, but of course that never happened until we had the books by Anderson and Herbert Jr. and they butchered the series even more...

I think the sequence I am thinking of, and I'm drawing on a really old memory is that the sex was used to trigger the memories of a ghola Miles Teg, an Atreidies descendant and ersatz kwizatz haderach (spell check loved that last run of words!). Whether it needed to be in such detail is a very valid question.

My memory of teenage not-sex is that it's often about not hugely successful kisses, and wandering (male) hands, and it's generally a fairly awkward and unsexual kind of experience (or maybe that was just me). The genuinely alluring bits tended to be the things that weren't specifically to do with sex or anything leading up to sex.

I don't think you need to show anything very much if you don't want to, but you might have some unspoken urges and awkward attempted kisses or something going on.

I guess it depends when it's set, partly.

Also, based on my observations of eight year old not-sex, much younger child flirtation involves things like insulting each other and wrestling. Might young teens still have some of that going on?

Perpetual Man said:

But it has made me think is sex really needed (obviously yes), but in what level of detail?

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Forget about sex, and think about relationships. That are realistic to your characters.

Hi Perp,

I'd ask you what your kids cultural capital/demographic is. Here in the Big Smoke the kids I teach - from 11yr olds upwards are sexually literate not only because of it being the city with all its attendant trappings, but also because PSHE plays such a big part in our children's curriculum these days. I hear 11 year olds frequently discussing the foolishness of people in movies who haven't worn condoms! HIV/AIDS is also far less shocking and taboo to these kids. It's a very refreshing thing to see kids approaching sex from such a mature place.

Having said that, I agree with Hex - awkward fumbles ahoy, despite their education and exposure to it on the net.

pH

In our neighborhood group there were many boys and two tom-boys and it was all rough and tumble and for the longest time that I can recall not much digression into sex; especially at that age. And those two stuck around playing baseball and football with us way beyond the stage where they were developing.

There probably was some point beyond thirteen where some began looking at them differently; but the most striking event that happened was one that I think you should take to heart here. One of the girls was raped at age 16 or 17 and we were all Catholics and there was no birth control and little talk of abortions at the time so she subsequently had a child from this and missed some school and endured quite a bit of social stigma. Through out I tried to be as helpful as possible and would like to think that I remained a true friend. If your characters are to engage in sex that young and you are addressing a young reader then there must be consequences and those have to be on display more than the sex itself. That's the only way it could be justified.

I think the date this is taking place is one of the most important factors, because of what is happening in the rest of society.

Back in the 50s and 60s there was no or little sex education and strict societal norms, which to an extent served to protect girls in particular who wouldn't want to go too far (while also, of course, sometimes laying up problems for their adult life). That persisted throughout the 70s and 80s but with more sexualised content on TV/in films etc, and less condemnation of out-of-wedlock sex -- and the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange was in existence in the UK then, of course, openly calling for adults to have sex with minors -- all of which is likely to have translated into more sex happening among young teenagers during those years. And now as Phyrebrat says, even young children are sexually knowledgeable, but we also have sexting and pornography on the internet available on every child's phone, with too many teenage girls being expected to have sex and being ostracised and bullied by boys if they refuse.

So how the children react will depend not only on their own hormonal urges, but the pressures and expectations surrounding them -- whether from their peer group, society as a whole, or their families, or indeed their ethnic group.

But it's not a documentary.

But it needs to be vaguely realistic.

There's a very good (if horrible) sex scene in Holly Black's YA Valiant if you want to see how she does it -- the kids are about 16, I think. There's one in Black Heart, too, but it's far more fade-to-black. Valiant is covered in stickers warning that it's for the upper end of the YA market (there's drug use too, and various other things).

I don't think sex always has to have negative consequences, but I prefer it when there's some sense of a reaction to it.

Hex said:

But it needs to be vaguely realistic.

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Assuming it's there at all. I was assuming there was no need.

I guess I meant that -- as TJ said in her post -- the time it's in will influence how they discuss sex and their expectations, or the challenges they face. So they don't have to actually have sex to be aware of each other and of where it might lead (or not -- again, depending on when the story is set).

At the moment I don't see it happening. It was not meant to, and if anything does happen it will be later in life, so I do have the option of referencing it.

As it is in my mind at the moment it is fairly innocent, there would be (nice) laughter and possibly alcohol involved.

As GDobkins points out there should be consequences, and this is important, even if they were simply a change in a friendship dynamic.

Phyre gives some excellent advice, but even if he didn't he gets away with murder because indirectly this is all his fault. (In the nicest possible way). He probably does not know this yet...

Thanks for all the comments and posts so far, it has/is making very interesting reading, and is very useful, if not for now maybe later.

Hex the time it is set is very nebulous. I initially had it set in the 1970's but as I've said these characters have a life of their own and they've already started talking about mobile phones.

So I might have to alter things accordingly.