I'm someone who likes to worldbuild. I want to create a world with a set of rules, create characters with a history, and see how that history in those rules would naturally sort themselves out.
In my bound friends series though, there is a reason I start it on the 18th birthday of the youngest character. I understand why there is an invisible wall at that 18th birthday, but that's not how real flesh and blood people live. And less sexualized media gets to explore that, there are simply too many shows to name where all characters are set in high school and most if not all are under 18 where relationships are the primary driver of plot. Because of course high schoolers are thinking about or having sex, they always have and always will.
I don't want to violate rules by exploring that, especially because I as now quite the adult do not want to be describing sex scenes of young teenagers. I especially don't want to attract or validate the kind of people who would like to hear that.
But who are we kidding? What 18 year old is born anew their 18th birthday?
So I guess to some degree this is also me crowdsorcing a question, if your primary characters are 18, how do you write a sexually charged book without ever including their sex lives before the day of their 18th birthday? Are there any good examples that spring to mind?
Because Preview:
I'm writing many things, but one of the many things I'm writing as a potential series is I want to kind of follow a single person through their life, from college to into their 30s at least. The Erotic Adventures of Emily (not a real title yet). I have the idea that she is basically in the closet about being bi, but it feels cheap. Maybe I'm one to talk, because as someone who is bi-adjacent I never really dealt very seriously with "being in the closet" in any of my Bound Friends series because.. I am not sure, it might have just been not something I wanted to deal with. But now making it plot central seems, also not great. Maybe I'm just self critical and don't like what I write no matter what!
Anyway, Book Recommendation
This will be in a very different vibe than my last one but I got to mention Tangled Vows by Anna Stone. The writing is well done, the characterization is interesting in that it's like pealing back layers. I don't know, I just really got into it even though it's light on bondage, "SugarKink" as I've newly learned the term.
One story I read recently had the character in her twenties and reminisce about her first highschool boyfriend. In the flashback she was 16 but the story overall felt appropriate because as you said, every highschooler is thinking about sex. Flashbacks might be the best way to circumvent this otherwise taboo subject.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I kind of see mentioning sex in the past tense to be about as far as I feel comfertable going. As long as the story's "present day" involves only adults, that's maybe the best I can do without making them a blank slate.
DeleteThat or don't have any teenagers. Once you get deep into your 20s and especially early 30s, what you did in high school doesn't really factor in much, unless it was something traumatic. And it might sound hypocritical from someone who has written sex that was non-consensual, but there's something different about non-consensual on the bases of age. I don't want to get into that.
A few months ago I watched HBO's series "Euphoria". There is like a lot of sex there. Mostly among teenagers, but also teens with young adults. Also a scene where a closet gay dad does it with a trans teen. The sex scenes are obvious but not explicit. I mean, it's clear that they are doing it, but is not shown in a "sexualized" way. Quite the opposite, as the series has a critical-ish approach and many scenes are unpleasant to see.
ReplyDeleteSo, my point, you can describe teens doing it, but not in a way that might arouse the reader. Maybe in a more informative/anecdotal way. Maybe describe a bad experience of the main character that teaches a valuable lesson.
I think, to the extent that the problem is sexualizing minors, the simple solution is to tell, not show. You can mention a character's recollection and judgment about their past relationships, without necessarily dwelling on them or describing them in a fashion that's meant to be arousing to the reader. So there is some space between crude sexualization and pretending sexuality is not an important aspect of peoples' underage lives, in different ways.
ReplyDeleteFrom a literary perspective, there is a way to be sensitive and honest about sexual relationships that doesn't come off as leering, and I think that relates to the standpoint from which you approach them. There is the basically innocent standpoint of the people engaged in them, who are overwhelmed by many considerations, not just their natural interest in sex, but the way they begin to approach romance and the way they start navigating social space independently (and so begin to be concerned about things like their reputation, validation of themselves and their interests, etc, not just love or the merry fun of making out), then there is the standpoint of the voyeur, whose interest in them is not innocent, who does not share the same concerns about their relationships and who adopts an external interest in them as a performance by people whose idea they find attractive. Incidentally, this standpoint is not honest about or sensitive to the way these relationships actually form and develop, because it doesn't care for any of that. So the literary suggestion would be to pursue internality in your exposition of these relationships, and try to reconstruct the more obscure and confused standpoint of the people in them.
Though it's been nearly a year since your last post, I'm not giving up on The Stories of Bound Friends or you.
ReplyDeleteGood news! Jess and I have collaborated to publish the next episode of Bound Friends. Read it here: https://www.deviantart.com/wr1t3r909/art/Part-24-25-Zainab-and-the-Big-Party-928469629
ReplyDeletedon't mind if I wait to hear from Jess before paying you 3 dollars for something that's 80% hers. It's not about money, but internet, you know?
DeleteAgree, would be nice to hear from Jess on this
DeleteThis feels like something I'd want to hear from Jess. Plus there is literally nothing else published at this account on DA.
ReplyDelete