Sex in Writing

Jumping on the bandwagon of a couple other blogs, I've decided to give my two-cents on the topic of sex in writing.

With regard to sex scenes in my writing. I don't have any, and I probably never will. Having said that, however, let me also say that I don't believe there's anything wrong with sex in a novel. Not if it's tasteful. Some of you may be shaking your heads. Tasteful is such a subjective word. Some people out there in the world would think the phrase 'tasteful sex scene' is an oxymoron. I'm not one of those people.

However, I do believe sex is a private thing. Not because it's dirty or shameful or wicked. To me, it's private because it is so very special. To me, it's so special, it's not something to share with the rest of the world. Sex is the most profound way one person can show their highest values being mirrored in another person.

I write my characters with that philosophy in mind. I'll hint at sex in my books. Heck, in Blink, a man and a woman spend an extended period of time alone together. The two main characters admire each other, and they have similar values. They're bound to sleep together. It would be strange for them not to have sex. But I only hint at it.

The only problem I have with reading sex scenes in novels is if the sex is degrading in some manner. Which seems pretty obvious given my stated view on what sex means in a relationship. People who care for one another shouldn't want to cause pain - whether it be mental or physical. JMO, to be sure. But pretty rational when you think about it.

The only time I'll even hint about sex in that manner is when I'm trying to make a point. In Spectacle, one of the villians gets interrupted having a sex with another one of the villians. He uses sex as a tool to get what he wants, and he's not above doing whatever whenever with whoever if it moves him up the power ladder. It's key to his personality.

So once again, I come to the point I've been talking about all along. If it works for the story, write it in. But keep it in character, keep it as part of the story, and make sure it flows.

As with anything you're writing.

Now, to illustrate my view on sex, here's a brief excerpt from Spectacle:
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Without warning a pair of small, sure hands slid over his shoulders and down his arms. He stood perfectly still and allowed himself a moment to revel in their touch. As the hands slid forward and he felt her arms wrap themselves around his chest, the scent of her shampoo wafted on a slight morning breeze. She laid her head against his back and sighed. Lifting his hands, he covered hers and hugged them close to him. It had been a long time since he had thought about the joy of having a good woman in his life and a long time since he had given up the thought of ever finding the right one.

Slowly he turned to face her. Her smile was hidden in the darkness, but he knew it reflected his own. Without speaking, he urged her to stand beside him and he rested his arm across her shoulders, pulling her firmly against his ribs. Together they watched in silent companionship as the sun rose.

When the day had fully begun, she shyly said, “Good morning, Michael.” Her head nestled in the crook where his shoulder met his chest, she wondered at how perfectly she fit there and how wonderful it felt.

He traced the curve of her cheek and then combed her silken hair between his long slender fingers. “Good morning, Alex,” he replied.

Stretching herself onto the balls of her feet, she moved forward to press her lips against his the way she had longed to do for so many days now. Sensing her intent, Michael shifted slightly and her lips met softly with his rough cheek. She smiled and said playfully, “You need a shave.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “Yes,” he whispered into her hair. “I need a lot of things, Alex, but some of those things will have to wait for another time.” Releasing her, he playfully ruffled her hair and then turned to walk back inside.

Laying her hand gently on his arm, she said huskily, “There is plenty of time, and one small kiss won’t take too long.”

She could see the temptation rising in his eyes, and he swayed slightly toward her as if he were fighting a battle. The smile in Michael’s eyes turned slowly to a smoldering gaze, and his hand reached toward hers. Gently he took her fingers from their grasp on his shirtsleeve and raised her hand to his lips. He kissed the back of her wrist softly and looked into her eyes. “There is time for one small kiss, my dearest one,” he said, “but there isn’t time for the things that must come before that one small kiss. A kiss is a promise, Alex; a promise you will be the only woman who will ever feel the touch of my lips again. I don’t make promises lightly, and when I make this promise, we will both know it is the right one to make.” A look in her eyes made him stop, and in an instant his resolve nearly crumbled, but the same force of will that had put Los Verdad on that mountain was more than enough to shore up his resolve once more. “It is not a popular way of looking at romance, Alex, but I don’t do things the popular way; I do things my own way. When I kiss you, you will know you have been kissed and that you will never kiss another man for the rest of your life.”

To Prologue or Not?

There seems to be something of a disagreement in the writing world about the dreaded prologue. From what I've read, prologues are a no-no. (Which is why I said 'dreaded'.) I've even had people tell me to drop the prologue from Caldera. But no real reason has been offered beyond the 'prologues are bad' argument. Oddly, one agent I queried loved the prologue and thought I should write a non-fiction piece based on the prologue. Unfortunately, he didn't like the premise of the novel itself. Ack. But I digress.

That's one side of the disagreement. On the other side, many of the books I've read lately have had... :drumroll: Prologues. Hmmm. Some of those books have been bestsellers. Now, you don't hear about those authors coming out in favor of prologues. They just write them.

While I'm sure people are out there writing prologues that do little more than give backstory or drag the beginning with unnecessary information, I don't think a wholesale ban on prologues is the right way to go about addressing the issue. Any more than a wholesale ban on slang or incomplete sentences would be appropriate. Just because some people use these devices improperly doesn't make them evil.

Having said that, however, I am considering dropping my prologue. Don't get me wrong. It's sets the whole book up rather nicely. It's only two pages, and I think it helps to be in there. How much it's helping, though, remains to be seen. And whether it's hurting Caldera's chances to be published remain to be seen as well. Right now, it's a coin toss. No one who has read the book in its entirety has had a problem with the prologue - or if they did, they never voiced their opinion about it.

So, I'm leaving it in the hands of my blog readers. The prologue is below. For those of you who haven't been reading along, the underlying plot of Caldera is about a scientist with a plan to control the impending eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.

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Prologue

It has happened before.

Six hundred thousand years ago, death and destruction rained from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River, from the plains of Saskatchewan to the Gulf of Mexico. Seventy-five thousand years ago the sun disappeared beneath a haze of ash, killing the majority of the human race in the ensuing global winter. Fifteen hundred years ago, the most notorious of human eras—The Dark Ages—began in a shroud of gray volcanic dust.

Early in the 19th century, the center of a tiny island in the Dutch West Indies swelled and trembled and burst. Fiery boulders fell from the sky; ash blanketed both land and ocean for hundreds of miles as it spewed into the atmosphere. More than ninety thousand people died as the sky became clogged with soot—soot so thick that the year of 1816 was to become known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’.

Later in that same century, a mountain rising from the depths of the East Indies exploded and then collapsed. The sea rose twelve feet that day, pushed up suddenly as tons of rock dropped into its murky depths. Thundering walls of water swept toward Java, Sumatra, Bali; tens of thousands drown as the ocean broke over their homes and villages.

In each instance a caldera has erupted, and in each instance the world has born the brunt of its destruction.

So far, many of these types of events occurred before the ascension of man; so far, they have all occurred in sparsely populated areas. In the scheme of human disaster, these events remain insignificant. In perspective, the death toll has been minimal. But still, the tiny native children who shivered in fear as Tambora thundered down upon them thought it more than minimal. The tribal women who screamed their last breaths as Krakatau choked the sound away considered it from a different perspective. The peasants who endured The Dark Age’s endless years of starvation and suffering certainly thought it significant.

They all must have prayed for whatever god they knew to make it stop. They must have offered sacrifices and tributes to appease the wrath that cascaded upon them. But even amidst their fruitless prayers and hopeless offerings, they must have believed in their hearts that nothing could stop nature.

In the mountains of western Wyoming, a caldera lays in a fitful sleep—churning and gurgling and smoking like some great evil dragon—and mankind dances around it as if it has been caged for their amusement. The sparkling geysers and the boiling mud are merely an interesting diversion right now, but the dragon is bound by no man’s chains and it has overslept by twenty thousand years. When it awakens, no man will think it amusing, and no man with think of it as a mere diversion.

Pompeii was a firecracker. Mount Saint Helens, a birthday candle. When Yellowstone makes up its mind to blow, the people in its path will wish they’d been at Hiroshima instead.

Will they be praying on some sprawling ranch in Montana? Will they be screaming in some sparkling penthouse in Denver? Will they be choking under a layer of ash on the bustling streets of Houston?

Perhaps nothing can be done to stop nature. Or perhaps, just maybe, something can.

It has happened before. Perhaps it doesn’t have to happen again.
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If it never gets published with the rest of Caldera, at least it's here. Barring any feelings about the writing style of the above excerpt, what are your thoughts on prologues? Do you use them when they're necessary, or do you shun them entirely?