To Do, or Not To Do... 'It'

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

I think we all agree we live in a sex-saturated society. Everywhere we turn there is sex - social media, movies and television, books, even advertising. Yes, we all know sex is used to sell everything from coffee filters to motorcycles and just about anything you can think of in between.

These days it's difficult to find books or movies that don't drip with explicit, graphic and sometimes gratuitous sex, but it is possible. The writers of this blog write what some call 'clean' books that don't have excessive sex or violence... but be careful of saying that. The word 'clean' is a trigger for lots of writers and maybe even some readers, especially those who like their reading explicit. It implies, they say, that sex is inherently 'dirty.'

Well, that argument is way above my pay grade! Besides, what constitutes 'sex' is really a very grey area, open to all manner of interpretations. To some readers, a kiss before an engagement is salacious, while to some others getting to know the other person's name before the characters have sex is not really necessary. Most readers - and writers - fall somewhere in between.

So as writers what do we do about sex? Ignore it? Allude to it? Something else? There are those who say that sex is an integral component of romance and of life itself, and that to ignore it is dishonest. There are also those who say that some things should be private, and not everyone regards premarital sex or even descriptions of marital sex as an indispensable part of romance. And many mystery readers believe that sex - except perhaps as a motive - has any place whatsoever in a mystery.

What's a poor writer to do?

First, we must accept that whatever we do there are some people who won't be happy about it. Second, we must always remember that it's our story and our people, and what they do is at our decision and command.

There are all kinds of options open to us. We can write a story where sex is not only not mentioned, it's never even thought of. We can write a story where a couple (married or unmarried) have sex, but it's most definitely off-screen, with nothing but the most careful allusion to it having happened. Some writers get so graphic in their descriptions of The Act that it might as well be advertised as an instructional manual.

So - do your characters do 'It'? Or not? It's up to you - and your readers.

What Exactly is ‘Sweet’ and Who Says So?

by Janis Susan May

I always thought I wrote ‘sweet.’ I mean, there’s no sex, no groping, no interactive body parts (other than lips, I will confess), no acrobatics. How sweet can you get?

In my case, apparently not enough. Once I got a very heated letter from a reader who was blazingly infuriated that in one of my books the hero and heroine had sex. Then she called me a number of names, the kindest of which was ‘pornographer.’

I was astonished, as I’ve never written like that, at least not in that book. Convinced that she had my book mixed up with another, I pulled up the manuscript file and began to read. Shoot fire, she was right. My characters did have sex – but only in a very non-sexual way, if that’s not a total oxymoron. There was a passionate standing-up clinch, then I said something like ‘he lowered her tenderly to the ground’ (they happened to be in a cave at the moment) and that was it. End of chapter. The next chapter started late the next morning when the hero and heroine were back on the run from the bad guys.

So did they have sex? Yes, but so far offstage that if you didn’t guess it you wouldn’t have known. No description, no blow-by-blow, no details, no morning-after smirks. Was it – even as shadowy as it was – gratuitous? Most definitely not. That evening’s activities were the lynchpin for a very important plot point.

So I ask, what constitutes ‘sweet’ and who sets the parameters? There are obvious no-nos, such as exposed body parts and minutely detailed acrobatics, but where is the line about incidents as described above? By the way, both characters were distinctly adult and cognizant of any repercussions. Teens and younger readers deserve their own set of much more restrictive conventions.

It’s easy to say ‘the publishing house sets the rules’ but in this day of burgeoning self-publishing that doesn’t fly. There’s one big publisher line where it’s a rule the kiss is the culmination of the book. Personally, I find a romance with just one kiss and it only at the end a little bit creepy. On the other hand, I find romances with characters repeatedly hopping in and out of bed with each other and repeated intimate descriptions worthy of a technical manual more than a little distressing and hardly deserving of the name romance.

I guess it comes down to an equivalent of art – how many of us have said “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like.” Some people sigh and gush over Mondrian and Warhol; others’ hearts go pitty-pat over Watteau and Monet. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

Unfortunately, until the unhealthy day some hard-and-fast rules are put in place, there is going to be a grey area, which in turn means that no matter how hard we try to get across our heat level, some readers are going to be insulted. Frankly, I’d rather have a few angry readers than a rigid, industry-wide standard, because as we all know, rules stifle creativity. 

Let Me Dream

by Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson

It is both an honor and a privilege to be one of the lead bloggers on this brave new experiment called Classic and Cozy. And part of my delight is purely selfish. For years I have preferred to read traditionally – love stories without explicit or highly descriptive sex. For the same reason I love cozy mysteries – no hard-boiled police procedurals, no graphic descriptions of blood, gore or other assorted horrors, just brain-teasing puzzles of ordinary people dealing with extraordinary events. I had begun to worry that I was alone in my likes and prejudices, that the reading world had abandoned me just because I like my books to focus on the story’s action rather than sometimes far-too-graphic details.

None of that means, however, as some people seem to think, such books are bland or boring. I personally think it takes a great deal of skill for a writer to convey an idea or emotion without necessarily resorting to such erotic or gory lengths.

Now I am a grown-up, most of the time at least, and I know that falling  in love  will sooner or later involve sex,  and that murder in itself is a ghastly and usually messy crime. I don’t  have to be shown every splash and touch to get the idea. In fact, the visuals in my head -  for me, at least – may be more moving than the author intended. Murder is an inherently terrible thing; we don’t have to be shown every blow and blood spatter to know that. Sex is intensely romantic and personal, and what is inside my mind is so much more intense for me than any author could ever write.

I guess I just just don’t believe in showing the monster. As I’ve blogged and spoken about in several places, I once worked on a  rather cheesy horror movie. When the crew was putting a rather ghastly rubber monster suit  on a poor actor, an old gaffer snorted and said they were making a bad mistake. When I asked why, he responded that everyone was frightened by something different. To show this rubber-suited actor would  take their worst fears away. The best way to scare the most  people, he said wisely, was to suggest the monster, to show what it could do, and let the viewer fill in the blanks with what was most frightening to them. Instead of the film trying to scare the viewer, create an atmosphere where the viewer could scare himself.

It’s the same for books. Obviously we don’t have monsters in cozies or romance, but the idea is the same. We read books for many reasons – for escape, for pleasure, for learning, for just about anything.  Why should our reactions be shaped and confined  by the author’s vision  of what is scary or sexy? I know that no romance I’ve ever read, erotic or not, has ever come close to my imagination… or my memories.

As a reader I say, lead me, don’t force me. Let my mind be free to imagine my own perception of your path. Let me personalize the story in my head. Let me become a partner, an active participant in my mind. Let me dream.

Janis Susan May/Janis Patterson is a 7th-generation Texan and a 3rd-generation wordsmith who writes mystery, romance, horror, children’s and scholarly. Once an actress and a singer Janis has also been editor-in-chief of two multi-magazine publishing groups as well as many other things, including an enthusiastic amateur Egyptologist. Janis’ husband even proposed in a moonlit garden near the Pyramids of Giza. Janis and her husband live in Texas with an assortment of rescued furbabies. She can be reached through www.JanisSusanMay.com or www.JanisPattersonMysteries.com