“Realism” in writing sexual relations

[LdyHoneybee]

I'll add this: My view is that in fiction "realism" is not the goal. It is not important. The goal is verisimilitude, the "appearance of realism." It means just enough realistic touches to hook the reader and keep the reader from saying "What bullshit!" and clicking out of the story. Readers' needs vary greatly on this subject. As a reader, I'm fairly "easy" in this regard. If the story is artful and the prose is good, I don't care too much whether it's "realistic." Also, as some others have noted here, what seems "unrealistic" to some may seem totally normal to others. Like polyamory, or wife-sharing. To some, these lifestyles are unimaginable; to others, they're part of everyday life. I think if a person, talking about fiction, says "I can't imagine [fill in the blank]" it means they don't have a good imagination.

My view about women characters is that women, like men, are almost infinitely variable, so I'm not too concerned about whether some readers might think, "A woman would never do that!" I feel pretty confident that some women, actually, would, and I feel no obligation to write characters who conform to statistical norms. I focus more on making sure that my characters, male and female, have recognizable personalities and motivations and that their actions are consistent with their motivations. Most of my readers seem OK with the way I've done things, but I've had plenty of readers tell me, "This is stupid trash" or something like that. I'm OK with that, too.

 

[SimonDoom]

I did say that i do agree it is EASIER for women generally (not specifically) to “understand“ men because of generations of formerly survival oriented instruction and experience, not that “men do not understand women.”

This is a generalization, and all generalizations are just generalizations, and not wholly true, but I think this is basically true.

In a male-dominated society, it's much more important for women to understand men than for men to understand women. It's a matter of survival.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

You were paying attention in English class, I see. Sorry. I am just not used to talking to people who did. My mistake. I am afraid that I balk really quickly to violations of character because characters are at the top of my list of priorities. I struggle with plot, so I am in awe of someone who handles it really well. Thank you!

 

[JGittes]

Dialogue! That is the key to making characters come alive.

A couple of months ago I saw Chaplin's City Lights at the Glyndebourne Opera House with a full orchestra. Intertitle cards, a few dialogue cards, and musical cues that sounded like speech synced with the film were the only hints at dialogue. My wife and I were sobbing, almost uncontrollably, by the end.

I'm pretty sure Chaplin would say, "Dialogue, I don't need no stinking dialogue."

(I'm fairly sure you're trying to defuse and redirect to a more positive direction.)

 

[TarnishedPenny]

SD, as usual you come up with precisely the right way of phrasing what I’ve been stumbling around. Yes, ‘verisimilitude’, believability is more important to fiction than absolute realism. Pratchett’s Discworld was utterly unreal, yet such was Sir Terry’s genius that it was entirely credible.

I would agree that there’s infinite variation and considerable overlap in both sexes, but there are generalities, too, bell curves and such. I do think (switching into übergeneralization mode) that men want action while women want emotion. Putting it in a less general sense, more men than women will be satisfied with an erotic ‘Insert Tab A into Slot B’ tale. And consider the very concept of ‘chick flicks’ or ‘chick lit’. Boyfriends shuddering at having to sit through 90 minutes of chick flick is a meme unto itself.

A good writer can include both, of course.

 

[Auden James]

This is a generalization, and all generalizations are just generalizations, and not wholly true, but I think this is basically true.

Then I think you're mistaken, see my earlier post here where I addressed LdyHoneybee's neo-Darwinian talking point already.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

What kind of lopsided argument is this? If you seriously want to make a neo-Darwinian argument, then the opposite is just as true, as only those men survived and reproduced in the past who, to use your terms, "understood women" enough to be successful with them. Hence it wouldn't be easier—on an evolutionary basis—for either sex to understand the other as they both found themselves under similar (sexual) selection pressures.

I don't think that the problem for female authors of depiciting male characters in convincing ways is limited only to their "internal thoughts and reactions," as I think that for some female authors, e. g. Donna Tartt, the problem already starts with their voice (especially in first-person narration) and actions (doing or refraining from doing things that men in all probability would rather not do or not refrain from doing, respectively). Other times the male characters created by female authors turn out rather cartoonish, e. g. Christian Grey, or their sexual orientation comes across as unbelievable as is the case with virtually all of the supposedly heterosexual male characters of Ann Rice who aren't believable in the least.

I haven’t gotten the quote thing down yet, but to your first quote: i have the long view because much of my intellectual time has been spent in historical periods. However, i said what I said because of the long periods of time when women had no independent power. Even today, there are places where we do not. In Saudi Arabia women just gained the freedom to drive a car. we only gained voting rights in the US in 1920. In Biblical times we were not considered to be allowable credible witnesses in a court of law. I venture that a “man’s world” has for centuries been based on his ability to get and maintain power. A woman’s success is often tied to her ability to understand and manipulate power through a man who has it. I cannot stand whiny people, but, you know, history. It just is. The idea that men should try to “understand“ women is very new (although some individuals, literary artists most, knew it all along), just since the 1970s really. It is a credit to many, many guys, I think, that they are genuinely trying, but it takes generations to really change something like that.

i totally agree about both those authors. Even though I lack anything like full insight into what it is like to be a man, I think their characters are ridiculous. Ann Rice even tried Jesus once! I don’t know how she thought she could do that when she could not even do a believable undead! But she is laughing all the way to the bank at those of us who think so.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

A couple of months ago I saw Chaplin's City Lights at the Glyndebourne Opera House with a full orchestra. Intertitle cards, a few dialogue cards, and musical cues that sounded like speech synced with the film were the only hints at dialogue. My wife and I were sobbing, almost uncontrollably, by the end.

I'm pretty sure Chaplin would say, "Dialogue, I don't need no stinking dialogue."

(I'm fairly sure you're trying to defuse and redirect to a more positive direction.)

A great, great artist. I love LOVE his work! Also Marceau and any great ballerina or danseur.

 

[Auden James]

i have the long view because much of my intellectual time has been spent in historical periods. However, i said what I said because of the long periods of time when women had no independent power. Even today, there are places where we do not. In Saudi Arabia women just gained the freedom to drive a car. we only gained voting rights in the US in 1920. In Biblical times we were not considered to be allowable credible witnesses in a court of law. I venture that a “man’s world” has for centuries been based on his ability to get and maintain power. A woman’s success is often tied to her ability to understand and manipulate power through a man who has it. I cannot stand whiny people, but, you know, history. It just is. The idea that men should try to “understand“ women is very new (although some individuals, literary artists most, knew it all along), just since the 1970s really. It is a credit to many, many guys, I think, that they are genuinely trying, but it takes generations to really change something like that.

Even if, for the sake of argument, I accepted your account of roughly the last two thousand years equalling a "man's world," then this "long view" would still utterly pale against the way, way longer view of human evolution up to that point in time, comprising roughly two to three million (!) years before that with the appearance of the first Hominis and their slowly developing hunter-gatherer societies.

Apart from that I find your assertion that men wouldn't try to "understand" women before the 1970s utterly ridiculous. What about the Romantics who pretty much invented our modern notion of "romantic love?" What about Shakespeare's sonets and plays? What about Ovid's "Ars amatoria?" And so on and so forth . . .

 

[8letters]

Even if, for the sake of argument, I accepted your account of roughly the last two thousand years equalling a "man's world," then this "long view" would still utterly pale against the way, way longer view of human evolution up to that point in time, comprising roughly two to three million (!) years before that with the appearance of the first Hominis and their slowly developing hunter-gatherer societies.

Apart from that I find your assertion that men wouldn't try to "understand" women before the 1970s utterly ridiculous. What about the Romantics who pretty much invented our modern notion of "romantic love?" What about Shakespeare's sonets and plays? What about Ovid's "Ars amatoria?" And so on and so forth . . .

From the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message, published in 2000:

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

So a Southern Baptist wife today per her convention's statement of faith has to understand her husband much better than he has to understand her as she has to know what arguments and tactics will likely win him over to her ideas whereas he doesn't have to convince her. Now, a husband would be stupid to not try to convince his wife to go along with him, but there are lots of stupid men out there.

Are you saying "Taming of the Shrew" invented our modern notion of "romantic love"?

I think whether your male and female characters are "realistic" depends heavily on the audience that you are writing for. I write I/T stories, of which the vast majority of readers are male. So I think I'm successful in getting my female characters "realistic" to my heavily-male audience, but I may not be successful in doing that if I wrote in a category where the vast majority of readers were female.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

Even if, for the sake of argument, I accepted your account of roughly the last two thousand years equalling a "man's world," then this "long view" would still utterly pale against the way, way longer view of human evolution up to that point in time, comprising roughly two to three million (!) years before that with the appearance of the first Hominis and their slowly developing hunter-gatherer societies.

Apart from that I find your assertion that men wouldn't try to "understand" women before the 1970s utterly ridiculous. What about the Romantics who pretty much invented our modern notion of "romantic love?" What about Shakespeare's sonets and plays? What about Ovid's "Ars amatoria?" And so on and so forth . . .

You are naming “literary artists” who are quite often anachronisms. Chaucer, I think. His “Wife of Bath” episode indicates that he had not only an understanding of “a woman’s place” in his society but also a remarkably deep and compassionate (and very subtle) understanding of what women had to do to deal with it to “succeed.” I admire these writers also. Actually, the ideals that the Romantics brought fully to fruition were first proposed to women in the nobility during the Crusades by poets who had been exposed to the Moorish poetic tradition where women are still often not even treated as adults, let alone beloved adults. Romeo and Juliet is about one of the hot topics of his day, I think, and that is whether a daughter should pick her husband or her father should. It is, in a way, flattering, to be put on that pedestal, but because of its negative side, not always fun. As a woman, I enjoy having doors opened for me. I always say thank you. However I do not enjoy the same people thinking that I am so dumb about a car that they can cheat me, if that makes sense. But this may be veering a little off topic for this board although I love discussing great artists.

 

[Auden James]

From the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message, published in 2000:

The point wasn't what this or that Christian denomination might have to say about sex relations today, but whether men wouldn't want to understand women before the 1970s. For this reason I consider the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message (published in 2000) completely irrelevant to the argument.

Are you saying "Taming of the Shrew" invented our modern notion of "romantic love"?

No, I don't since Shakespeare was no Romantic, and it were the Romantics whom I pointed out as pretty much having invented our modern notion of "romantic love." See, for example, Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," published in 1774.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Hello, i am new as of yesterday and trying to figure out if there is a niche fo me here. I write so i know what good writing is. I have also been told I am a good roleplayer, and I enjoy it. I am looking around and randomly reading things of other authors, good and not so. I even looked a bit into the archives/old things from the early 2000s.

i have been interested for a long time in whether men can write really convincing female characters, especially as regard to sex and sexual issues and vice versa. i have read female authors who write sex scenes for their books (not talking about romance novels here, the heaving breast crew) and also at least one who is quite famous for her classic literotica. They seem “realistic” to me. But i am female, as are the authors. However, Charles Dickens immediately identified George Eliot as female by her writing, so i don’t know.

I found several astonishingly good male authors here; however, I am not sure some really “get” the female psyche despite my hopes when I started reading because they definitely showed writing skill. From my perspective as female, women do absolutely not need the missionary position and a permanent cuddling set-up to revel in sex or to enjoy reading it. On the other hand, I wonder if many women really identify with characters who become wildly excited (maybe a little) by being banged on by men who say they love them while going at sex as if they were engaging in it alone and who periodically manage to ask them breathlessly in midbang if they are enjoying it. Am I wrong about this? Is it just the writers I happened to see? Again, these are good writers in many other respects.

Is this a hopeless situation? Do you think that men and women are so hopelessly different that neither can write realistic reactions for the other in the grip of sexual interaction? Are there writers anyone has found who do seem to get it, women who can write realistic men or men who can write realistic women in extremis?

Thanks for being patient with this new person who would like to learn. I turned in a couple of “prologues” last night to test the water, but then I read here that people are waiting months for their writing to be evaluated (No criticism…I understand).

The end of the day almost everything we write is outside of our perspective, otherwise most people on here would be too knackered to do any writing.

For me the best writing is all backed up with great character work, be that character be male or female and be that writer be male or female.

Consider this, in Ripley in Aliens James Cameron created an iconic female action hero lead, but in The Hurt Locker, Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow won Oscar’s for her brilliant and tragic look at the male psyche in war.

It can be done and does get done every day in every culture, not just here.

 

[Auden James]

You are naming “literary artists” who are quite often anachronisms.

How could men like Shakespeare or Ovid have been anachronisms when they were very much men of their time? Ovid's instructional elegy, for example, was so popular at the time of its original publication that he immediately wrote a sequel, "Remedia amoris." If his writing's content would indeed have been anachronistic, i. e., incongruent to the mores of its time, then it wouldn't have become this popular in the first place! The same is true for Shakespeare.

It is, in a way, flattering, to be put on that pedestal, but because of its negative side, not always fun.

Well, you can't have your cake and it eat it too, or can you?

 

[TxRad]

LHB, remember that Auden James is known for arguing with anyone who doesn't see his point of view exactly. A total waste of time.

Check out the other threads he his been in and you will see his normal.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

I've lived and/or spent significant time on 5 continents and met many different types of people and different cultures.
In all of that time and locations, I never once met a "happy couple" in an open marriage.
If you believe the numbers, then I'm sure they're out there.

I'm jumping in late here, but I had to respond to this point. You have probably met dozens of happily married couples in open marriages, but never knew their status. Couples in the lifestyle generally do not advertise their relationship status to others who are not. Think about it--who among your friends and family knows what goes on behind your bedroom door? Our neighbors and families know nothing about what we enjoyed.

My wife and I have been married for over 30 years. For 15 of those years we were active swingers. We met literally dozens of couples like us who were in long-term marriages but who also enjoyed playing with others. For 10 years we were involved with five other couples with whom we enjoyed family outings, went on vacations together, celebrated holidays, went to dinner, and once a month we got together and fucked each other's brains out. Of the six couples, four of us are still together, married between 30 and 40 years. One couple divorced due to the husband's numerous issues, and the sixth couple also divorced--they had issues before they started swinging and thought fucking other people might cure their issues (it didn't). Two divorces out of six marriages is less than the national average, by the way.

We still socialize with the other couples and and the wife of one divorced couple, but we don't fuck each other anymore. We have all aged out of it.

I'm not saying the lifestyle is for everyone. It is not. But even if you know a few people who have tried it and it was not for them, do not suppose that those involved are not happily married. The vast majority of those we met were in happy, stable, fun and sexy relationships. Sure, we met people who were not right for it, and we saw a few scenes that we would have preferred to avoid. But the majority of the interactions we had were favorable, and led to lifelong friendships.

 

[Seadog777]

Funny how everyone is a current swinging couple or used to swing.
Know lots of couples that are as well.


I can always count on getting a laugh.

I'm done now, next topic.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

The point wasn't what this or that Christian denomination might have to say about sex relations today, but whether men wouldn't want to understand women before the 1970s. For this reason I consider the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message (published in 2000) completely irrelevant to the argument.

No, I don't since Shakespeare was no Romantic, and it were the Romantics whom I pointed out as pretty much having invented our modern notion of "romantic love." See, for example, Goethe's "The Sorrows of Young Werther," published in 1774.

He let a woman who might have returned his love believe that he wanted only to be her friend, and then he killed himself. I am afraid I did not consider that very romantic, just really frustrating and dumb. He should have told her. Then if it did not happen, he still could have killed himself but at least he would have had a real reason (I guess..at least more than he had). But as it was, his imagination killed him. But yes, that was the start of the Romantic *movement* but not the start of the idea of romance as a reason for relationship. You used Shakespeare, by the way as an example.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

The end of the day almost everything we write is outside of our perspective, otherwise most people on here would be too knackered to do any writing.

For me the best writing is all backed up with great character work, be that character be male or female and be that writer be male or female.

Consider this, in Ripley in Aliens James Cameron created an iconic female action hero lead, but in The Hurt Locker, Cameron’s ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow won Oscar’s for her brilliant and tragic look at the male psyche in war.

It can be done and does get done every day in every culture, not just here.

I think that also. Just want to do my best to do it. it is like any other way that someone else’s experience is not like yours. You have to ask and then LISTEN since there are some things your own experience can never teach you. Thanks!

 

[LdyHoneybee]

How could men like Shakespeare or Ovid have been anachronisms when they were very much men of their time? Ovid's instructional elegy, for example, was so popular at the time of its original publication that he immediately wrote a sequel, "Remedia amoris." If his writing's content would indeed have been anachronistic, i. e., incongruent to the mores of its time, then it wouldn't have become this popular in the first place! The same is true for Shakespeare.

Well, you can't have your cake and it eat it too, or can you?

What I meant by that is that artists, particularly artists whose expertise is in language arts, are often more sensitive to human nature than ordinary people which lifts them out of the timeline in a way and installs them in “forever.” This is why, I suppose, that we still read and see and love Shakespeare even though he has been dead for over 400 years. For contrast, can you remember the most popular song of 2018 without doing an internet cheat? An anachronism is “out of place in time.” Shakespeare (and many other great authors) have no time. They transcend it, so they are always, in a way, “out of place.“ But you are right that Shakespeare was a good businessman. He knew how to write to appeal to everyone, even folks who did not agree with each other. Although I think that Shakespeare was not very Romantic and could make a good argument for it based on his work, someone who DID think he was Romantic could do the same based on his work.…more easily maybe because he wrote a whole bunch of comedies. That, to me, makes him an artistic super genius….and an excellent businessman to boot.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

LHB, remember that Auden James is known for arguing with anyone who doesn't see his point of view exactly. A total waste of time.

Check out the other threads he his been in and you will see his normal.

NP I’m fine. Thank you, though.

 

[lovecraft68]

Funny how everyone is a current swinging couple or used to swing.
Know lots of couples that are as well.


I can always count on getting a laugh.

I'm done now, next topic.

Its the internet, if you said you won a turd eating contest someone here would say they did too and the turd they are was smellier than yours.

 

[lovecraft68]

How could men like Shakespeare or Ovid have been anachronisms when they were very much men of their time? Ovid's instructional elegy, for example, was so popular at the time of its original publication that he immediately wrote a sequel, "Remedia amoris." If his writing's content would indeed have been anachronistic, i. e., incongruent to the mores of its time, then it wouldn't have become this popular in the first place! The same is true for Shakespeare.

Well, you can't have your cake and it eat it too, or can you?

Wow, that word of the day calendar is really paying dividends!

 

[LdyHoneybee]

From the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message, published in 2000:

So a Southern Baptist wife today per her convention's statement of faith has to understand her husband much better than he has to understand her as she has to know what arguments and tactics will likely win him over to her ideas whereas he doesn't have to convince her. Now, a husband would be stupid to not try to convince his wife to go along with him, but there are lots of stupid men out there.

Are you saying "Taming of the Shrew" invented our modern notion of "romantic love"?

I think whether your male and female characters are "realistic" depends heavily on the audience that you are writing for. I write I/T stories, of which the vast majority of readers are male. So I think I'm successful in getting my female characters "realistic" to my heavily-male audience, but I may not be successful in doing that if I wrote in a category where the vast majority of readers were female.

Audience, yes. Excellent point.

 

[Auden James]

He let a woman who might have returned his love believe that he wanted only to be her friend, and then he killed himself. I am afraid I did not consider that very romantic, just really frustrating and dumb.

You may consider it "frustrating and dumb," just as the opponents of the Romantics considered them in their time, but again—similar to "Flesh and Blood"—you recount the story not entirely correctly, as Lotte, the woman he adores, is already betrothed to another fine gentleman, and the romantic idea of dying for one's (unattainable) love is still current in our times, as proven by the third highest-grossing film of all time "Titanic," where Jack (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) dies in the end for his love Rose (played by Kate Winslet).

But yes, that was the start of the Romantic *movement* but not the start of the idea of romance as a reason for relationship.

That's true, but I pointed out the Romantics exactly because their ideas of love went much further than mere medieval "romance," i. e., courtship and chivalry, with love becoming the only proper basis for marriage as well as everlasting, and so on and so forth.

You used Shakespeare, by the way as an example.

But not as an example for Romanticism.

What I meant by that is that artists, particularly artists whose expertise is in language arts, are often more sensitive to human nature than ordinary people which lifts them out of the timeline in a way and installs them in “forever.”

Still, even if you think that these artists were exceedingly sensitive, their sensibilities must have reached out or "spoken to" their respective audiences to garner them the overwhelming success they enjoyed during their lifetime, thereby confuting your implicit argument that they weren't as willing to "understand" women as, according to your explicit argument, solely post-1970s men are supposed to be.