jck

So.

Writing a sex scene is difficult.

Let me re-phrase that. Writing a sex scene that someone else is going to illustrate is difficult.

In writing my comic, which I have kept (to the best of my efforts) at a PG-13-esque rating, I have encountered a few occasions where people need to be people. What I mean by that is that often in literature, movies, comic, etc. we create an artificial reality where people (for the sake of the publishers, our target audience, censors, and let's not forget larger sales) do not act like the people we encounter in reality.

They don't speak like us.
They don't act like us.
They're not as boring as us (and let's be real... we're all pretty boring).
They don't look like us (where are all the NORMAL people...?)

There are probably a million other things that are out of sync with reality, but they all produce the same result: a disconnect from the story. I can't speak for everyone (and I won't attempt to), but I have a difficult time suspending too much disbelief. If there are simply too many things that I have to overcome in order to submerse myself in their world, then I never really connect with the story or the characters.

Am I making sense here?

Moving on.

Having said all of that, I realize that life is anything but PG-13.

Life is vulgar.
Life is dangerous.
Life is sexy.
Life is beautiful.
Life is manipulative.
Life is evil.
Life is pure.

Life is too big to "boil down" into a relatively non-offensive story to appeal to sensitive viewers who have chosen to avoid certain elements of life. Don't get me wrong, there are wonderful stories that are for children, young adults, and others that are pointedly non-offensive to the general public. Those stories are not the ones to which I am referring. I am meaning the stories that are supposed to be about our lives. The stories where the hero is the every-man, the common Joe.

You.
Me.
Us.

That is the kind of story I want to tell; the story I am trying to tell. The story of a regular girl who is pointedly not interesting, along with her friends, who are also rather boring, trying to find their way in life. This doesn't mean the story is boring, it only means that I am attempting to pay closer attention in my writing to make sure the world my characters exist in mirrors our reality. That means:

People swear.
People say dumb things.
People have accidents.
People are ignorant.
People are intolerant.
People are prejudice.
People are closed-minded.
People are compassionate.
People are generous.
People are giving.
People are hurtful.
People are loving.

And,

People have sex.

So, as I said earlier, writing a sex scene is awkward when you know someone else is going to read what you penned and then draw your words.

My attempt with the sex (from a storyteller's PoV) is not to be gratuitous (I'm not getting off on my own writing... that's just odd to me) but to be real. If I wrote something less than real it would feel less that real. The characters would then no longer be "real people" but characters in a story.

I want my characters to be real.

So, in the next few pages of my comic, you'll see some boobs. You'll see a woman with her hand between her legs. You'll see sexy moments and awkward moments. You'll be turned on, and hopefully, you'll be horrified, too.

That's how life is.
It's horrible and boring.
It's sexy and awful.
It's beautiful and charming.

C'est la vie.
C'est la mort.

C'est la Surreality.