*ahem* - Writers Forum

avesjohn · 12-17-2006, 10:34 PM

Well, this is kind of an embarassing post for me to write...but I need to know this for my novel "The Fragile" (the prologue of which you can read in Fiction now, and the summary of which you can read in my introductory topic, "Hello, I'm new"). Obviously, if I had a girlfriend, and as a corollary of that, we had...you know...I wouldn't be asking this in the first place. But here goes: I need to know about sex. As in, sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. There are three couples that lose their virginity over the course of the novel, as well as a 14-year-old girl who is regularly molested and raped by her adoptive father. Specifically, I need to know how it feels: 1) physically, 2) mentally, 3) emotionally. And if I could please get this from both a man and a woman's perspective, that would be great. Try to describe how it feels without getting TOO specific; only put down what YOU think is necessary for me to know.

And just for the record, NO, this story is NOT erotica. Sexuality just happens to be one of the themes of the story, along with acceptance, what it really means to be "crazy" or "insane," and (most prominently) corruption. This the most psychological of my stories that I have planned so far, and easily the darkest.

Thanks everyone.

lisajane · 12-18-2006, 01:53 AM

I'm guessing you haven't had sex before.

I'm slightly confused over two things - whether you want to know how it feels for the girl to be raped and the rapist or about sex, or whether this is about losing the virginity or about sex afterwards.

Your problem is is that it feels different for everybody, and even for the one person, sex can mean different things and feel different and have different emotions each time. I know mine changes drastically. There's no specific way of how it feels (how its supposed to feel for the woman is completely painless and earth-shattering orgasms and how it actually feels are two entirely different things), or any specific mental state (completely being in love while doing the deed or just fucking), or emotionally (whether you wind up crying halfway through or loving the whole thing). You'd have to go to a lot of sexually active people to find out.

And losing your virginity isn't as wonderful as it sounds in books and movies.

avesjohn · 12-18-2006, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lisajane

I'm slightly confused over two things - whether you want to know how it feels for the girl to be raped and the rapist or about sex, or whether this is about losing the virginity or about sex afterwards.

Truthfully, ALL of that. I guess I'll just describe the situations as they apply to each set of characters. In the story, the girl's (Sabrina) adoptive father (Anthony) is a relatively famous male supermodel who convinced her early on that he was "checking her health" when, of course, he was actually exploiting her for sexual purposes. But Sabrina has been too traumatized to know any better, and he disallows her to speak of what he does to her nearly every night to ANYONE. Further, Anthony regularly takes photographs of her nude and distributes them online to share with other child pornographers. And occasionally, if the opportunity arises, he will steal a child seperated from his/her parents, by convincing them to go with him, and then force that child (regardless of gender) into having sex with Sabrina while he films it, again for distribution on the online pornography ring. When Anthony's German supermodel girlfriend Ingrid discovers a collection of these videos in the basement of his mansion, he kills her right then and there to ensure he isn't discovered. Considering all this, is it any wonder Anthony is the main villain? (His death scene at the end is going to be awesome: think subway train.)

Next come Rachel and Kevin. Two 17-year-olds high school juniors (11th grade), boyfriend and girlfriend, they have sex when Rachel convinces Kevin into "doing it" at her house after coming home from school to celebrate her 17th birthday. (Kevin thinks it's too soon, but he complies after she starts taking off her clothes. Go figure.) Although it could be considered a birthday gift of sorts, Rachel's main goal is actually to rebel against her religious parents and family, whom she feels imposes too many rules on her lifestyle. About an hour/45 minutes in, her parents come barging into her locked room and find her there with Kevin, in the heat of the moment. Kevin is kicked out, followed shortly thereafter by Rachel herself. Later, Rachel is allowed back in by her parents, but her father makes her pregnancy test and...guess what? Yup, pregnant. Nine months later, Rachel gives birth to Sabrina. Kevin ran away from home as soon as he found she was pregnant, and hasn't been seen since.

The whole Rachel/Kevin thing is exposition (1994-1995, specifically), although their story is still written down as action, because SHOWING the action is so much better than TELLING. Everything else takes place 14 years later, approximately December 2009. The next couple is Rick and Iris, two 16-year-old high school sophomores (10th grade). Their storyline is mainly this: they've been together for about three years (since the end of my first, more child-oriented story, "The Boy With The Power"), and they're debating whether or not to take their relationship to the next level. Eventually, they do, at Rick's house (him & her are neighbors, FYI) while his parents are out Christmas shopping and his little (13-year-old) sister Emily is out doing something else (as yet unknown). But they only do it ONCE, and they take it into the shower. Long story short, they narrowly avoid getting caught by Emily. The rest of their subplot deals with the gradual collapse of their relationship following their aforementioned intimate relations. And yes, they tell their parents about it eventually.

Finally, there is Danny and Katie. Katie and Danny are both 21; she just turned this age, and recently escaped from a mental hospital near Boston (although, in reality, she's not really insane). She escaped because she wants legal custody of her little brother, 13-year-old Travis, who is Emily's (and Iris's little brother Nathan's) friend, and who, along with everyone else not in this paragraph, lives on the West Coast, in the suburbs of L.A. (specifically, my hometown, but I'm not giving its name). After escaping, she was picked up by Kevin, who, now 31, has finally decided to head back to said suburbs and reunite with the daughter he never knew. (Travis and Sabrina share the main character position, and are essentially each other's love interest. See how their lives are intertwining in several ways?) Along the way (I'm thinking maybe Chicago), they meet Danny, a low-key (shoplifting, etc.) criminal, as he is running away from authorities. Katie and Danny become a couple as they travel westward across the states, with Katie losing her virginity to him (he's not a virgin) in a hotel/motel room probably around the time the 3 of them are in the Rockies.

I know: this was a LONG post. But I hope this clears up any things you might have been wondering about.

But again, let me make this clear: sex does NOT dominate the story. The main plotlines (they converge) are Travis becoming accepted by his peers after he gains certain "abilities" (which Katie already has), and Sabrina becoming free of Anthony's grip on her freedom. Despite being each other's "love interest," though, Travis and Sabrina aren't likely to become a couple at the end of the novel. Mostly because I have other story possibilities for them that I'm thinking about.

aspiring · 12-18-2006, 03:18 AM

For someone who doesn't know much about sex, you're certainly including a lot of it in your book!

lisajane is completely right - sex is different for everyone, and even sex with the same person can feel different each time.

But your book deals a lot with losing your virginity, so I am guessing that most of what you want to know relates to that.

Sex, like anything, is a skill that improves with practice. Many people find that losing their virginity is rather a let-down. You could say 'so what?' afterwards. I was lucky - I lost mine to someone who knew what he was doing, and it was an enjoyable (if slightly painful) experience. I expected to feel differently afterwards, but I didn't of course! The only thing was that I kind of felt that everyone could just tell by looking at me: 'look! she lost her viriginity last night!' kind of thing. I felt as though I must look different to everyone around me.

It seems these days that many people lose their virginity whilst drunk, which really must detract from the whole experience. If you're really drunk, your nerve endings become de-sensitised, so sex can be rather uninteresting! It's important to realise that sex isn't at all like it's portrayed in the films or Mills and Boon books. Sex can be wonderful, romantic, can make you feel like you're walking on air - equally it can be boring, painful, over too quickly, take too long, embarrassing etc. Not to mention the sinking heart you get after a condom breaks or something like that.

Pretty much everything you can imagine happens in sex - it's as different as the different personalities of people - and if you don't have any personal experience to base it on, use your imagination. But don't make it all romantic and hearts and flowers. Losing your virginity is rarely that perfect

aspiring · 12-18-2006, 03:25 AM

We cross-posted

Wow, that's a complicated plot. I like it.

Something else to remember though, considering you've got 16 and 17 year olds losing their virginity is that it rarely lasts longer than a few minutes the first time, normally because the boy ejaculates quite quickly through excitement. Rachel and Kevin would not actually be having intercourse for 45 minutes - they would more likely have done the whole foreplay/exploring each other's bodies and then just engaged in penetration. Although actually 45 minutes of foreplay is quite optimistic for teenagers too, to be honest! And the couple who have sex in the shower. Speaking from experience, that's not as easy as it sounds...!! Certainly very unlikely to happen on a first time - having sex standing up in a shower is quite difficult and if you were losing your virginity you'd just lie down on the bathroom floor (and probably hit your head on the basin or something) - honestly. Simplest is best when losing your virginity

avesjohn · 12-18-2006, 04:05 AM

Thanks for the help everyone.

What I've previously mentioned is basically all the sex featured in the story (and almost all are just single scenes; as far as the sex is concerned, the AFTERMATH of the act is what matters mostly). However, there is one more thing I have to mention: after killing Ingrid in the basement, Anthony engages in necrophilia with her fresh corpse. Admittedly, the scene isn't needed plotwise, but I think it helps show his character: upon shooting her through the temple, the sick b*st*rd figures, "Why let such a hot body go to waste?" So he does it with Ingrid's corpse in the darkness of the basement, while Sabrina sits alone in her room upstairs.

And I didn't mention this earlier: About a year into their marriage (which was shortly after they met), Anthony hired a hit man, Lance, to kill Rachel for him. We see Lance kill her in the prologue (read it in Fiction now). The purpose of this is to make sure Anthony gets Sabrina all to himself (sick b*st*rd). In the "present" (well, 12/2009) time, Anthony hires Lance again to kill a man on LAPD who was coming very close to solving Rachel's case (after Lance killed her, Anthony had him toss her body into the Pacific Ocean, hoping it wouldn't be discovered. But it was.). Iris's father, Sam, happens to be the one investigating the murder of that LAPD crime lab technician. Towards the end, Lance, although still technically a criminal, joins the "good guys" to help defeat Anthony.

Helpful though you people have been, do you think this thread is too risque? Or would I have gotten warnings from administrators or moderators already if it was? Please, let's keep the thread, I need all the info I can get. I'm just curious if I could get in trouble for this, that's all. As long as I'm asking questions, I'll ask this, too: is it wrong for a person like me, a virgin, to write about sex when I haven't even had it yet? Yes, I've already written several sex scenes, using my imagination to fill in the blanks. But is it WRONG? I'm not perverted, I'm just a storywriter (and not, I repeat, of erotica). And, okay, one last question: about how long does sex with someone usually last, if you happen to be established couples or married or...whatever? That info would be helpful for other stories.

lisajane · 12-18-2006, 04:49 AM

Losing my viriginity was also with someone who knew what he was doing, but due to me being generally unable to relax my muscles, was very painful for me, so I can honestly say it was not pleasant. I felt quite empty afterwards (long story short, wasn't rape but I hadn't wanted to do it and felt pushed into it), and didn't do it for a long time afterwards, but quickly grew to like it, lol. Btw something to keep in mind that several women bleed after the first time, how much depends on how gentle the man had been, whether the woman was used to any pentration etc etc, but never have heard it as life-threatening.

I don't think it's wrong to write sex scenes despite not having had sex, I've been writing stories with graphical sex scenes for about three years, and I've only had sex for one. It may sound perverted, but it's just research, research, research. Asking like you're doing, and just doing searches across the Internet. You'll come across a lot of pornographic stuff probably, but looking up informational sites for adolescents with sex advice, I've found a few articles of where it frankly said the dos, donts, positives and negatives of losing your virginity and the process of, in a no-nonsense format. Even sites like AskMen I found are quite good for this kind of thing.

I think this thread borders on the risque, but there's been nothing graphic described here (ie, what actually happens in foreplay), just a general idea. You probably won't be able to post the sexual scenes on here, but you're welcome to pm me if you need more information or critiques for those scenes, even if this thread goes under.

On your last question, again, it depends. First time for me was probably about half an hour, maybe an hour with foreplay, I don't really remember. I live with my boyfriend, so sometimes a Saturday morning with nothing to do can turn into a two hour session, and other times on a work morning or tired and late at night, 15 to 20 minutes! Pretty much, just go with the time, the attitudes and the mental states of your characters to play with how much time to leave for sex.

Btw your story sounds quite fascinating, I'd love to read it.

mammamaia · 12-18-2006, 11:43 AM

sorry, aspiring, but sex in the shower is easy as can be, for folks who know what they're doing... guess you've not had that much experience with 'upright sex'...

...for fumbling, inexperienced teens, however, it could be a humorous bit, if the book calls for one...

aj... it's a subject more appropriate for private discourse than public postings on a mixed-age forum, so if you want info on the glorious/gory details, feel free to drop me line... in my 'old' life, i used to write triple-x-rated short stories loaded with very inventive sex scenes, so can give you some input on your scenes from both a participant's and a writer's pov...

love and hugs, maia
maia3maia@hotmail.com

rcallaci · 12-18-2006, 05:01 PM

avesjohn

These posts from you and the commenter's have been done in good taste and although the subject matter is somewhat risque it does not break any of the rules of the forum.

Btw you got one hell of an interesting story in the works... Good luck with the writing...

my warmest
bob

imrhati · 12-18-2006, 06:29 PM

Speaking of virgin comedy... I was getting a bit touchy feely with my old girlfriend on the couch, we ended up with me laying on top of her (clothes on unfprtunately) and when I went to get off her I accidently put all my weight on her breasts. Looked like it really hurt. ooops...

aspiring · 12-19-2006, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mammamaia

sorry, aspiring, but sex in the shower is easy as can be, for folks who know what they're doing... guess you've not had that much experience with 'upright sex'...

Perhaps I was put off by early experiences where it didn't do much for me

Am willing to believe that it can be easier than it has been for me!!

avesjohn, it's not wrong to write about sex when you haven't had it. God, it's all most people think about before they do it for the first time. I would only wonder whether your writing would be realistic, but that's what asking questions is for

Shawn · 12-19-2006, 06:32 AM

If you are trying to foil the characters by giving them opposite experiences, then you will only need two characters and two different sets of circumstances... generally, themes for novels go about the line of "Choices a free man can make" and such. Too much sex will get monotonous after a time.