It's good that you used first-person in The Red Tree as a well-considered approach. I know how it often gets used by first-time writers as a crutch, and a lot of them don't really think through how it should be used. You've clearly done that thinking. I don't remember you even telling many early short stories in first-person, so it likely hasn't been a crutch for you. (I haven't read The Dry Salvages yet, but I found it telling that you waited that long to write even a short novel in first-person.)
Aside from some poorly executed sections of The Five of Cups, I don't think I did first person until...well, I guess it was "The Dry Salvages." So, for the first ten years of my writing career I avoided fp, and now it's the voice I use most frequently.
Your Sirenia Digest writing has definitely helped you in being able to portray sex.
I agree.
You also avoid the pitfall of a lot of badly-written sex scenes where the particular moment of sex is The Most Important Sex For This Person Ever. (That's the sort of thing that makes so much of Penthouse Forum absolutely ridiculous. That, and just the bad writing in general.) It's handled in The Red Tree as a fact of life, an often complicated fact but one that keeps happening, that's a part of the continuity of these characters' lives.
Personally, I suspect a lot of authors who write sex that way either don't get much of it, or they attach an inordinate importance to it. It assumes this sort of status as a penultimate, rather than as a pleasurable, important, and sometimes (but only rarely) exquisite experience. It's very like eating, in that respect. One should learn to write well about food before even trying to write about sex.
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Date: 2009-08-16 05:00 pm (UTC)It's good that you used first-person in The Red Tree as a well-considered approach. I know how it often gets used by first-time writers as a crutch, and a lot of them don't really think through how it should be used. You've clearly done that thinking. I don't remember you even telling many early short stories in first-person, so it likely hasn't been a crutch for you. (I haven't read The Dry Salvages yet, but I found it telling that you waited that long to write even a short novel in first-person.)
Aside from some poorly executed sections of The Five of Cups, I don't think I did first person until...well, I guess it was "The Dry Salvages." So, for the first ten years of my writing career I avoided fp, and now it's the voice I use most frequently.
Your Sirenia Digest writing has definitely helped you in being able to portray sex.
I agree.
You also avoid the pitfall of a lot of badly-written sex scenes where the particular moment of sex is The Most Important Sex For This Person Ever. (That's the sort of thing that makes so much of Penthouse Forum absolutely ridiculous. That, and just the bad writing in general.) It's handled in The Red Tree as a fact of life, an often complicated fact but one that keeps happening, that's a part of the continuity of these characters' lives.
Personally, I suspect a lot of authors who write sex that way either don't get much of it, or they attach an inordinate importance to it. It assumes this sort of status as a penultimate, rather than as a pleasurable, important, and sometimes (but only rarely) exquisite experience. It's very like eating, in that respect. One should learn to write well about food before even trying to write about sex.