Let's talk about sex, baybee, by Catriona

Action, comedy, dialogue, sex, or violence - which of these do you find the most difficult to write and why?

Sorry for the earwom, by the way. First, I present the quotes I picked out for my latest bookmark:

Next, let me say that these five options - action, comedy, dialogue, sex and violence - are probably the easiest bunch of all for me, compared with what the QotW doesn't address: back story, description and passage of time to name but three. Passage of time is unbelievably pesky: you never want to draw attention to the fact that you've skipped a chunk but you need readers to know what time of day and/or year it is. I can't be the only writer whose first drafts regularly include majestic, towering Tuesdays with three lunchbreaks and two entirely distinct evenings. 

And description? Ooft. If Thomas Hardy was trying to break into traditional publishing today, with his Chapter 1 habit of starting with the geology of the county . . . 

I particularly dislike descriptions of clothes. Even if there are no brand names, it's hard to care what kind of trousers everyone's wearing. It rarely matters. And don't even get me started on eye colour. Seriously, how many people can you bring to mind who've got eyes of a colour that merits description? In real life. My niece and her daughter, my great-niece, have got the same Disney-enormous brown eyes (a pair each; they don't share them) and Terri Bischoff, Crooked Lane editor, has a blue one and a brown one. But even that took me five years to notice.

Back story is its own special kind of torment, but at least it's a challenge and it's necessary. Unless you give away a free prequel with every purchase.

But to turn to the question that was asked - So soon! - I find dialogue easiest to write, and most rewarding. The fact that I've got my agenda for the story and each of at least two participants have their own agendas makes writing a dialogue scene feel like juggling. For the crime-fiction writer in particular, you can hide a lot of clues and red herrings in that mix. 

Comedy is a different matter, I think, in that there can be comedic action, comedic dialogue, comedic violence, and you bet comedic sex. Comedic action is pretty difficult to pull off, mind you. I did it once in Scot on the Rocks in a slapstick scene, but it's not something I feel I've got in my bag of tricks every day. I love comedic violence when it's done well - Carl Hiassen, Elmore Leonard - but the tone of my books doesn't lend itself. Comedic dialogue? Oh all day long. My agenda, their agendas and a few jokes? You could hide Moby Dick in that scene. 

Which brings us to comedic sex. Which is the only kind I write. But here's the thing: that's deliberate. I think if I wrote sex scenes that weren't about horrific, awkward, hilarious sex the scene would still be funny, but the reader would be laughing at me instead of with me. I mean, have you ever read the shortlist for the Bad Sex Awards? I give you this, but not the author's name. I'm not a monster.

“He puts his hands on Bianca’s shoulders and slips off her low-cut top. Suddenly inspired, he whispers into her ear, as if to himself: ‘I desire the landscape that is enveloped in this woman, a landscape I do not know but that I can feel, and until I have unfolded that landscape, I will not be happy …’ Bianca shivers with pleasure. Simon whispers to her with an authority that he has never felt before: ‘Let’s construct an assemblage.’”   

(Let's not.)

Where are we? Just Action and Violence to go. They're often the same thing in crime fiction, or tied in a three-legged race anyway. (Although I was filled with admiration when reading WHERE THE DEAD SLEEP because Joshua Moehling wrote a boat chase. That's something you don't find every day in clever, character-driven novels. 

Action, if not violence, is to some extent, I think, a matter of pacing: literally a question of short words in short sentences. Maybe short paragraphs too. I came across a really badly-handled bit of action recently, which shows what I mean better than a slick piece of successful writing could ever do. I'll disguise it to protect the author, but roughly: 

"The hint of anxiety I'd felt earlier enlarges into a cortisol hit when I see the figure spreadeagled on the ground, a huddled lump, still."

I promise I haven't made this worse than it actually was. The challenge was to resist making it better. I'll do it now for the sheer relief.

"What's that? A shape on the floor. A corpse? My body is ahead of my brain. My blood is pumping before I believe it."

Phew.

Cx