Sometimes Less is More

How do you handle sex in your books? Or, if you don’t, why not?

by Paul D. Marks

Well, there’s sex and there’s sex. No, I don’t write really steamy sex scenes. If people want that they can go to Fifty Shades of Arousal, romance novels or porn, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t sex in my stories.

I’d say I approach it more obliquely. We know the characters have or have had sex, but we don’t get the play by play like from the Howard Cosell scene at the end of Woody Allen’s Bananas (see link). It’s funny as hell and sort of makes fun of the overly purple sex scenes. 

Click here to see YouTube clip

Just as with violence, I don’t want the sex to be gratuitous. And, believe me, when working in Hollywood plenty of sex and violence were added to scripts strictly to have sex and violence where it wasn’t really needed. Also added were other elements that seemed extraneous. But that’s for another post, I suppose.

I like the sexual relationships in my fiction to reflect on the larger relationship between the characters, as well as being a reflection of their character. In the third Duke Rogers novel I’m currently working on (after White Heat and Broken Windows), a character sleeps with Duke essentially as a way to deal with her own issues of insecurity and doubt. The relationship between her and Duke is tentative and very confusing for Duke, and shows his own ambivalence about relationships. So what they do sexually is less important than conveying the idea that both Duke and his love interest are flawed people with fears and insecurities. And sex is intimated at in other stories and novels of mine. It’s just not explicitly described like in a high school sex ed class.

Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

Sex scenes can also often stop the forward momentum of a story, especially if they’re not integral to the plot in general. But in particular, it drives me crazy when the characters are on the run, in grave danger, but they have the time and inclination to stop everything and have sex. I think of movies in this regard. We’ve gone beyond the time when filmmakers and screenwriters added sex because there was an opening up of social mores and the end of the Hollywood Production Code. When all that loosened up filmmakers went bonkers adding sex and violence, much of it gratuitous, just because they could.  They were spreading their wings. I like to think we’ve gotten that out of our systems so that when we do have a sex scene it’s more integral to the plot. But seeing some of today’s movies, I’m not so sure about that…

Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice

I like this exchange from In a Lonely Place, one of my favorite movies, between Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart, as they stand in the kitchen. She’s in a robe, all bleary-eyed from having just gotten up. He’s doing his best attempt at making breakfast. They’re not in a bedroom. They’re not having sex. Not even kissing. But as Bogart says, in other words, their little vignette is a good love scene:

Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame

Laurel Gray (Grahame): [referring to a scene in Dix's script] I love the love scene – it's very good.

Dixon Steele (Bogart): Well that's because they're not always telling each other how much in love they are. A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit. You sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we're in love.

In the old days, movies had a code, so things were left to the viewer’s imagination. When Rhett carried Scarlett up those stairs, we didn’t have to see the culmination, our imaginations filled in the blanks.

The famous anklet in Double Indemnity

During the code days, you couldn’t show graphic sex, but somehow the filmmakers got the point across. Maybe these bits seem quaint today, but they worked. In both Cain adaptations, Double Indemnity and Postman, sex isn’t even imminent in the scenes where Fred MacMurray and John Garfield first spot Barbara Stanwyck and Lana Turner, but you know it’s there and you know it’s coming sooner or later.  There’s nothing graphic in these scenes, but they’re still steamy as hell. And I would say the beach scene in From Here to Eternity is one of the great sex scenes of all time, yet there’s no actual sex in it. And the one from Ghost World, in particular, I think is played for laughs, making fun of those earlier tropes.

Double Indemnity: We first meet femme fatale, Barbara Stanwyck, wrapped in a towel. A few minutes later she descends the stairs and we see her sexy little anklet. It’s clear she’s seducing Fred McMurray and we don’t need to be hit over the head with it.  

The Postman Always Rings Twice: Here John Garfield sets eyes on Lana Turner for the first time. Again, we really don’t need everything spelled out here. It’s clear what’s going on without having to get all the details.

From Here to Eternity: Possibly the sexiest scene ever filmed and all they do is kiss.

Ghost World: When they cut to the toy “rocking” horse, the implication is pretty obvious and funny at the same time.

So, I don’t think sex has to be particularly graphic to get the point across or to be, well, sexy. In fact, I would argue that too much detail kills a sex scene and is boring. Sometimes less is more.

But if you just need a sex fix, here’s some songs about sex that might do the trick. (I do like these songs, I admit.) Be warned, some graphic content, but these are not obscure songs. My wife says some people don’t get my sense of humor sometimes and I thought these would just add a light, but sexy note, to this piece 😉. And, while I do like these songs, as I say, I’m also adding them here strictly for prurient interest, he said in jest.

Berlin, “Sex, (I’m a…)” 

  

Divinyls: “Pleasure and Pain” 

 

Divinyls: “I Touch Myself”

Lilly Allen: “Not Fair”

Beatles: “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road”  

So, if people want to read particularly graphic sex scenes, I guess my stuff isn’t for them, at least up till now. If a story calls for it in the future, maybe. But if you want some good mystery-thriller-suspense, then I hope you’ll check out my works.

~.~.~

And now for the usual BSP:

A great review of Coast to Coast: Noir at Just Reviews:

Each story is filled with sadness, tragedy and each character experiences death in a different way. The titles alone are eerie and will give you the chills. A fabulous collection of well written noir short stories told in different settings with  characters that work in meat packing plants, feed companies, markets and not very lucrative jobs causing their downfalls and falling for the need to complete jobs that most would turn down. A superb collection for readers that want something odd, different and dangerous.

-- Fran Lewis, Just Reviews

And a very nice review of The Blues Don't Care at The Irresponsible Reader:

Marks hits the right notes with his prose and characters, creating a mystery that appeals on many levels. I recommend this for mystery readers looking for the kind of thing they haven’t read before.

--H.C. Newton, The Irresponsible Reader

Please join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.d.marks and check out my website  www.PaulDMarks.com

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Crime novels to transport the reader

by Dietrich Kalteis

Many readers like to travel vicariously with a good book without having to move from the comfort of their armchair. Are there any crime novels that you particularly enjoyed that transported you to a place or time you had wanted to visit?

A good crime novel transports me, whether to another place and time and into some character’s world. Good writing does that, it draws you in and creates that world. Even a story set in my hometown needs to do that. Sam Wiebe’s Last of the Independents set in my home town is a good example.

And there are plenty of crime novels set in places I haven’t been or in other times in history. When it’s done right, the words on the page paint a picture and draw me in and transport me. And in a crime novel, there’s the thrill of experiencing what the story’s characters go through, things most of us would never do, a little like living on the edge without paying any of the consequences.

I recently reread Elmore Leonard’s Djibouti, one of his last about a film maker named Dara Barr, her grip Xavier LeBo and some happy-go-lucky pirates, al-Qaida terrorists and a Texas billionaire and his elephant gun. It’s often hilarious through Elmore Leonard’s quirky characters and sharp dialog. The story takes the reader around the waters of the Horn of Africa as Dara and Xavier get caught up in an attempt to blow up a hijacked tanker filled with enough liquified natural gas to take out the African city the book’s named after.  

 

Then there’s the classic Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith, set in Moscow toward the end of the soviet era. An excellent thriller that transports the readers, following chief inspector Arkady Renko through the streets and squad rooms of Moscow as he tries to solve the murder case of three corpses found in an amusement park. I’ve never been to Moscow, but this book makes it real and brings the setting to life because the writing is so convincing.

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett takes the reader back to 1940 just ahead of the Allied Invasion of Normandy. A German spy in England, Henry Faber is called The Needle and obtains crucial information about the Allied offensive. Allied counter-intelligence came up with a scheme to convince the Germans the D-Day landings would occur in Calais. When the Needle finds out the landings will happen at Normandy, he tries to get the news to his command. He becomes a hunted man by the British, and must go on the run across Northern England and to Aberdeen, Scotland where he tries to rendevous with a U-Boat. This book just doesn’t let up as the Needle tries to escape.

 

James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice was published back in ’34, and has been turned to film a couple of times as well. It’s a story of lust, murder and betrayal that holds up and takes the reader back in time, tells of a drifter named Frank Chambers who stops at some out of the way California diner and ends up working there. When Frank falls for Cora, the owner’s wife, they start an affair and plot to kill her husband. After they succeed, the police suspect them, and Cora gives Frank up for a lighter sentence. When the case falls apart, Frank and Cora try to reconcile, but in Cain fashion, there’s no neat ending in store for either one.

My next one’s called Zero Avenue, due out in October. It’s about Frankie del Rey, a promising musician and leader of the punk band Waves of Nausea. Frankie makes ends meet by running dope for a local gangster. She falls for club owner, Johnny Falco. When he finds out from Ernie, the Waves’ bass player, about the gangster’s pot fields out by Zero Avenue along the U.S. border, Johnny rips off one of the fields in hopes of keeping the doors to his struggling club open. And he might have got away with it, if it wasn’t for Ernie finding out what he did and trying to rip off one of the fields on his own. Ernie gets caught and the trail leads back to Johnny and Frankie. The story is set during the early days of the punk rock scene in Vancouver. I had a great time reliving the music and researching the bands and music of that time, most of which was pretty obscure.

I’ve written stories set in different times and places, from dustbowl Kansas to San Francisco at the time of the big earthquake, and I like the fact-finding that gives me all the bits and pieces to make these settings come to life. I love a story that transports me, so I guess it’s natural that I’d enjoy creating them.