Welcome back. This course is about how to write about sex without rising about sex. So now we're going to take a closer look at sex in fiction. I hope that's what you're expecting because it's certainly what you're about to get. The last video used an extract from Caroline Graham's Midsomer Murders books to show how her portrayal of Sergeant Troy and his sexual adventures gives a clear picture of the kind of man he is and the kind of relationships he has. Caroline Graham does that without actually writing about sex at all.
As I said in the last video, ghostwriter sign non disclosure agreements, and I therefore can't read you from books I've written to be published under somebody else's name. What I can do is to read from my own Here comes extract one. It's a book I originally called Zappa's mom's a slapper. There it is, although the publisher renamed it as the bit making a billion macrolane. There are some things You need to know about the story if you to understand what's going on here. The first is that Billy and poppy both come from very deprived backgrounds in a city.
They were boyfriend and girlfriend at school, it was a chaste relationship. And they were parted when Billy went to prison as a youth. Before that happened one day, Poppy said to Billy, how much do you love me? and Billy couldn't answer. He said, How do you measure love? How do you How much do you love me?
And poppy said, up to the sky and down again, a million times. You need to know those things if you're really going to understand where this part of the story came from. Now, Bill is out of prison. They've somehow got back together again. They've been out a couple of times. It's still a very chaste relationship.
And Billy says I didn't deserve puppies. If she'd been a vindictive person that sort of made me pay for the hurt, I'd inflicted I couldn't have complained. But she wasn't. She was someone who loved and I don't think she knew how not to do it. The wound didn't take a long time. I think all she wanted was to know that I really was as sorry as I'd said I was under I was still underneath the person she remembered.
It was our third date. She'd never invited me to her place and she hadn't been to mine. But that Saturday she'd come to Shrewsbury and we were walking in the park, she said, Do you remember asking me if I ever got a hug? I could feel myself going red. I wasn't trying it on. I know you weren't.
I think that was the first proper hug you'd ever had. That was thing is Billy. I'd like it back. She turned to face me and drew me close. She's smooth my chest with our hands. This is a nice jacket.
I bought it in Bruges. I gave myself a weekend. A few months ago, lovely place. nice enough to go twice. Oh, sure it's, we could go together maybe her arms wrapped themselves around me. And I unfolded her in mine.
Her face was tilted up asking asking to be kissed. So I kissed her. We stayed like that two people were classifying each other. And I had that feeling I hadn't known since Wendy had never felt with Amanda, or Katie or cherry or Marcy, or Melanie, for that matter. It was it's a physical thing. tendinous the raising of hair on your skin, the warm closeness, the sense that you're with someone to whom you must have as much as they do.
People went bias in both directions. They went on bikes and skateboards and roller skates and some just walking people on their own people with friends, couples, couples with children. There was squirrels running up and down trees and across the grass. All of that was going on, and Poppy and I just stood there and held Other she said, it's coffee time. There's a cost are not far away. Actually.
She said I was thinking New York case. She walked around the flat looking at things while I made coffee. after she'd taken her first sip, she said, it's decision time, Billy. That makes me very nervous. I've made mine. It's you, Billy.
You're the one who has to decide. Is this forever? Or just a nice interlude? My heartbeat fastest forever pops. She nodded. When you got out of prison.
Did they give you your condoms back? Hey, oh, I I'm asking if you'd keep me safe, but I still don't want to baby. Arise came up to hold mine. Not too long married. I'll take care of you. You'll be gentle, won't you?
I wrap my arms around her. I kissed her on the forehead on the cheek on the throat on the lips. She kissed me back. She used herself out of my grasp, took my hands and led me towards the bedroom. Just before she gave us up to me, she said, How much do you love me? up to the sky and down again a million times.
You'd bless it, Barry Mac, you'd better just before she gave us out to me. That's all you get. You know what they've just done. You know what they're going to do when she says it, but you don't see it. And that's what I mean, by writing about sex without writing about sex, or the love is there or the warmth of the tenderness or the affection, it isn't actually necessary to describe the physical acts of sex. I'm not saying this out of some previous or prudish desire not to see people writing about sex.
If you want to write erotica, that's great. If you want to write scenes in which people make love. And you describe precisely how they do it, that's great. But it's possible to write and to say all the things that you want to say about the relationship that exists between a boy and a girl, a man or a woman, or between two women, or between two men, if that's what you want to write about. It's possible to write those things without actually physically describing it. And I know that just as there are people who want to write erotica and want to read it, so there are people who want to write books in which that does not take place, and people who wants to read those books.
In the next video, I'm going to talk about why that's important. And how to decide whether at this point in the book, it's okay to write about sex in more detail. And this point in the book, it's not such a good idea, because it's necessary to distinguish between those two points in a In the development of your story, I'll see you there.