Sex, violence, and all that…
One advantage for authors becoming minimalist writers is that they can leave a lot to readers’ imaginations. Some readers might not realize it, but their own minds are wonderful instruments for filling in the gaps and creating their own images about what is going on from just a few suggestions offered by the writer. The Goldilocks Principle applies. Not too many suggestions, not too few, but just enough. This technique is especially beneficial when writing scenes containing sex, violence, and other action scenes. Readers’ imaginations can run wild with the cues provided by the writer and make their reading more of a breathless and more personal roller coaster ride.
Unless writers are writing erotica or porn, they can avoid the plumbing issues in sex scenes in this manner. While readers aren’t medical doctors or forensic specialists with a deep understanding of human anatomy, most understand the anatomical issues. Such scenes are still consequential even when the prose is minimalist, but the events leading up to them are often more important. Even in bodice rippers, the seduction is more interesting than the consummation!
While sex scenes might contain violence, especially in mysteries and thrillers but also sci-fi, other scenes can contain it too. How much blood and gore should a writer include? I suppose there’s a niche for those stories that describe a lot of violence—horror and sexual perversion stories come to mind—but I tend to avoid those scenes as a speed reader and get on to the meatier stuff (pardon the bad pun). (Reading preferences are subjective, so some readers might relish that material.) Again, being a minimalist writer, I focus on events leading up to that violence and subsequent events after it occurs.
But such scenes appear in many of my plots. My characters are human (or have some human characteristics, even if they’re strange ETs), so they have to act like humans. For me, the plot involving those characters drives me to include such scenes—in other words, they just lie somewhere on the line that defines the spectrum of all human behavior, even if they’re at the extremes of that distribution.
One reviewer said my novel Angels Need Not Apply had more sex scenes than The Midas Bomb; another said Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder didn’t contain enough lust. Readers who have read all three books know that sex and lust in those plots arises from natural plot development—the characters are human beings who react to stressful situations in very human ways.
Same for violence. In the Chen and Castilblanco series, there are books that are more mysteries (or crime fiction, if you will) and there are books that are more thrillers. Sex and violence are elements in both types of plots, but they’re not the main elements. I wouldn’t call them mysteries or thrillers if that were the case.
And, by making them ancillary elements, the writer can focus on more important elements in their plots. As Castilblanco ages, for example, he replaces direct physical violence with smarter techniques that compensate for his diminishing strengths and attack his adversaries’ weaknesses (often with the help of Chen). I don’t directly come out and say this, of course, and the descriptions of those action scenes isn’t so detailed that the reader can’t create his own images. But the reader still experiences them—and adds his own twist on those experiences. The change in tactics helps define the aging process, which is the more important theme.
My new post-apocalyptic thriller The Last Humans (to be published by Black Opal Books this year) is about a reluctant female warrior, Penny Castro, who creates an adopted family and then strives to protect them. It contains sex and violence, but I’ve just described the main theme, the more important one–post-apocalyptic. In the many violent combat scenes, you will observe my use of the minimalist philosophy to help me establish that main theme—you will have enough information to fill in the gaps in those combat descriptions, but I don’t belabor their description. There are more important themes—for Penny Castro, for me, and hopefully for my readers!
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Comments are always welcome!
The novels in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series” start in NYC but often become national or international. From #1, The Midas Bomb, to #7, Gaia and the Goliaths, a NYC homicide starts a roller coaster ride that covers a lot of ground. And the spinoffs of the series, Rembrandt’s Angel and The Golden Years of Virginia Morgan do the same. All of these books are stand-alones—I don’t write soap-operatic episodes with cliffhangers—and they can be read in any order. Enjoy!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
