Sexuality is core to character, wherever they are on the sexuality or gender spectrum. Just as we need to know what clothes our character likes and why, what they feel they’re saying or not saying about themselves when they get dressed in the morning, and much more besides, so we need to understand what makes them tick sexually, even if it never makes it into the book. Why is my character attracted to that person, not this one? Why do they have multiple partners, or none? For every question included here, there are myriad others. As well as thinking generally about whether a character is hot-headed and impetuous, or cautious and reflective, I always spend time thinking about who they are sexually, whether anything happened to them in childhood or in their life that might have influenced that. I don’t set too much store by labels, although a label can be a good starting point.
Sex can be power, of course, but in psychological thrillers, I am often seeking to exploit the chinks in a given protagonist. In my current WIP, my main character is a straight cis female and is not classically feminine in terms of received ideas about the construct of femininity – she seldom wears make up, has short hair and wears jeans and scruffy cowboy boots most days. She is monogamous and her tastes in the bedroom would best be described as ‘vanilla’. Her faith in her own attractiveness comes from seeking friendship and loyalty in her choice of partner before anything else, which is why she married her husband, who she believes to be faithful, calm and kind. She is looking for stability, for depth, and for a lack of conflict. Conflict and her mother’s chaotic sex life are things she has tried to leave behind. My M/C’s sex life has stalled a little due to fertility issues and the grind of IVF. Obviously, I had to do some research and some thinking before I wrote her, as well as leaving room for her to show me who she was on the page. The tension will arise from the antagonist, who will be everything my M/C is not, in as much as complicated people can be drawn in binary opposition – but think Breaking Bad’s Mr White and Jesse Pinkman. My M/C’s vulnerabilities are self-evident and it is up to me, the author, to exploit them in order to take her on a journey. In any fiction, a person’s very attractiveness can be their super power or their weakness - if it attracts the wrong kind of partner. Upbringing, lived experience and position in society can leave a person vulnerable to empty charm or insidious wrongdoing that the reader can see but the character cannot, which creates a delicious pantomime-like scenario in which the ‘baddie’ hides in full view of the ‘audience’.
Where there is sexuality, there is often a sex scene or two and these can be difficult to write. But like any other kind of scene, the writer has to know their character well, even if we close the bedroom door before things have gotten heated. What approach would the character respond to - an expert or a tentative lover? Is the foreplay cerebral or sensual or both or neither? Would they initiate or wait? Would they give or ask for consent verbally and, if so, how? Would they engage knowingly or unknowingly in morally dubious behaviours? What does sex mean to them – validation or communication or both or neither? There are, of course, so many other questions I could list. As for the action, as it were, a sex scene is like a fight scene: easy to get bogged down in geography, which can take away from the emotion – his left hand caressed her right breast while his bent right leg gently pushed between hers, which were crossed at the ankles but now weren't anymore and meanwhile his other hand searched…oh, hang on, now I’m working this out instead of being swept away in the moment. We all know what goes where after all and, as a good friend of mine has been known to quip, there are only so many ways you can flip an omelette. So, a bit like sex itself, it is a question of mood, atmosphere, the sensory and the emotional. Just like any other scene, it is about who these people are and who they are to one another. Authors don’t so much describe what’s happening – that runs the risk of a kind of CCTV feel to the writing or, God forbid, a sports commentary. Authors write through point of view, accessing the character’s innermost thoughts as well as their senses, their actions and speech. Sex scenes are no different. What is my character thinking and feeling and how are they reacting to what is happening to them? Are they amazed, shocked, or were they expecting it? Are they tingling with pleasure or wondering if they put the bins out? Are they confident physically or are they shy? The same goes for whoever is with them, although the author can only show that through action and speech; we don’t get to dip into their head too, unless we’re adopting a more literary, omniscient style, which can be confusing to read if not done incredibly well. The author must also explore what it is about this scene and the people in it that is specific to that scene and those people rather than resort to generic cuppings of faces or limbs intertwined and glistening in the moonlight. And, depending on where we are in the story, the reader will by now know the character quite well and, hopefully, will either be thinking oh no, don’t! or yes! (yes, yes)!