Young Writers Society

(I rated this R, just in case)

In my NaNoWriMo I have to write a sex scene. Actually, it's a rape scene. I've been practising a bit, just with 'the girl' and 'the boy', but I'm only 13 and everythign I know comes from watching TV and the few stroies I've read with expicit sex scenes.

I don't want to make it too graphic, but a little interesting. I'm quite nervous about when I have to write it, does anybody have any tips?

I have rape scenes in mine, too!


Lol. Sorry, I'll give help. I suppose you would write it like any sex scene. It kind of depends what your focus is on. You don't want to be too graphic, just general. Everyone [well... people who are reading it, hopefully] knows what goes on during sex, so you don't need to give us sex ed in the middle of your scene.

I can find some articles and things for you in a bit, but not at the moment. ^^;

Watch TV when you're writing it. It'll distract you from thinking about the rape scene, and you might get something pretty creepy and original when doing that.

Is the scene absolutely necessary to the story? 'Cause if it makes you too uncomfortable, you can ditch it, or imply that it happened without writing the whole thing.

Rape is disturbing (or at least it should be) to everyone. You have to be incredibly careful when writing something like that. Be absolutely sure not to glorify the situation. Our society glorifies rape. Western society glorifies the power struggle of rape, it glorifies the male v. female model, provided the male it victorious. Rape is the ultimate symbol of male sexuality conquering female. Read survivor accounts, articles written by rapists...anything that will help to inform you outside of television or film. They are concerned with making money. If you want to tell the truth about rape (even if its only in one scene of your novel), the stay away from pop-culture.

Think about what you're trying to convey in the scene. Don't write it just for the sake of writing it - there needs to be something specific communicated to the reader.

I would highly recommend The Lovely Bones and Lucky, both by Alice Sebold. The first is a novel, and the second is her memoir. In the first the girl getting raped is very young and doesn't understand what's going on, so there's a certain detached element to the story that makes it even more powerful. In the second, she's narrating her personal experience as a college freshman, and she is very blunt throughout the whole book, sometimes painfully so.

Hopefully that will help.

[Silly Clau. XD Only writers would be like, "Yay! Me too!"]

Like Snoink said, for this kind of emotion, it's especially powerful for it be a little disconnected. If it feels like a bit of an afterthought, your reader will be all distraught, because hey, it's not. And that's pretty cool.

The key to writing 'extreme' scenes- highly explicit sexual or violent content- is to make it unique. Anyone can whip up something really graphic, but it takes a little finesse to make it shocking without being completely gross.

A critique I did awhile back you might want to read, in which I rant about sex scenes a lot: http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/post247622.html?highlight=#247622

Snoink helped me out a bit with that one- she's really good at writing bad sex scenes. XD Surprising, considering...well, read FREAK.

So, yeah! I hope that was somewhat helpful- feel free to rant at me if you need more help.

Actually, Sam reminds me, there was this one really cool movie I saw, La historia oficial (translation: The Official History).

The premise of the film is based after something kind of creepy that happened recently. In Argentina, just a couple of decades ago, there were secret concentration camps where people, usually political dissenters, were sent to. So they were kidnapped from their homes at the dead of night and brought to this detention center. There, they were tortured and beaten into confessing. Some of them were fresh out of high school or in high school. The pregnant women were allowed to have their babies, blindfolded, of course, and then killed. Their babies were adopted by families who were desperate for children. How fun. Some of them were killed by being dropped in the Atlantic Ocean from the airplanes.

About 30,000 disappeared. Several thousands more were killed outrightly.

In the movie, two Argentinan women were talking with each other, because they hadn't seen each other in ten years because one of the woman "went out of the country." So at first they talked about their past together and then, as they got more drunk, one of the woman started laughing hysterically and telling her friend how she was abducted and tortured. And how she saw the mothers stripped away from their babies and then executed and then how one man threatened her that he was going to rape her first. And how she was terrified every day that he would hear his voice and he would rape her (she never saw him because they blindfolded her). And by the end of that scene, I was in tears, but she was laughing hysterically and I feel like crying now because it was so disturbing, and yet she could only laugh about it. It had driven her crazy.

Detachment is absolutely necessary for those scenes.

Ok, well, my mom's a psychologist, so i kinda have an idea.

Sex and rape are totally different. sex is something God created and married people do; rape is about power and violence. so instead of being all graphic and describing sensations and all that, describe how it FEELS for this girl to basically have something so precious stripped away. i wrote a short story for English a few years back with a rape scene, and i didn't describe anything physically. i described what it did to her emotionally. next to that paragraph my teacher wrote in big letters "Horrible." so it's effective.

just an idea.

Everyone is touching on the right points, often for the wrong reasons. So let me touch on aspects of what it is and what some of the affects are. We all get how its done

I hate to say it, but as I writer I know these things well. Especially this aspect as its in so much of my horror works. That's all you'll get from me on why I know this subject and we leave it at that.

The dictionary (how funny the first usage in many is rape of a WOMAN) defines rape as so:

Noun
1. the unlawful compelling of a woman through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2. any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3. statutory rape.
4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.
Verb
6. to force to have sexual intercourse.
7. to plunder (a place); despoil.
8. to seize, take, or carry off by force.
–verb (used without object)
9. to commit rape.

We mean sexual here.

Rape comes in three forms, but for many different reasons.

1. Physical rape, violation of the body. Most common of these.
2. Mental rape, violation of the mind. Goes with #1 most strongly.
3. Spirital rape, violation of the sense of spirit. Goes with #2 strongly.

Rape can be on a boy or girl, boys can be enticed and taken against their will by a girl as well. Boys will rarely admit to this, especially in case of a girl, for fear of losing social ties. They suffer the same trama as girls, but they have no outlet and are forced to 'accept' it by society.

In a society that praises male sexuality and the all powerful penis its really damaging for a boy to admit he was forced into sex by a girl. It is the ultimate humilation and tramautic act for a boy to recieve from a girl, this happens to many weak willed boys with girls who are dominating.

Sex of a boy from a man, easier to admit, but still VERY rare to admit to it. This is often seen as changing the boys sexuality and he will be deemed a 'faggot' or any other word for homosexual you can call. This one is particularly damaging for boys to admit to and also is highly repressed within society. It is much rarer for a boy to be raped in this manner though, but is still very damaging.

Next we have girls. Often we all know how they are raped and by what methods. Usually forced and tied down, beaten or drugged before a man or bunch of men rape her horribly. This can be torture and very mentally scaring, but it is not very common for a bunch to commit it.

Then we have girls raping girls, a very real possibility, but altogether highly ignored. This falls into the same classification as a boy being raped by another boy, the social damages are immense, but often under appreciated. Our society labels these women often as lesbians and they are scarred again for being the victims of the act.

Common beliefs of our society turn the victim into an even worse state after admitting this act even occurred, forcing silence on many.

#1 Boys cannot be raped as they have to be aroused to have sex. Not true. While sex is 90% mental it is very possible for a girl to tease a boy, maybe do some oral and then force herself upon him and hold him down from on top. With or without a weapon a girl can often over power a guy from the position and despite usually being physically weaker rape him despite attempts to resist.

#2 Women who don't resist secretly want it. No just no. Plenty of fear and other tactics can force a woman to do this.

#3 Suggestive clothes mean it is okay! Often used by men who were driven insane through girls who wore too revealing and lack of clothes. Same applies to men in shorts or other clothes that can entice dominating women. Just because they wear it doesn't mean they want it. Though its probably not a good idea to wear an ultra mini skirt, no bra in the dark in a bad neighborhood.

#4 No means yes. Often used BY girls who change their mind midway through. Very rarely does this get attributed to boys who are not vocal, but if she says no, it means no. Consentual sex turned rape is often the issue here, but nevertheless it can be rape.

Now we got specifics out of the way of society issues for doing it and almost everyone knows the basics of how to that aspect goes, next we venture into the horrible world of abusive rape.

Slapping, punching, sodomy with object such as guns, sticks, poles, knifes, bottles, soda cans, food, sexual toys, animals and much worse things that I don't want to even go into detail about! This kind of rape is just sick, often befalling many sex slaves and other perverts. Children and mutiliation are common aspects of these very sickening rape scenes.

Another common one, is the sex slave that is horribly abused. This is very real for many children and adults across the world, too many being anymore then zero. You might have seen specials on TV or in books about this horrible kind of rape. Kidnapped and brutally raped and sold they are often amongst the most brutally raped people. (As mentioned above) They can be mad from the rape and laugh at it, but the damage is there. Perfect for a horrible backstory of characters and usually given them very warped sense of self, these scenes are very dramatic and disturbing.

Hope those add some spice and ideas to your head when writing them and give you aspects to think about how it affects the people who are raped. Hopefully we can start seeing something besides 'guy rapes girl' scenes.

Some reasons as expressed before, but others exist:

Dominance
Lust
Forcing obdience
Torture and perversion

lyrical_sunshine wrote:Sex and rape are totally different. sex is something God created and married people do; rape is about power and violence.

*ahem*

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary wrote:Main Entry: sexual intercourse
Function: noun
Date: 1799
1 : heterosexual intercourse involving penetration of the vagina by the penis : coitus
2 : intercourse (as anal or oral intercourse) that does not involve penetration of the vagina by the penis

Note the conspicuous lack of God and marriage in that definition. People can (and do) have consensual sex out of wedlock.

*sigh*
I wasn't intending to get into a philosophical discussion. i was just pointing out the difference between rape and consensual sex. don't freak out on me.

#1 Boys cannot be raped as they have to be aroused to have sex. Not true. While sex is 90% mental it is very possible for a girl to tease a boy, maybe do some oral and then force herself upon him and hold him down from on top. With or without a weapon a girl can often over power a guy from the position and despite usually being physically weaker rape him despite attempts to resist.

You have to remember, though...girls have a lot less sex drive than guys do. It's not me stereotyping, it's true. Ergo, male rapists are a lot more common and probably a lot more believable in writing.

Good article, though, Errant- excellent points. ^_^

Sam: Well, I wouldn't say it's a lot less. Indeed, it is less, but having met plenty of teenage girls, I wouldn't say it's less by much.

Yeah, statistics do indicate that men are far more likely to be rapists than women, but agression and the want to dominate also play a large part here; it's not just libido.

Very true- the lines between which get sort of muddled.

Granted, there do lurk about our planet whorish Ashlee Simpson minions who would gladly do such a thing, but their numbers are blessedly few. I think what I meant was that it's not less sexuality, it's just a different kind. Men have their drive for reasons imperative to the survival of the human race; women have it as sort of a bonus.

I know that sounds horrid, but it's what I have after a marathon five-thousand-word night. XD

Since this is nanowrimo, I suggest you have an entire chapter just defining what rape means and how it is done, and then describe the scene with as many words as you can.

CHEAT!

NOBODY CARES IF YOU TYPE A WHOLE PAGE FULL WITH SEX! SEX! SEXUAL OBJECTS AND SCREAMINGS AND EROTICA!

EW!

JUST LAG ON AND ON AND ON AND ON!