Some of us recently participated in an interesting discussion of ‘graphic’. How graphic is too graphic? One author responded so eloquently that I asked her to be my guest and elaborate on her point of view.
Please welcome author bestselling author, Amanda Ashley.
In a recent discussion on one of the author loops, the question was posed ~ how graphic is too graphic?
At the time, I said that, in my opinion, I thought less was more, and that it applied to everything. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to read graphic descriptions of murder or torture or rape. I’m reading to escape reality, not have the ugliness and evil of the real world spelled out for me in vivid, gory detail.
I don’t want to read a lot of profanity and swearing and curse words on every page. I know a lot of authors claim to do this because it adds to the “reality” of the scene, but honestly, did you ever finish a book you loved and find yourself raving about the profanity and how many times the author used the ”F” word?
Have you noticed you hardly ever read any other cuss words these days? Everything is “f” this and “f” that. Personally, I hate that word and just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I read a book by a really well-known author who used a word that is even worse, one that I never thought to see in print, especially in a book written by a woman. I no longer buy her books.
I feel the same way about love scenes. I want high emotion and feelings and sensuality, but I don’t want graphic descriptions of who’s doing what to who. I don’t want to read it, and I don’t want to write it. I’ve made love, I know how it’s done. I want to experience the wonder of it, the newness, the excitement, not the ABCs.
In my own books, I’m always aware that I have girls as young as 12 and 13 reading my stories.. If they don’t know how it’s done, I certainly don’t want to teach them!
Again, I know there are authors who aren’t bothered by this because they say they’re writing for adults, and that’s fine, for them. But not for me.
Given the “anything goes” nature of books these days, and the fact that editors seem willing to go along with that, I guess it’s no wonder that I find it harder and harder to find a book I want to read, and why I’ve stopped buying several authors that used to be “auto-buys” for me.
I’ve been a published author for over 20 years and in my opinion, the times they are a’changin’ not only in books, but movies. And not for the better.
Thank you so much, Amanda. My husband asked me tonight, after reading an especially graphic blurb for a supposed erotic romance, “How low can you go? This is depraved.” Not much shocks him…this did.
I can write hot and I can cuss like a truck driver. Occasionally one of my characters has a potty mouth too, but whatever I write is story driven first and foremost. Context is everything. Sex taken out of context is meaningless.
Click here for Amanda’s Website.
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I feel like we’re in recoil. Until very recently nothing too honest, frank or graphic was allowed in women’s literature. We broke past the age of purple prose and the need the find pretty ways to speak of “rough and vulgar matters” and that was a good thing, but hot on the heels of liberation came the great descent into yuck. It falls into the category of just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should…
Personally, I’m disappointed when I hear excessive profanity pouring out of someone’s mouth in real life, especially when the situation doesn’t merit it. It’s even sadder when profanity that’s had the meaning beaten out of it tries to pass for dialog in fiction.
In fiction and in life I use profanity sparingly because it has more punch if you don’t over do it.
XXOO Kat
I agree we’ve gone overboard with graphic details and the use of profanity is overload. Less is definitely more. Great blog today.
I think the title here should be How Low Can You Go? And the answer is…very low indeed. I am avoiding books with excessive violence and foul material….although I don’t mind cussing, since I also cuss like a sailor. A drunk sailor. A drunk sailor who loves cussing. :^)
I also have some authors who were auto-buy who are no longer. I have to check book by book to see if the violence is offensive, and if it is, I’ll skip that one. I guess someone must love this stuff, because the books are selling and the writers are writing it. But I hope that the trends start swinging back to “less is more” soon.
Funny, this has been on my mind as well. Though I haven’t found any excessively violent books, the ones I’ve picked up recently have definitely pushed the sexual boundaries into the extreme to remain just “romance”, IMHO.
And swearing? Let’s just say I share a bunk with Penelope and all the other drunk sailors who enjoy cussing. I don’t even notice it anymore. Very little surprises or offends me on that front.
Great post! And it’s wonderful hearing from A.A.
The “F” word doesn’t bother me at all, nor does any explicit language, if the situation/characters are such that it would seem natural to that situation/character. I, too, am like Penelope and can swear the air blue, so I’ve got a fairly open mind about that.
As for violence, rape, abuse, death…depends on what I’m reading, but I have a pretty high tolerance within parameters. If I’m reading an intense psychological thriller about a serial killer torturing a victim, it will disturb me - but sometimes being disturbed is the point. I remember a book I read within the last year or so that included a couple of scenes of sexual abuse and murder of children. It was very, very carefully written. I could almost sense the care given to every single word of those scenes. Would I consider the scenes graphic? No.
But did they go too far just by existing at all…?
That’s where this issue starts to slide down a slippery slope for me. While I agree, some scenes I’ve read in books, or some language that exists in books, may be too graphic (e.g. I don’t want/need fluid discussion or any particular sounds of wet flesh during sex scenes - that icks me out), I am more concerned about trusting anyone to make that decision for me and the censorship potential that could result.
The bottom line for me then becomes: It’s impossible for me to define what is “too graphic” in absolutes, even for myself - let alone for others. If I stumble across it while I’m reading, I can always skim it. I’ll probably mention it in a review (I posted a warning in the review of the book I mentioned). I may/may not decide to buy anything else by the author who wrote it. But I also won’t condemn, criticize, or rebuff them for their right to do so. That, for me, is where the real danger lies.
Well…either that, or I completely missed the point of the post. Which is also entirely possible. ;>)
I’m going to make a general comment, and by the way, your comments are amazing.
Here’s my take - I’m not for censorship for the most part, aside from self-censorship, however I’m not in favor of allowing kiddie porn, snuff videos, or sexual slavery because someone claims that to disallow these things is treading upon their rights to free speech and freedom of the press.
I’m too young to have been a real, true hippie, but I know for a fact there was a brief shining moment that was known as Camelot. It faded fast. Within a couple years of Woodstock, you could no longer trust that just because someone had long hair, they were one of the good guys.
Same with drugs that people used to expand their minds - which then became addictions for many people. Free love and ‘if you can’t be with the one you love honey, love the one you’re with’ turned into free SDTs and then HIV. Excess of any kind leads to…well…excess. Excessive calories lead to weight gain. Excessive exercise can lead to stress fractures. You get the point.
As far as erotica is concerned, yes, we women should have the freedom to explore our sensual/sexual sides, but in this particular case we are moving in a direction that is exploitative in the exact same way men exploit us. It’s about two things - money and pushing the envelope as far as you can for shock value. It’s like prostitution. Most prostitutes would probably rather have a real job with benefits, but circumstances have put them in a position where they either can’t find other work or they need to feed their families and this is one, albeit dangerous way, to do it. I don’t believe most writers are writing these stories because they live this lifestyle or because they believe it’s a good thing - they write these stories to make money.
***This is the most important point - these stories sell extremely well and if you want to make a whole lot of money, this is what you write. One author told me the following - “I troll the internet, searching for every sort of perverted sex act, so I can put it in my story. And my readers expect me to take the next story up a notch. My sales are incredible, but I feel like I have to scrub my eyes and my brain with bleach after everything I write.”
In every good book, context is the all. Anything taken out of context loses its meaning aside from one - sex is just sex and it’s not especially pretty. Violence is just violence, and violence for its own sake is nothing less than sadism. Think Dr. Mengele. It’s dehumanizing.
Woah, okay, I don’t think I’ve read any book ever that could possibly have caused its own author to need to bleach their own brain after writing it - and I don’t want to. In fact, that crosses so many of my lines of self respect and taking care of oneself I don’t even have words for it.
Personally I find it depressing that money is such a motivation that depravity, debasement, and abuse is considered a successful endeavor. I may not have been clear earlier, but I’m not into that at all, nor would I credit an author who was with my money.
Am I naive that I didn’t even ponder that sort of material being commercially available? I’ve never considered myself particularly so, and my previous comments were based on a frame of reference and thoughts that were on a completely different level of “graphic.” But I think that if authors are writing material that crosses their own personal lines to sell books and make money…
Well…then I wonder if they even realize that they know exactly what it feels like to be a victim of a sex trade, because they’re prostituting themselves.
Tracy - don’t think I was singling you out, I know what you’re talking about because I do write erotic romance and my scenes, between an adult man and an adult woman, can be hot. Sometimes I write more closed-door, sensual romances, sometimes not. I think what some of us are experiencing is a gut feeling that a line has been crossed and all of us - romance writers, YA writers, erotic romance writers - are going to be jumbled together with the top sellers on several romance ebook sites. These top sellers are not what the erotic romance genre was about even a year ago.
Publishers are asking for more extreme, graphic scenes and writers are complying in order to sell books. Self-published authors are seeing how well hard-core erotica sells and they are taking that route too. Not so long ago, I would have claimed that there is a difference between erotica and porn. I will no longer make such a blanket claim. I’m not seeing any difference. See my previous post on daddy-rotica.
Well said. You expressed my sentiments exactly.
Yes, Sandra. You’ve moved on. In a very good way.