SEX - writing about it and Lee Child.

SEX  -  writing about it and Lee Child.

 

Our maths teacher told us that there was a formula for everything in life. To make a cross curriculum point he told us there was even a formula for ‘writing’. The average novel, he said, is 50,000 words with 200 words a page which makes 200 pages in total. The sex, he said, now having our complete attention, will be on pages 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 or there abouts! It is done that way to keep your interest. However, he added, you could just hold the book up by its covers and it will fall open at the sex scenes.

 

Publishers have a formula for the costing and production of books, which can be, and often is, done with a cursory glance at the manuscript. After choosing a font, the size of the page and the number of pages a publisher can arrive at a basic unit cost. How much a publisher can reasonably ask for 200 bits of paper and a bit of card depends on several factors. But in truth the value of a novel is a bit like the value of an apple, no matter how hungry you are or how good the apple is, it is only ever going to be worth pence not pounds.

 

A writer greatly interested in sex and writing books to a formula was George Simenon. He was renowned for allegedly having sex with over a thousand women and being able to write a 200 page book in 11 days. He would mark  a calendar with a red cross each day for eight days as he wrote the novel, and then leave himself three days for re-editing. Some of his early novels might be considered ‘pulp fiction’ but the later novels are good if not great literature. The Maigret novels are without doubt some of the best crime fiction ever written. Simenon knew that in writing about sex  -  less was more, and he also avoided the problems of cliché ridden sex scenes. It is almost impossible to imagine the chaste Inspector Maigret indulging in hanky panky with the ever proper Madam Maigret. But he was a Parisian policeman after all, he knew about the ways of the world, even if he was not tempted like his creator. Maigret’s observations about women are often sensual, never crude, just dispassionate and honest, and all the better for it.

 

A lot of authors feel that they ‘have’ to write sex scenes, after all, it is part of the formula of a good book. But as the annual Bad Sex in Fiction Award suggests some authors just can’t do it! Trying to describe the beast with two backs takes a certain amount of flair, avoiding cliché requires talent. Most authors get away with bad sex scenes I suspect, because most readers do not write ‘yours disgruntled’ letters to the press about bad sex.

 

I like Lee Child’s book  - but he broke his formula. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when he and the editor met up to discuss the manuscript for The Affair. Who had the temerity to tinker with the Jack Reacher formula? For years, Child like Simenon, kept the sex in ‘the less is more’ camp, and did well because of it -  no embarrassing or silly sex scenes.  No one reads a Reacher novel for the sex, they read to see what the very smart and very tough guy is up to. Reacher is one of those great literary creations – he is charismatic – free, fair, honest, no weaknesses, no vulnerabilities, you care about him and you would like him as a friend.

 

The Affair was a shock, it had sex – a lot of it – enough to put it in the Bad Sex in Fiction category…. but it still has lots obligatory gratuitious violence, fist fights, shootings and killings. If you have not read the book (Spoiler alert – of a sort – not the plot!), I doubt you would find it difficult to imagine what might happen during the distant rumblings and eventual arrival of the earth shuddering, trembling midnight train!