Gratuitous

Gratuitous is a word that a lot of people hide behind when they want to censor some kind of activity, whether it is sex or violence or anything else. Me? I'm not really a fan of gratuitous religion, but that doesn't get the same kind of attention.

Sex and violence, on the other hand, warrant all kinds of rules and regulations. I don't want your story if it has gratuitous violence - you know, anything that doesn't move the plot forward. I understand that a physical altercation can be just about the action, but often what leads up to it and the people who express their emotions in that manner are what needs to be shown with that end. Sex is an expression of a lot of different things, and again makes the people real.

These are two pillars at the core of our makeup. The drive for sex and procreation cannot be separated from the human condition. There are books and studies and who knows what other evidence to explain this, but if people don't have sex, people won't exist after very long.

Does that mean we have to weave it into every single thing we say and do? Maybe. Television, books, radio, even anecdotes from daily lives revolve around sex. We have innuendo and other not so subtle devices to insert it into our daily lives. It might make us crass or rude to admit it, but why are we so ashamed of sex? We're human. Sex drives us.

Oh, wait, let's insert that gratuitous - or not so gratuitous - religion again. All of a sudden our basic drive for sex is immoral. We have rules against sex outside of marriage, sex before marriage, sex with yourself, sex with anyone but that one person you marry. And these rules are absolute and in direct opposition with what our evolved drive for sex tells our minds to think.

Books and movies and all the other media use sex and violence to maintain drama. Drama is how you hold the audience's attention. It's one reason most of us fall asleep during documentaries they'll show you in school. There are trees and somehow the only action is ants crawling across the screen. Unless you're an ant fiend, it just doesn't do it for most of us. We crave drama, tension, conflict.

We mirror what we see in our lives, what we feel in our hearts, to create these plot lines. Sometimes it seems like they're all hopping into bed together. Sometimes it seems like another character just ended up dead. Remember when the soap operas dominated daytime television and they just couldn't figure out more ways to keep that tension high? We've replaced it with unscripted dramas we call "reality TV" that are actually nothing like reality. We freely admit this, and watch them anyway.

Not everyone chooses to watch this kind of entertainment. It's a choice. I recently met someone who said he didn't want to watch anything on television with sex or murder because he wanted to fill his life and his mind with the things he wanted more of - happiness and inspiration and other good things. His solution was to turn  off the television. While he explained his opinion, I felt in no way pressured to do the same. He never said I was immoral or anything else by enjoying those shows.

I try to remember him when I see all the other people touting immorality on screen, but it's difficult. I recently read an essay by a Christian woman who writes murder mysteries and watches all the crime shows, but hates that they all have sex together. She wants a cut and dried version with only the facts of the murders to take her on, without the characters that so many of us find intriguing.

Of course I'd be against those who are against gratuitous sex as an erotica writer, right? It's not that I'm for putting a sex scene in every novel or that I think everyone who might get close to sex should have it in the stories. But sometimes, it's necessary. That's who the person is. It is in our society and our lives. How deeply a writer delves into the sex is at the discretion of the writer (producer, director, etc).

And as a writer, I listen to the characters. Some of them want nothing more than to end up in bed together. Others run away at the prospect. At times those sex scenes dominate my story, and in another book they will be nothing but footnotes.

I think I need to stop letting those essays and blog posts and other outlets get to me. As long as we're telling stories, there will be sex and violence woven throughout, some gratuitous and some integral, and there will be arguments on both sides about which is which.

As for me, I'll be writing both kinds. Because sometimes it's just too fun not to.