# Writing about Sexuality in Story Telling is difficult for me



## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

On a positive note a recent thread got me thinking about the minimal amount sexuality in the fiction novel I am writing and it is a romance novel. I find it difficult to write about. I have been watching a lot of Netflix series lately and all of them have tons of sexuality written in the series. The Bridgetons, Grace and Frankie, The Queens Gambit, The Kominsky Method. The Kominsky Method being my favorite so far. In fact it almost dominates the conversaton in Grace and Frankie and they are all playing 70 year olds. So it is a natural part of human nature and I am not natural at writing about it at all.

It reminds me of when I went to Art school and had a lot of difficulty drawing hands. I am very good at drawing faces and was also sometimes frightened at drawing hair. And finally I learned it is about picking out the light and the darks and shapes and just dive in. I have this same sort of hesitancy about sexuality with my two characters in my fiction novel. One thing I noticed about the Queens Gambit is that she goes from a child to a young woman in the story. She is a pretty woman in the world of mens chess and there are lots of sexuality in the story. Also she flirts by staring at her opponents.

I am going to try and order the book by Walter Tevis on Amazon and see if this is mentioned in the book. Growing up and reading a lot. Most writers
barely mention it and strong feelings are never shown in actual sex scenes. For Instance I remember reading Oh Pioneers by Willa Cahter which is a torrid love story and ends in a murder of both lovers by her husband. And there is never a sex scene shown. In one of her later books I think it is called Lost Lady there are a few scenes of hugging and it is useful to drive the story forward explaining the relationships and situation.

I haven't really thought about it much as it hasn't come up in my first 3 chapters. Although trying to be funny and eye catchingly memorable saying my new avatar is a combination of one of my first pets name and a street from childhood and it equals my pole dancer name. I think I had carelessly spelled it like poll dancer. and then trying to be obtuse and instead of mentioning the small spelling error. I tried to be obtuse and talk about the distinction between a prostitute and pole dancer which there is little distinction as there is little distinction between the e at the end of pole and the l at the end of poll. The meaning is understood.

Anyway I don't plan on any sex scenes in the book but now maybe I should include something like this as a natural part of the development of the story.
I will have to see how this plays out and how comfortable I am with it. Most books that I have read dont go into great detail. I am running my mind over books I have read. Jane Eyre a classic no mention but it is a romance novel essentially. And they have a son at the end. Little House on the Prarie series i must have re read that series 10 time as a child. And there is only the mention of someone smelling of apples when they hugged them.

And Maya Angelou in her book I know Why a Caged Bird Sings I read that in high school It was a novel about her being raped at 7 and she told her family and the man was murdered soon after and she refused to talk for several years and found solace in reading. And then became first a singer and performer and later a writer. And that is a true story by the way about her life. And as a teen ager I found the direct talk about sexuality amazing. And she has a baby at 17 in the book her son guy. 

Wally Lamb in his books like She Has Come Undone or This I Know to be True or something like that title. Both openly deal with sexuality. With scenes and peoples reactions to each other. You hardly notice it but it is there. And these are more modern novels. Not from another age like Jane Eyre or Little House on the Prarie series. Or willa Cather, not so apparent like I know Why a Caged Bird Sings or all these very modern Netflix series. In my first novel
it was another mismatched love story and I never had a sexuality reference and it was a romance again. 

I guess my solution at this point is to get the Queens Gambit by Walter Tevis and read that. Although I already have read that many people are disappointed because I guess in the book she is ugly and the Netflix series she is gorgeous. So there might be no mention of sexuality I dont know.
And the chapter I am writing now is the early romance of the couple but I am not naturally directing my story in these areas and I likely should
as it creates a more natural character(s).


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

In my opinion, D. H. Lawrence is the best writer about sex, specifically _Lady Chatterley's Lover._  Well...some e.e. cummings poems are about equal.   I'm trying to think of books that actually made me feel erotic instead of all the books with gratuitous sex on every page and yet not love.  


Okay, so honestly...I'll take a tangent here... I'm really into MBTI/Jungian personality theory.   To tell you the truth there are different ways people experience sex from a cognitive function perspective.  Very in the moment and 5-senses-related, or...like me... kind of off the charts in the stratosphere of what it unlocks in my mind. Honestly the pleasure is the only thing keeping me pinned to planet earth at all as sensations run to very abstract symbols... but they are erotic... hard to explain to someone whose brain doesn't do that.   There are writers who are like me and I think those books that write about the kind of sex that my brain experiences are much more erotic to me.   There are then a few other ways to experience sex that I know very little about since I haven't gotten to talk to those personalities about it hardly at all.  From what I can tell, it has something to do with a release for some, much more than it does for me.   

At any rate, some of the authors writing about sex when they are not using symbolism and not using emotion (I'm also a considered a feeler by cognitive function) means nothing to me.    There are so many vampire and fairy and werewolf sex books out there.  I have some friends who love giving me bags of those.  I skim a few and definitely need to return them.  _50 Shades of Gray _ has boring repetitive sex that didn't seem like a turn-on to me at all and I guess was maybe something about release?   By the way, I think from what you've written you might like more of the concepts in with the sex like I do.... not that I know you that well, but spelling pole as poll is something I would do.  We also like a lot of the same books and some shows.   Brigerton is nice just because of the chemistry between the leads, isn't it?   Charlotte Bronte is one of my top favorites and I love Maya Angelou so much.  I am also so grateful for her book.    Toni Morison is too much for me, actually.  Too much abuse in with the sex when I picked up a book.  There might have been redemptive relationships in those books, and I wouldn't actually know.  I got too upset when I tried to read one.   I love pure love with sex in my life and in my books.  All the books that I love with sex in them have some purity about them in this way....also the whole book can't just be about the sex.  No way. 

So luckily there are some other books that really do it for me:

As mentioned D.H. Lawrence's _Lady Chatterley's Lover_  In my opinion, it's beyond anything anyone else has done with sex in a book. 
_The Red Tent_.... oh my gosh... gets me interested in the act just thinking about it and it's fantastic for relationships between daughters and aunts (not sexual!) and between men and women (love + sex).
_The Year of Wonders _about the Plague in an English town in the 1600's. 
There's a lovely piece by Madeline L' Engle in_ And Both Were Young _ I think is the name of the book.   You might be able to google Madeline L'Engle and sex scene and find it.  
_How Green Was My Valley_ has a fabulous sex scene, imo.  Ohmy gosh the writing right before it... so beautiful, imo.  The book is about growing up in a Welsh mining town around the turn of the century, so many wonderful observations to read about life in there.
 All of the above except for Lawrence usually only had one or two sex scenes and that's all that was needed. 

For more just fun and less classic, there were a few good scenes in the first book of _Outlander_, imo, but the author loves to have her MC take physical abuse (no not sexual, although sometimes in later books sexual?  eek!) and come out of it smiling which is a problem imo.  Also the first True Blood/Sooky Stackhouse.  After the first books it was less about love and was much less erotic to me in both of these series.  I wish I could un-read them, actually.  I need love in my books... basically tons of foreplay is what it is when you're watching two characters almost getting it on and tension building and feelings of tenderness and protectiveness increasing, etc.   =)     Have fun!


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

Llyralen can I can you like canned peaches and pears and distribute you to the masses and everyone is so happy. Not meaning to be trite but you are a godsend to me.

I AM NOT GOING TO BECOME A LITERARY SEXOLOGIST! phew that was a lot to type in capital letters. Although I will order the Queens Gambit. ASAP.

Jeese, Loueeze, and other stuff. so, ahem and hmm and whatever. I have never read LCL although I have read on D.H. Lawrence book that I can not remember the title. Madame Bovary comes to mind for some reason and the only thing that stuck in my mind was that she married a country doctor who botched the club foot surgery killing some poor person. Thats me or moi.  And the one D.H Lawrence book  the only thing that stuck in my mind was when they were going to kill the mother who was dying and used a symbol of her death of a broken doll. 

I love JUNG. I have a Carl Jung story. Once when I lived in Paris a graduate student I admired him so much that I made my lame friend Larry who was a diplomat in Paris drive me on a pilgrimage of sorts to see his house in Zurich. At the time his son was acting very terrible as teens do. And we were ganging up on him trying to convince him to be nice. I had an old friend on route and we visited the family. and they all pitched in trying to convince him to be nice too. And then onto Jung territory ZURICH Switzerland. 

We visited his house. Jung loved making stone mandorlas. These circle stones. We got to Zurich with teen guy acting terrible. And me and Larry as a happy as clams. And Jungs summer escape was only open on certain months. So we forlornly peaked over the wall and our grumpy teen said hey I will boost you over the wall. Soon we all were over the wall at his summer home dancing and photos around all his stone sculptors. So I am posed at 36 with 6 foot circle stone in his country retreat.

Anyhoo now I am a Llyralen fan 

your fan BabesJJ


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## EmmaSohan (Feb 10, 2021)

It my chapter about the grammar of action scenes, I recently added sex scenes. So this topic has been on my mind. There are different ways of writing a sex scene.

There is the physical actions and emotions. I describe this in my book.

There is being more conceptual. This is actually on my website, though framed in the context of a kiss scene.

And a friend just forced me to look at Lolita. Nabakov does collage-like pieces. In my chapter, I talk about Martin Clark doing that, it's really hard to explain.

Which is to say, you talk about whether to include the sex scene or not. I think they are easier to include, and include well, if you know your choices for how to write them.


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## EmmaSohan (Feb 10, 2021)

Sex scenes are often just physical, and I usually just skip over those. The physicality of sex is boring to me. So I did not automatically object that Ludlum (_The Bourne Identity_) skipped over the actual sex scene.

*But*. They went into the sex as two people negotiating a perilous relationship, and came out of it as a team. That's hard to write, but the opportunity to write that scene is precious. I want to say that's the reason I exist as a writer. How could he turn that down?

So, I'm perfectly capable of skipping the actual sex and going on to a conceptual post-coitus description. I also included the sex scene in my rewrite of The Scarlet Letter, and the book doesn't make sense without it. But it's mostly conceptual, with enough physicality so that the reader knows what is happening.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

EmmaSohan so people become teams after a perilous journey. OK I am your fan FOREVER. Meanwhile thank you thank you thank you. We are watching Edward Scissor Hands as the super bowel commercial prompted us. 

I am a TV watcher via computers and Netflix. Get distracted when our family starts the afternoon stuff on TV. I will write more and longer when I am not as distracted. And Do you know about the Meyers Briggs it is a personality quiz. Jung inspired. Gotta go TV On.


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## EmmaSohan (Feb 10, 2021)

Sorry for drowning you in answers.

What we as writers do, or at least should do, in any scene, is things like conflict, surprise, twists, obstacles, etc. And the natural thing is to leave those out of a sex scene. Because the two people are working together. (Even though that probably isn't completely true even in RL.) And the natural thing is to ignore personality growth, because sex is just supposed to be physical, or it leads to falling in love whatever that is but it's too vague to be good writing.

Or we ignore showing-character, as if everyone responds the same way to sex. Um, that might be close, but it's not true. Or that everyone feels the same in every sex scene, even though that seems ridiculous when I write it out.

Or maybe some writers just advance plot, and the plot tends to stand still for a sex scene.

So, the needs and potential of the sex scene vary. But usually you should be writing it AS A SCENE.

Okay. Done! I hope. I maybe should get therapy. :redface: Thanks for bringing this up.


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## VRanger (Feb 10, 2021)

My discussion is not going to be advice per se, but how I as one reader (and a male reader) look at the subject.

My primary genres of interest have always been sci fi, heroic fantasy, mystery (a la Perry Mason, Agatha Christie, etc), and some adventure. None of these genres prominently feature sex in any detail, and it's by no means a hole in those stories. They do, when it's appropriate to the story, make it clear who is interested in who and why, and occasionally when a specific sexual encounter occurs, but without a blow by blow.

Since 1993, the Literary Review has issued an annual award for "Worst Sex Scene". So many detailed sex scenes are written, especially in Romance, that authors sometimes go to ridiculous extremes to "make it different". Those authors may wind up as candidates for the Literary Review's award.

IMO, a detailed sex scene virtually NEVER has anything to do with building the story. 99.9% of the time they are included as an appeal to prurient interest, and there is unquestionably a market for that. I can see an exception if some behavior during the sex scene exposes a character trait the author wants known, and that's the only way to get it into the story, but that can probably still be done without step by step detail.

So the question a writer has to answer is if they are writing for the prurient interest market (which includes Erotica), or writing because they have a more encompassing story to share.

I included nothing but oblique references to sexual relationships until the sci fi novel I wrote just last spring. A couple becomes engaged, and shortly afterward is kidnapped. They escape the kidnappers, buy fake identities, and wind up sharing a hotel room for a few weeks while trying to arrange a way off the world they were transported to. Twice I make it very clear that they're having sex, but only by a sentence or so to telegraph it, then a change of scene. I believe in the trade, that's called having the sex "behind closed doors".

In my WIP, there are more frequent references to specific encounters, but it's still in the "behind closed doors" style. You will never, and I mean never, find something I write in any way a candidate for the Literary Review. ;-)

_"Do you think we might just stay here?" Lea teased. "We should be able to get some kind of jobs."

"Very funny. So it's good news and bad news."

"I get the good news. Why bad news?"

"If we find a way to ship out on New Hansea, I've only got several days and their port stay to make things hot for the Count."

"Somehow, I was afraid that was the bad news. I just didn't want to give you any ideas in case it wasn't. So, how do we go about this?"

Thor noticed the 'we'. "I don't know. I haven't had much time to think about it yet. We'll have to put our heads together."

"I like that idea." As Lea rounded the table, she reached up and pulled the right half of her robe aside.

_[End of Scene]

So there you have it ... the extent of a vranger hot sex scene.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

Sex is everywhere in all these modern Netflix series I have been watching recently. Don't have me starting to worship John Irving. The best writer of sexuality ever. "It reminds me of when I went to Art school and had a lot of difficulty drawing hands. I am very good at drawing faces and was also sometimes frightened at drawing hair. And finally I learned it is about picking out the light and the darks and shapes and just dive in. I have this same sort of hesitancy about sexuality with my two characters in my fiction novel. One thing I noticed about the Queens Gambit is that she goes from a child to a young woman in the story. She is a pretty woman in the world of mens chess and there are lots of sexuality in the story. Also she flirts by staring at her opponents."


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Llyralen can I can you like canned peaches and pears and distribute you to the masses and everyone is so happy. Not meaning to be trite but you are a godsend to me.



 I will think of myself as seen as a sunny bowl of peaches all day and it will keep making me smile!  Yay! 



> I AM NOT GOING TO BECOME A LITERARY SEXOLOGIST!



I wouldn’t rule it out completely!   Hehe. 



> Jeese, Loueeze, and other stuff. so, ahem and hmm and whatever. First of all most if not all D.H Lawrence lovers are men. I read LCL and other books and the only thing that stuck in my mind was that she married a country doctor who botched the club foot surgery killing him. Thats me or moi. And I read it twice. And I read another book and the only thing that stuck in my mind was when they were going to kill the mother a symbol was used about a doll.


. 

That isn’t the plot of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  You must have read a different book.   I kind of thought most women found LCL erotic.  Hmm.  I didn’t find Lawrence’s other books nearly as erotic. 



> I love JUNG. I have a Carl Jung story.




So awesome!  I didn’t know about the stone mandalorias.  Mandalas?   I will check it out!  How fun!!!


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

EmmaSohan said:


> Sex scenes are often just physical, and I usually just skip over those. The physicality of sex is boring to me. So I did not automatically object that Ludlum (_The Bourne Identity_) skipped over the actual sex scene.
> 
> *But*. They went into the sex as two people negotiating a perilous relationship, and came out of it as a team. That's hard to write, but the opportunity to write that scene is precious. I want to say that's the reason I exist as a writer. How could he turn that down?
> 
> So, I'm perfectly capable of skipping the actual sex and going on to a conceptual post-coitus description. I also included the sex scene in my rewrite of The Scarlet Letter, and the book doesn't make sense without it. But it's mostly conceptual, with enough physicality so that the reader knows what is happening.



You re-wrote the Scarlet Letter?  I would be very interested in that! 
Someone made you read Lolita?   There’s a book that would upset me, but I was wondering how Nabokov wrote sex scenes.   That sounds interesting!  So I should maybe look into Clark Martin’s stuff?  What would you suggest?


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

Llyralen, we are about to go down for vegetarian cooking, aged Corgi pre-named Cowboy about the place, although we adore him, WHAT I WANTED TO EMPHASIZE WAS THAT I WANTED TO CAPTURE AND PERSERVE YOU LIKE THE BEST THING OF A SUMMER SEASON. I know I am a mere mortal and I can't capture kindness and intelligence and fun. Yes I was boosted by a bad tempered teen age boy over the wall of Jungs wonderful summer house and saw several stone mandorlas.


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Llyralen, we are about to go down for vegetarian cooking, aged Corgi pre-named Cowboy potti ing about the place, although we adore him, WHAT I WANTED TO EMPHASIZE WAS THAT I WANTED TO CAPTURE AND PERSERVE YOU LIKE THE BEST THING OF A SUMMER SEASON. I know I am a mere mortal and I can't capture kindness and intelligence and fun. Yes I was boosted by a bad acting teen age boy over the wall of Jungs wonderful stone manderlas. bas speller. So we cavorthed in privare amongst the Mandorlas. And when I am expected to be half way family and engaged sorry that I am engaging. Do you know Meyers Briggs. Do an online test. I am a great fan of you, PEACHES are to die for.



I am so glad that you see me as all of those things and yes, peaches are wonderful!  This is a wonderful symbol that you are giving me for myself!  I think you’re so fun too!  I appreciate you too!  I love hearing these stories from you. 

As Emma knows, because she and I have talked about it, I am a MBTI freak.  It colors almost every aspect of the way I view life and people.  I’m an ENFP.   My only other forum is PersonalityCafe.com (same name of llyralen).   I love to just hear how different people experience things and think.   Even though I’m saying I’m a freak about it, I do think it’s all about the brain.  I follow Dario Nardi’s work with neuroscience and MBTI.  Since a lot of the brain is trained I do know there are anomalies in type and have seen it.  

I am working right now on writing a short article or blog about how MBTI can help a person’s writing and how to draw inspiration from it along the lines of Jung’s archetypal thinking.  I will post that on this forum when it’s ready.


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## Taylor (Feb 10, 2021)

I had to chuckle when I saw this thread come up...very timely for me. I just finished writing a sex scene for my MC and her new love interest -- their first time. I wasn't sure how to write it, but decided to write it as I would wish to read it. It took one and a half chapters. 






They had been dating for two weeks, are busy professionals and not yet found the opportunity to be intimate at all. Only one kiss at the door at the end of one date. But a friend invites them away for the weekend. So once they fly out of NYC, they leave work and everything else behind, and are now in neutral territory. What fun I had! It takes place in a luxury hotel over two days. Because they got in late on Friday night after a five hour flight and a visit with their friends, they headed down that path, but she fell asleep from exhaustion on the first night. So they finally get to it during the following day, starting in the morning after a nice long breakfast. Writing from my FMC POV, I included many of her thoughts. AND most importantly their conversations. He's incredibly turned on by her mind, and vice versa. But I only write up to the clothes coming off. And then after many hours a knock at the door.  End of chapter.  

I found the trickiest thing about writing it was indicating how he was sensitive to her openiness, while still being the aggressor.  And I only had one POV to work with.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

We are having dinner and if I could make a royal coat of arms insignia it would be an owl and a peach. Meanwhile I am sadly an ENTP. And if you understand meyers briggs I will blather on at another time. if you have 2 communication links overall understanding is very easy. Anyhoo, more later, now my family isn't expecting me to be the evenings entertainment. 

your fan both of you the owl and the peach


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

Taylor said:


> I had to chuckle when I saw this thread come up...very timely for me. I just finished writing a sex scene for my MC and her new love interest -- their first time. I wasn't sure how to write it, but decided to write it as I would wish to read it. It took one and a half chapters.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, It’s so fun to read this!   I bet it was a blast!  One and a half chapters!  Swoon!   That sounds so interesting.  So you’re writing from her POV, yes? And indicating or aware of his sensitivity to her openness?   Wow tricky and sexy!  Love it! 

Well owl... this peach needs to go write more sex scenes for her murdered prostitute.  I also think it’s best like that, write it how you would want to read it.


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> We are having dinner and if I could make a royal coat of arms insignia it would be an owl and a peach. Meanwhile I am sadly an ENTP. And if you understand meyers briggs I will blather on at another time. if you have 2 communication links overall understanding is very easy. Anyhoo, more later, now my family isn't expecting me to be the evenings entertainment.
> 
> your fan both of you the owl and the peach



Oh this is the best! 

I will be hunting up a peach avatar pic later in honor of all of this awesomeness!  This thread has made me SO happy this morning!   

Okay, so all of us intuitive girls need to get dinner together and each lady who has written in this thread is a mature and awesome intuitive woman.   Emma, you, me, and Taylor!   Oh what fun we’d have!   And we all know about MBTI.   Writing and MBTI and characterization and interesting people and music as well for at least 3 of us... Babes would you be interested in going to a concert too?  If not we will love you just as much as when we get back.  There would be endless things to talk about.   Sorry to our I (introvert) sisters, would you guys also be interested?  Well... it’s just so fun in my imagination anyway.  I find I need to go there in my brain and get permission from us all to have dinner and a get-away in my brain even though it’s just my imagination talking.  Lol.   Girls?  Lol!


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## EternalGreen (Feb 10, 2021)

I'm writing a make-out scene and trying to make it as erotic as possible before the inevitable scene in the bed chambers.

Once I reach that point, I'll probably keep it "r-rated." This part of the story isn't "about" the characters having sex. It's about them trying to get away with it living in a historical context. That's what's more interesting.

I might overwhelm the reader with sensory data in that chapter. By that I mean all five senses and even a sense of orientation and balance.

I worry this will make the MS (more) difficult to publish. We'll see later on.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

Here it goes giant Myers-Briggs blather and tie it in with male and female communication methods

Myers Briggs ie Carl Jung 

When I was in college there was a professor who tested everyone with the Myers Briggs. It was developed by a mother daughter team during the cold war as a tool to try to match government workers and soldiers to jobs that they might be a good fit. The mother was a psychologist and had always had ideas about personality traits could be defined. She had thousands of index cards with some sort of observations or something. Anyway she was introverted and she has one daughter who was introverted and married an extrovert. We all have all these traits just one is often dominant. For instance I am extroverted and we often take a poll to make a decision. While introverts look inside themselves. Extroverts get energized being around people while Introverts enjoy people but the interactions might tire them and the need to be by themselves to recharge. 

Anyway, Myers or Briggs I am not sure which is the mother or which is the daughter. Anyway her husband invented the wind tunnel and was connected in government circles. So she was given money to research these personality traits. Ultimately her testing was successful but she asked that it not be used for government workers so at some point it was stopped for government workers etc. The Meyers Briggs family I read somewhere recently that they are not going to continue the tests anymore as they are sick of the whole thing it sounded like.
I do remember that when Meyers-Briggs read Carl Jungs book about architypes she was shocked as it was so similar to her research and 
wrote him and was afraid that people would think she just copied him. And he was very kind to her and wrote back that these are naturally observable facts and it would make sense that other people saw them too. 

So the categories are Introverted Extroverted, Thinking or Feeling, Intuition (N) Sensory, Judgement Perception. And all are all of these things we just usually have a dominant way of interacting with the world. The lady that tested us gave the example of like a parent to a child. The dominant characteristic is like the parent and the child is the lesser character. So for instance the parent says lets have a salad for lunch and the child says lets have spaghetti. The child is heard but the parent is in charge and they have a salad. So as far as male female characterization.
She told us that 80% of women process by feeling and 80% of men process by thinking. So our culture and society has developed around these norms in society. Although that leaves 20% of women who are thinking like me and 20% of men who are feeling like Bill Clinton. We still have
both but the dominant one is the one that is how we communicate with the world,.

Feeling women often see thinking women as having a defect. And often see the problem and will act as interpreters of feelings to thinking women. and thinking women often seek out sort of empath friends as it is so socially unexpected and almost unacceptable for women to respond in a thinking interface with the world. And the same for feeling men. They are sometimes seen as effeminate. And vice versa for women being seen as masculine. And of course these are wide generalizations. For me being and ENTP is I am in my head., Oh all the 
senses can be measured except intuition. They can not measure intuition. It is almost like being psychic. You just know. Sensory people
like to see the evidence I always think that they love massages. I think my husband is ITSP. I am not sure as he has never taken a test.
They have tests online for free. I wouldnt pay for one. I have heard of people doing meyers briggs guess on written characters in books.

I have also heard of suggestions to myer-briggs all your characters. I havent gotten that far but it did cross my mind to do that after thinking
about this. Oh last thoughts. Ah, we interface with each other. and if we have 3 matching characteristics communication is easier. For instance an ENFP and and ENTP would have an easy connection. While people with only 1 matching characteristic or sometimes even none it is more work to communicate still possible. Anyway, the lady that tested us followed us all year she was doing her PhD around something using 
the results somehow. And she said to me thinking women often didn't stay in the career I had chosen at the time. and moved on. I have
struggled with my first career choice and now embrace it in middle age. She was right though I sometimes felt like an imposter.

Anyway I am almost Meyers Brigged out.


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## Taylor (Feb 10, 2021)

EternalGreen said:


> I'm writing a make-out scene and trying to make it as erotic as possible before the inevitable scene in the bed chambers.
> 
> Once I reach that point, I'll probably keep it "r-rated." This part of the story isn't "about" the characters having sex. It's about them trying to get away with it living in a historical context. That's what's more interesting.
> 
> ...



Yes, depends on your target market.  But you are a great sensory writer, so it will be a treat I'm sure!


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## luckyscars (Feb 10, 2021)

Without wanting to get into exactly what I mean, I think sex scenes (and, to a lesser extent, any _sexualized_ scene) are actually the few examples where Write What You Know is actually pretty much everything.

There is absolutely _nothing _more likely to go wrong, for instance, than a lesbian sex scene written by a man. That isn't because 'ugh, men' but simply because sexuality really is so nuanced and the line between getting it just right and way off may come down to the smallest detail/lack of detail. It's really hard to write 'somebody else's sex life' well. It gets progressively harder. The more unfamiliar it is, the more likely the writer is to fall into clichés, the result based off pornography or something seen in a corny movie. 

I feel like I can always tell when I'm reading a sexual scene that is speculation on the part of the writer rather than informed by experience and the latter is always better, or at least not nearly as terrible. Sex scenes are usually terrible.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 10, 2021)

I guess that writers are trying out different characters and other personalities in their heads so they have to be a sort of shape shifter.


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## MistWolf (Feb 10, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> _Queen's Gambit_



The book is a trip to the planet Calufrax- dull, boring and tedious. 

It was a free download from Audible and I could not finish listening to it. If you hooked the character up to an emotional EKG, you'd think she was dead. The writing is lackluster. Maybe it gets better after she starts playing professionally. If so, too bad. The author took too long getting there for me to find out.


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

EternalGreen said:


> I'm writing a make-out scene and trying to make it as erotic as possible before the inevitable scene in the bed chambers.
> 
> Once I reach that point, I'll probably keep it "r-rated." This part of the story isn't "about" the characters having sex. It's about them trying to get away with it living in a historical context. That's what's more interesting.
> 
> ...



I enjoy reading writing that uses all 5 senses— it’s something I’d very much like to get better at writing myself.    In love scenes I like love in it though, but if written well who knows?   I can like all of it.   However I think a majority likes the sensory.   

I got a bit carried away earlier.  I don’t want to leave out anyone and I have a new appreciation for women in general in that we women could be so helpful to each other if we can feel and promote sisterhood. 

Anyway, I bet I’d love to read your scene!  That’s exciting!


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## Llyralen (Feb 10, 2021)

luckyscars said:


> Without wanting to get into exactly what I mean, I think sex scenes (and, to a lesser extent, any _sexualized_ scene) are actually the few examples where Write What You Know is actually pretty much everything.
> 
> There is absolutely _nothing _more likely to go wrong, for instance, than a lesbian sex scene written by a man. That isn't because 'ugh, men' but simply because sexuality really is so nuanced and the line between getting it just right and way off may come down to the smallest detail/lack of detail. It's really hard to write 'somebody else's sex life' well. It gets progressively harder. The more unfamiliar it is, the more likely the writer is to fall into clichés, the result based off pornography or something seen in a corny movie.
> 
> I feel like I can always tell when I'm reading a sexual scene that is speculation on the part of the writer rather than informed by experience and the latter is always better, or at least not nearly as terrible. Sex scenes are usually terrible.



Isn’t it the truth?  
A thought I had earlier:    Basically, after reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover I thought “Well, I kind of know Lawrence’s MO as much as I know my husband’s in some ways.”   Basically, if you ask me if Lawrence ever knew about what (dang it I’m going to need to get explicit) the clitoris is capable of, I’d say he never did know.   Oh my gosh this is kind of awful to think about but also maybe something important for authors to consider?    I’d so much rather read and think “Okay, dude did not know about X.”  Than think to myself “Wow, I don’t think this author ever experienced anything close to what they are saying here.”     It would kind of be like that Harry Potter fan fiction that got dubbed “the worst ever writing”, but that is kind of fascinating for seeing what a kid thinks about some things they’ve never experienced... My Immortal?  Was that it?    Hilarious.   
Important for us to think of as writers, it’s kind of an expose’ to write sex scenes in some ways.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffh7cWRrqF4


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen said:


> Isn’t it the truth?
> A thought I had earlier:    Basically, after reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover I thought “Well, I kind of know Lawrence’s MO as much as I know my husband’s in some ways.”   Basically, if you ask me if Lawrence ever knew about what (dang it I’m going to need to get explicit) the clitoris is capable of, I’d say he never did know.   Oh my gosh this is kind of awful to think about but also maybe something important for authors to consider?    I’d so much rather read and think “Okay, dude did not know about X.”  Than think to myself “Wow, I don’t think this author ever experienced anything close to what they are saying here.”     It would kind of be like that Harry Potter fan fiction that got dubbed “the worst ever writing”, but that is kind of fascinating for seeing what a kid thinks about some things they’ve never experienced... My Immortal?  Was that it?    Hilarious.
> Important for us to think of as writers, it’s kind of an expose’ to write sex scenes in some ways.
> 
> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ffh7cWRrqF4



I will look at the link. Thank you. 

And somebody mentioned that The Queens Gambit wasn't very interesting. Good idea to get the audio book. 

And I am so dumb I was talking about Madame Bovary that I read 2 times. I have never read Lady Chatterley's Lover so maybe I will get the chance someday. And although I am an ENTP I still have feelings of course I just the I use thinking to interface with the world as my stronger hand.

I looked at the link. It is funny. And strangely before seeing it I commented about vampires. Neat video.

I wanted to add a Myers-Briggs test question I remember.

You play cards because

You enjoy the strategy

You enjoy the socialization

You enjoy the competition

You do not like playing cards

I don't really like playing cards so I picked that one. 

Oh Lyallen I rewrote and added to my comments on Meyers-Briggs in the previous page so if you are a Meyers-Briggs person I wrote a bunch of stuff i learned about it being tested for a year for someone PhD.

now adding this site as I just re-took the Meyers-Briggs and got ENFP this time ha although I think I am more compassionate with age.

https://www.16personalities.com/enfp-personality


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

> Anyway I am almost Meyers Brigged out.




Oh no you’re not Myers-Brigged out really, hopefully.  Lol.  I can never be sick of Meyers-Briggs/Jung. 
Meyers Briggs and Jung is so deep it can fill many lifetimes discussing it which is why I plan to make a thread on a Jungian approach to literature. I might want to make my first blog or YouTube video about it.  I’ve been thinking about it for 19 years.  I also took the amBtI in college.   So the free online tests are knock-offs and they aren’t nearly as accurate as the official MBTI.  16Personalities skews towards iNtuitive, so even obvious sensors often get N results on there— something to know.  For descriptions and also to understand which functions dominate each type I recommend www.PersonalityCafe.com but descriptions are not always accurate so at some point everyone kind of keeps the perceiver/judger info that Isabella Myers brought to the table (which are not cognitive functions on their own, but instead very accurate observations of what happens when you have extroverted perceiver functions more dominant or more extroverted judging functions more dominant—- otherwise most people rightfully go back to Jung’s cognitive functions to explore the world and the descriptions of people can definitely fall by the wayside since everyone is so different.  For instance Michael Jordan and Donald Trump are the same MBTI.  A description ends up meaning nothing.


Anyway, I really will make a new thread for just writing and MBTI— but to make it good give me some time and patience for that.  It’s been 19 years developing. 


BUT I will do something different for this thread, how about?  It will also take me some time.  I will bring examples of sex scenes by each type if they are available.  At least by each dominant function, hopefully.  

I type James Joyce INFJ and there is an example of a Ni-Fe sex scene in the 5th chapter of Ulysses.   Hemingway who I type ISTP has a sex scene that starts more towards the Ni side but quickly shows his Se is more dominant but is working hand in hand with his third function.    Anyway, we will see what I can show.  I admire all types and also all types writing.  I love the equality that I see as a natural part of MBTI.  Understanding other people have strengths where you have weaknesses and the flip is what it’s all about.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen, I will support any thread that you begin based on Meyer Briggs and possibly sex writing themed or character development themed?  Was any of what I wrote about Meyers Briggs helpful or interesting? You are welcome to use any of it if it did.  And you are right I likely still am ENTP as I have read about it here and there.  I found the description of women who are thinking and the issues around that in society very relatable to me. The professor who tested us came and gave us a few talks. Then she did a private interview with us for her PhD project. And I have always been interested in Meyers Briggs since. As it gave me some sort of understanding when my thought process seems so analytical. Although I have learned to listen to my feeling child. I am also a huge Carl Jung fan. I was boosted over a garden wall to scamper amongst his mandorlas for heavens sake. I have a photo of me hugging a mandorala. Anyway, that is in response that of course I not and never will be totally Meyers Brigged-out (I love Amerian phrasal verbs) . How can anyone who would drive for 8 hours to hug a Carl Jung Mandorla ever become tired of Meyers Briggs? Like ya count me in.

I have wanted to start a thread on Netflix series because the writing on Netflix is so different than other TV series I have experienced. I just love it. The standard series for so long was a living room area with a set of stairs. I could remember at least 10 sitcoms that look like that. I would enjoy doing a PhD thesis on sex on Netflix series. Oh for me if I could do a PhD thesis I would like to do it on New Mexico Artists. And old friend from high school became a psychologist. She did her PhD on doctoral students who didn't complete their PhD for whatever reason. The term is ABD All but the dissertations. And the main reason was that they moved away from their home university. Anyway I have often entertained the thought of for fun getting a PhD in my old age at the University of New Mexico. As it is free after 65. I would get it in American Studies. Living in France has made the USA culture very interesting to me. Anyway YES yes and a thousand times yes I will go along with you on a Meyers Briggs thread. 

I took a couple of film classes in Art school and the Hayes Laws regulated sexual content on the public airwaves and I don't know if the same laws are on Netflix which is a private company. So I am guessing that is why Netflix showing and talking of sex is so different than public airwaves. Not sure just a guess. Oh I meant to mention earlier that my first bachelors was in painting and i mostly painted abstract portraits from memory. Jane Eyre inspired me to do this because that is how she often drew. Anyway, that was way before I was as self aware as I am now. And that is not all that self aware. Knowing what I know about psychology and these types of character workings my painting might be different now. I can keyboard very fast and I can really churn it out. I call it keyboarding not typing as its not a typewriter anymore. So yes count me in on the Meyers Briggs adventure. 

BR BabesJJ


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## EmmaSohan (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen said:


> I will bring examples of sex scenes by each type if they are available.  At least by each dominant function, hopefully.



Sounds fascinating.


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## JBF (Feb 11, 2021)

When I started out, I believed a majority sex scenes in fiction were unnecessary.  I've moved to the point now that pretty much all of them are.  Why?  Because usually this means a change in tone, questionable details, and a sense of obligation by some authors that this is somehow required.  It's something appended to the story for the sake of being appended, irrespective of whether the same could be accomplished through other means.  Plus, an unsettling number of writers either don't seem to understand the mechanics of the thing or don't possess the ability to pass it coherently to the reader.  

If you're wanting to show two characters in love, you need to depict intimacy moreso than the act.  If you want somebody who was indelibly changed, show the result, whether this was a rite-of-passage thing, violent crime, consummation of a relationship...whatever.  

I get the appeal, but as storytelling goes I don't see the utility.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

JBF Watching Netflix and how all these shows have a lot of dialogue about sex and it is new to me but also strangely interesting. I agree that sex can be a distraction.

EmmaSohan thank you for pointing out what Llyralen has in mind. Very sensitive and insightful to do that. Also its a part of writing and I don't want to just ignore it.

Llyralen, Whatever thread you decide I will try and stay in the lines and likely make tangential comments but I think it is a great idea. 

In general I think Jane Eyre was an INFP. Extremely introverted. I once did an insurance psychiatric exam on the Jane Eyre character. I think I read that book easily between 20-40 times during high school, See if I had been reading LCL I would likely be much more talented at writing the natural parts of life instead of just ignoring this part of a characters life.


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## JBF (Feb 11, 2021)

> Watching Netflix and how all these shows have a lot of dialogue about sex and it is new to me but also strangely interesting. I agree that sex can be a distraction


.

In fairness, it's a somewhat different set of rules with visual media.  

Still think most of the time it's overdone and unnecessary, though.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

JBF I had an idea. I will put my gratuitous sex scene in the middle of the book. You can put anything in the middle. Just thinking about having to write a sex scene fills me with dread. Yes I think Netflix doesn't have to follow the same rules that public airwaves. My favorites right now are the Kominsky Method and Grace and Frankie. I have watched the Kominsky method 3 times at least and there is 1 more season planned. And Grace and Frankie everyone is like over 70 and that is all they talk about is dating and they actually have a vibrator company for senior ladies. I love Jane Fonda and Lillie Tomlin.


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## EmmaSohan (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen said:


> Someone made you read Lolita?   There’s a book that would upset me, but I was wondering how Nabokov wrote sex scenes.   That sounds interesting!  So I should maybe look into Clark Martin’s stuff?  What would you suggest?



Martin Clark. I think I would have difficulty arguing my point for Lolita, but it's easy to make with Clark. This is a one paragraph sex scene. The first two pieces are just telling the events of a story. The third piece is a summary (they had sex) and the fourth piece is a description.

All ordinary story telling. But then the description of events _stops_. It becomes a collage of images. Not random images, but close.



> Instead, she was waiting when he turned the corner, and she stopped him at her Mercedes and opened the door, and they had sex in the backseat, jammed in and wrapped around each other, struggling to fit, her hose and panties and fancy shoes on the floorboard, a DJ's patter and commercials and songs on the radio, the smell of perfume and brown liquor and quarter horse curling and roiling with the heat until they finished, her foot bottoms damp against the window glass, condensation everywhere. (The Jezebel Remedy)



Foot bottoms damp against the window glass. What an image! I mean, it's so meaningful and tells us so much.

I was interested in Clark's use of grammar, which you can read about by clicking on sex in my current signature. His books are good; the style is like that for the whole book, making it a grammar lesson in what that can accomplish. I would actually rate that as the default for a sex scene, though a modern author would use a few periods for organization.


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

@babesjj.  (Can anyone tell me if there is a way to tag people in WF?).  I loved your stories.  I’m so very very immersed in MBTI that the explanations on it are not helpful anymore.  I did not know that the Myers-Briggs family might be sick of the business of the numbered and paid for tests.   I find the history of the MBTI test very relevant to whether Jung’s ideas get further testing.

I mentioned Dario Nardi.  He found neuroscience testing to be significantly and strongly correlated with MBTI type, but in general many main-stream psychologists have rejected MBTI due to the way the tests were set up.  Big 5, a newer test that is not MBTI based and more shallow in my opinion is now having a lot of recognition due to open testing and this makes it testable by all psychologists.  So that structure of how it was all set up has made a huge impact in limiting the wide acceptability of Jung’s ideas.   Main-stream psychology (which was/is Freud based) really only incorporated the idea of extrovert and introvert.    But I think Jung’s cognitive functions are fairly easily observable if you know what to watch for.   

There was a ton of research done through the 50’s to 90’s and now there’s a disconnect between older practitioners and the he YouTube generation who are kind of rebuilding the wheel without the older research.  I see Dario Nardi’s work as the only current bridge and I really wish more neuroscientists would get into it because as your fellow Ne-dom I see HUGE potential for applications, especially in the field of teaching ans learning.      Okay... this really should have gone into another thread, right?   I could write a textbook or two or three.


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## luckyscars (Feb 11, 2021)

Key point is purpose. The number one reason most sex scenes fail, besides just being poorly written, is lacking a [meaningful] reason to exist.

Oh sure, you get this vague crap about 'its to show character' but that's NOT a reason. There's a million ways to 'show character' and sex is probably not even in the top 100 in terms of efficiency. 

I think the truth is most sex scenes are written for some fairly disingenuous reasons. The most obvious one is...fun? It's fun to play god with some sexy woman or man and live vicariously through them. Of course it is. But this isn't a MEANING. It's no different than having pointless violent scenes. All too often, it's simply about a mindless bit of fantasy. 

What is the reason for the sex? There has to be one, just as there has to be a reason for everything in a story. What is trying to be said? Where is the change to the character(s) -- their relationship with themselves/their bodies, each other/each other's bodies, society more broadly? You have to be able to answer this question. If you can't answer it, you are just writing erotica. There is nothing wrong with erotica, by the way, but there is everything wrong with erotica that pretends to be something it's not.


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

EmmaSohan said:


> Martin Clark. I think I would have difficulty arguing my point for Lolita, but it's easy to make with Clark. This is a one paragraph sex scene. The first two pieces are just telling the events of a story. The third piece is a summary (they had sex) and the fourth piece is a description.
> 
> All ordinary story telling. But then the description of events _stops_. It becomes a collage of images. Not random images, but close.
> 
> ...




Love it!  Thank you for sharing!  Yes, I will click!


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

luckyscars said:


> Key point is purpose. The number one reason most sex scenes fail, besides just being poorly written, is lacking a [meaningful] reason to exist.
> 
> Oh sure, you get this vague crap about 'its to show character' but that's NOT a reason. There's a million ways to 'show character' and sex is probably not even in the top 100 in terms of efficiency.
> 
> ...




I agree with what you’re saying here.  But also I want to add the fun experience of the reader and kind of a question of why there is romance in general in literature. 

Sex can be as important as a birth or a death.  Sex/erotic love is one of those possibly major life events (and of course it used to be more synonymous with marriage and possible births).  Romance in a book often will take center stage because sex/love is so important as a motivation in life.  Intimacy and sexual intimacy are part of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.  People learn a lot about themselves and about others through sex.   I’m agreeing and yet not agreeing on characterization.  Sexuality can be a part of characterization. 

In_ On Chesil Beach _by Ian McEwan.    The MCs are engaged to be married and are in love Both are virgins.  He walks around imagining all the sex they will be having soon and she hardly even likes to kiss and has no experience with knowing that she might want sex. She dreams he will gently ease her into things or maybe love her enough to not care much about sex.   Their wedding night is a disaster and neither one of them marry again, both think of each other the rest of their lives with anger and resentment for the most part.  Both feeling so unloved and misunderstood.  There is so much unrealized or wasted potential. 

Sex does show some things about character, but much more it is a plot point.    And whole series of books and shows have made their popularity by building the tensions and questions of whether two people are actually going to get together or not.  A quick example _Lois and Clark._ We watched so many seasons wondering if superman was gonna make it happen.  Lol.  The series stopped being interesting after they actually got together.  Lol. 

The truth is that when you’re watching people fall in love on screen or in books you are also experiencing with them all their needs and frustration and desire.  And this is actually what the continuation of our species is based on.   So sex is important.  It can also be the whole reason for everything else.   It is definitely the key motivation for almost any unpaired sexually healthy person.   What Romeo wouldn’t scale the wall to his Juliet?   And when characters and humans are not really active in this way it can be funny, frustrating, dull, etc.   And when people are happily together and intimate in every way, then the stars have aligned and it produces “Oohs and Ahhs” and it makes us think maybe life is worth living after all.    See that 80 year old couple holding hands?  It was all worth it.  The human race deserves (maybe a little bit) to continue if I was arguing with aliens about it (maybe).    I’m getting into some of my own thoughts there, but whatever.   Sex is important!   It also can make or break a relationship.   I guess it can make or break some books as well.

I know so many stories in my personal life about people I know well who have made major decisions based on sex, the quality of sex, the quantity of sex, or being treated or treating a person a certain way during sex.  It can be and is a life-changing motivation for many people.  Whether you go into details or hint “And they lived happily ever after.”  Would be a completely different post from me.  And whether it’s needed at all or not is your point— my point is that sometimes it is needed and when it is in the work it is often all-important.


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## EternalGreen (Feb 11, 2021)

I wonder: Is something a cliche if it really happened to the writer? I'm working on a scene where, while kissing another character, she accidentally touches her ribs and essentially causes her to be tickled, which becomes kind of awkward. This had legitimately happened to me before.

I thought Nabokov's sex scene in the pale fire novel was . . . not the best. How often do you actually make direct eye-contact with your lover and _bite your lip_? (without laughing, I mean.)

I think he tried to idealize the sex act too much. (Think of how he thirsted for the Nobel Prize in Literature.)

I want to feel like the characters are real people, not paintings that came alive.


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

EternalGreen said:


> I wonder: Is something a cliche if it really happened to the writer? I'm working on a scene where, while kissing another character, she accidentally touches her ribs and essentially causes her to be tickled, which becomes kind of awkward. This had legitimately happened to me before.
> 
> I thought Nabokov's sex scene in the pale fire novel was . . . not the best. How often do you actually make direct eye-contact with your lover and _bite your lip_? (without laughing, I mean.)
> 
> ...



Fun!  Lol.   Cliche is something used over and over isn’t it?  So definitely not cliche and new and fun to read, I’d think.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen, Thank you for letting me know that you found the Carl Jung and Meyers Briggs connection interesting. I can't remember the extent of their letters to each other but I thought it was great how generous he was in his response to her.

So here is my thinking right now. My two characters Henry is a 20 year old man who just got a major inheritance and he is surprisingly unhappy for the reason it is changing his life and he doesn't like change. In fact he survives by routines to keep himself together after his fathers death at 10 years old. He meets a woman in her 40's at his Uncle Iggy's funeral. She is a funeral crasher since finding out she has advanced cancer. She likes the excuse to dress up.  Also May is totally not coping and going to funerals seem about the makes her feel better. Both people are faced with life changing events and are not facing their issues. Right now they are funeral crashing together. And they have a good communication. Henry lets say is an ENTP and May I don't know what to name her is a repressed petite librarian assistant like and INFP. I don't really want to make her J because I want Henry and May to have an easy communication. So I am now on the 3rd chapter. I suppose that I should start telling my reader that they will have a sexual relationship. Henry is friends with his ex-girlfriend a slightly older woman who is a bartender and has a drinking problem. I considered having them have a sex scene but didn't do that. It is a possibility. As Henry gives her 5K to follow her dream and move to California. The scene I imagine is Henry also inherits his Uncle Iggys cabin and he goes up to look at the place and when both are totally out of society they sleep together. I just made myself laugh like do I cut to a scene where a fountain gushes. Just kidding. See I was thinking of having them make and apple tarte together and have them do that in an intimate manner more than a sex scene. Would that be enough suggestion so I don't have to go through the pain of a real sex scene. Anyway I am not there yet and I like to plan things out in my head. The essence of their relationship is not dealing with reality somehow. When I get that far I will try writing a sex scene. I am like a 56 year old virgin of writing sex scenes. Lord have mercy.


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## Llyralen (Feb 11, 2021)

BabesJJ.  You never have to write a sex scene if you don’t want to.  You just write that they are satisfied after.  Or unsatisfied.  Just indicate how it went, I’d think. 


For an ENTP it’s very unlikely to be stuck in routine.  It’s what we hate the most as Ne doms is routine.  There can be short stints of routine that we will handle out of necessity (kicking and screaming) and short stints when we feel uninspired from depression or maybe rigid for a moment due to stress.   Even a depressed ENTP stuck in quarantine will be working to find constant things to do to learn new things.   So one stuck at home might make a camera out of a shoebox or might make a piano out of rubber bands and Popsicle sticks.  It’s the housework and the routine stuff that is going to be so awful for an Ne dom.  Maybe even more so for a depressed Ne dom.  But he would do interesting stuff on his own and amass a huge amount of info on any topic interesting to him during that time— every multiple subject under the sun.   Like we do... jack of all trades style. 

If you want to make him Si dom (ISTJ or ISFJ) then it’s the flip.  Routine is stabilizing and necessary for Si and it takes effort to change routines— or why would you?  Si learns expertise through repetition and feedback from others combined.  Being an expert on what they do in their jobs and at home and in their interests is the goal with Si and life is finite so there’s only so much time to become an expert or perfect a few things.   Receiving positive feedback from others (usually in the beginning stages) and being stable in jobs and relationships is usually the Si goal. 

The differences are like handedness as you’ve said and fundamentally reflects how the brain learns for different personality types.   Ne learns by rapidly scanning all areas of the brain for related other data, producing multiple questions to “test”.  Si learns by repetition and feedback and comparing details to other memories of details.  The more Ne learns different subjects the more connections we can make.  The more repetition for Si the more expert they become.  There’s a bit of overlap since those two functions are at either end of a pendulum. 

Anyway, write your story maybe and then type them?     I do kind of find it to be inspiring to type first, though.  Plus it should keep each character from all turning into ENFPs for me.  But I will just tell you... there are very few fictional characters who can be typed into just one type because they are fictional.   Real humans have handedness and keep their handedness.  Fictional characters are usually all over the place.  We have them doing all sorts of things like being in a routine but talking with Ne and stuff like that.  Instead, it’s much easier to type the author and the author’s ideas.   I kind of like the idea of using MBTI to make characters more real... but I wouldn't want anyone's story process to be thrown off either.  The author's ideas and type usually show up and are interesting enough. 


  Okay, here is a “back to the subject”.    My neighbor who is a writer says “There are only so many ways to write insert flap A into slot B”.  And I think he thinks it is really funny, but he is actually a passionate man towards his wife as far as I know.   I guess I wouldn’t.  But his wife writes sex scenes.  Interesting books for us to have in the shelf given to us from our neighbor!


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## MistWolf (Feb 11, 2021)

EmmaSohan said:


> Foot bottoms damp against the window glass. What an image! I mean, it's so meaningful and tells us so much.



It tells us he's making love to her navel!


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## BabesJJ (Feb 11, 2021)

Llyralen, Well maybe I should make them J's as Henry wanting no change and routines since his fathers death as a means to cope would make more sense. And May I was thinking of calling her Violet could also be a J. As I am a P who has had extremely J times in her life to succeed I understand both the right and left handedness of the situation.

For the characters it wasn't just about sex. I wasn't even sure the relationship would go this far. And this discussion makes me realize it would only make sense that they 
do become lovers although I find that world lovers so old fashioned. In the Kominsky Method they make jokes about the word Lovers.

In The Kominsky Method on Netflix it is produced by Chuck Lorre the same guy who does The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men. The writing is really excellent. It is an amazing show. I thought of it when you mentioned the A to B things. 

One of the characters Phoebe who is a drunk and comes home for her mothers funeral and acts just nuts at the funeral and wake is drunk and makes a rude speech and falls passes out on the coats. During her rambling incoherent chats with other funeral goers, most of her comments are inappropriate.

Phoebe mentions her ex husband is gay and she makes the remark what does it matter a hole is a hole. The man replies maybe you should have laid on your stomach more.
Anyway, that is what I mean it is not just about A to B writing. I love Phoebe in the story. It is wonderful writing.

Yes I agree to make my characters work they might need to be J's. I have barely gotten started and have not thought of characterizing them as MTBI is that how you write it,
In my first novel that was strangely made into an Indie movie years later they put in a bunch of sex scenes I hadn't written. 

I have never read Nabakov although I saw the movie with Rose Clooney I think it was her. I loved when they had a screaming lovers quarrel because he was jealous. Giving away their relationship to a neighbor. I read someplace that he wrote the novel based on a real life story of the abduction and rape of a 13 year old for 2 years. Really sad. 

Are you American? I am American. I lived in France for 10 years and I was surprised when we moved to Chicago they report rapes on the TV news. In Wisconsin they don;t. And often showed video of the attackers to try and catch them. I was like what in the world. The USA had changed a lot while I was gone that 10 year in France.

Now I skim through TMZ so I stay up on my tabloid trash. And I am an avid newspaper reader online. I don't want to be that culture shocked again. I love that Netflix
is very sex centered. At another time I will write about Howard Hughes and the development of the Hayes rules on public airwaves I dont know everything about it.

There are strict rules for showing sexuality on public airwaves. And Netflix is a private airwave or company so hence the reason for so much sex talk and actual scenes.
It is so different and interesting. It is in the wee hours of the morning one of us gets up to let our aged Corgi out.


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## Llyralen (Feb 12, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Llyralen, Well maybe I should make them J's as Henry wanting no change and routines since his fathers death as a means to cope would make more sense. And May I was thinking of calling her Violet could also be a J. As I am a P who has had extremely J times in her life to succeed I understand both the right and left handedness of the situation.
> 
> For the characters it wasn't just about sex. I wasn't even sure the relationship would go this far. And this discussion makes me realize it would only make sense that they
> do become lovers although I find that world lovers so old fashioned. In the Kominsky Method they make jokes about the word Lovers.
> ...



It's whatever you want, right?   A J and P works too.  Usually a lot of balance happens with a J and a P.   Just like an I and an E often find a good balance.  But I like watching and thinking about all of the combinations.   The positives and the hardships.  I do have some strong opinions on what would absolutely not work for me, though.   I am married to an INFP.   I am an American.  I also lived in Europe (Denmark) for a few years--- and isn't that such a learning experience?   I'm so glad I did that.  Culture shocks are fascinating.   I started the Kromsky Method.  It's not quite me so far, but we will see if it warms up for me.   

I love love love your Chicago Orchestra!   Muti is maybe the best conductor in the world right now... and what a doll!   I felt like I had such a personal experience in April 2019.  I was in Chicago at a work conference and I snuck away to a concert and little did I know that I was going to cry at how beautiful it was.  I was front and center, I am tall-ish and since it was a matinee I was probably the only one under 45 there.  Muti saw me trying to deal with all my tears and blew me a kiss.  I thought he can't mean me but then I realized where I was placed only 15 feet from him and how much I stood out and how much he locked eyes with me at each bow with smiles and kind eyes and the rest of that concert I felt like he was mostly looking at me during the applause.  I still think that sounds crazy, but when I think of where I was placed then there's nothing else that could have been.  I would give a lot for that experience again-- they even had one of the best harpists in the world playing that day and the harp is my very favorite.  I think it was one of those magic things.    I went home and asked my psychologist friend if something is wrong with me that I can't control my tears with beautiful music and she said she thought it was beautiful about myself and said that I should think so too.  I did not tell her about Muti, but I think he must have thought the tears were beautiful too.  Yeah... altogether kind of priceless.   Like jumping the wall into Jung's yard!  =)


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## Chris Smith (Feb 12, 2021)

I have the same issue with sex scenes. I think that the easiest way is to write about what you know best, and in a way that you would enjoy reading it. It's a mental block that you need to tackle head on. I found that reading sex scenes in similar types of books gave me an idea of how to convey the passion without being too graphic.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 12, 2021)

Llyralen and Chris Smith, I prefer to write about death. I love writing about death. Very natural to me. Sex scene I feel like I am dying inside. That is just me. I am writing a romance that is contemporary fiction right now. And I realized that I might actually need to include some of these elements. Two of the characters Iggy and Oz I plan to write future books about inglorious death detectives in a small town in Wisconsin. And fortunately for me they are both mostly retired old men and get little action. It just came up no pun intended in this book. And it is a natural part of life. Give me a death scene over a sex scene any day is my motto. I put my first paragraph of my novel below. 

Unspoken Mermaid

Chapter 1 Iced Iggy

"Iggy died ice fishing. It was an inglorious death. Often speaking of having seen a mermaid as a child. Some people later thought the accident happened while searching for her. When tripping on his tackle box and falling head-first in the ice hole. Being overweight and narrow shouldered he fit like a cork. It was over in minutes. A silent scream to the sturgeons who warily eyed him. Two fellow ice fishermen passing by saw him from afar, first impression was they thought he was kneeling. Iggy was butt up in the air. One of the men, it crossed his mind to take a joke photo for prosperity. Thought better of it at the last minute and stopped himself. Both men tugged at Iggy’s body which was stuck head and shoulders in the ice hole. Iggy's clothes had become partially frozen. Finally extricated with much exertion, when the emergency medical people finally tiptoed gingerly across the ice to get him, no further life saving measures were taken."

On the Kominsky Method Strangely I had an insight about Thinking verses Feeling interfacing with the world. Chuck Lorre is a big producer. He has a lot of influence on the writers he hires and content and look of his shows. From what I have noticed analyzing over the years with my thinking brain is that his shows are a thinking world almost devoid of feeling. So a feeling person who interfaces with feelings in the world The Kominsky Method would be a hard sell. For me it speaks to my soul. I love it when they spend mindless and endless shows about their prostates that is so self centered and male thinking. They even have a scene where their prostates make noises. What I am
trying to say it would make sense that The Kominskly Method would be hard to relate to for a feeling person. Bill Clinton is a feeling person and I am sure he would find
it wooden to him. And being a woman thinker I have had to build and develop my feelings because the expectations for women to be feeling are so high. Men don't bother.

Chuck Lorre from my opinion from the Big Bang theory and Two and a half men. Women are often damaged and if they are not damaged they are defective in other ways. The basic Chuck Lorre woman is never a normal pretty intelligent woman. She is often short and wears glasses sleeps around makes bad decisions or is a sociopathic or narcissistic mother. And in Two and a half men there is that over weight house keeper the narcissistic mother, various mean or cruel or incredibly damaged woman. I used to wait for one woman who was just a normal breezy person. never the Chuck Laure woman are basically what happens when a narcissist is in charge of writing women characters. They barely exist except as an extension of their self insides. Although it can be very entertaining and funny. I see in the Kominsky Method that they are trying for a better and more
real quality in women. Although the good girls are fat and ugly and blond and the sexy girls are dark and thin. Chuck Lorrie. 

So the Kominsky Method is very very thinking oriented. And I don't have to exercise my feeling skills as I have developed over the years. And that men don't need to bother
as society has no expectations for them to do this. For me when I am in the feeling world it is like when an Introvert goes to a party and it tires them out to reach out to people socially. I can be a total feeling person but it is tiring for me and takes effort. Anyway, I also really appreciate Frankie and Grace. All that 70 year old sex. It is almost a sex
farce with their company selling dildos giant purple ones no less. Love you Jane Fonda and Lillie Tomlin in Grace and Frankie. And my other favorite the Bridgetons is very feeling. I can tolerate it because its so photographically beautiful. 

I have not put much of my book up yet as I am still on my first draft. Will start putting more soon. I do like the MTBI discussion. It really is relevant,. how did you get into it,.
And Denmark what a lovely place to have lived. I am in the process of taking french citizenship kind of pushed into it because of circumstances it was not my choice or plan.
i will have duel citizenship. French people are only allowed to carry 2 citizenships. So I will not ever be able to carry Danish citizenship sniff as that sound like a neat citzenship to be. Anyway, Chuck Lorre views on sex are really interesting. Get to the part where after his wife dies and one night the ghost of his mother and grandmother and wife
visit him. It is very weird.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 12, 2021)

Lleralen, Hopefully my long winded thinking thing was not offputting for a feeling interfaced person. If I was a guy nobody would care. Anyway, Oh I had another thought. My best friend from first grade is a bartender. And she is really into the bar scene in our small town. So she thought that once I have a hard copy of my book in final form I should mail it to the local bars to be read by women bartenders. And this would create buzz. And I could even get a newspaper article from it. As their is nothing gossipier than women bartenders in a small town in Wisconsin. Then I had this thought. Imagining old grizzled Wisconsin men drunks reading a sex scene in my book. I could care less about it not being well written or lagging plot or whatever but the thought of someone I might know reading a sex scene seems excruciating to me. Anyway that thought of old grizzled Wisconsin drunk men reading a sex scene written by me funny. And in my subsequent detective series that is my audience. Old grizzled drunk men. No I am kidding gossipy women. BabesJJ


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## bdcharles (Feb 12, 2021)

I think there's a degree of discomfort around this subject, because in my view, to do it well requires us to be vulnerable, revealing something inner about ourselves. I think many people are unwilling to go there even in the privacy of their own thoughts, much less making it all public. But I wonder if that's the place one needs to access, to make it work. 

Perhaps this is why a lot of erotic writers seem to adopt _noms de plume_? Maybe that's the answer.


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## River Rose (Feb 12, 2021)

bdcharles said:


> I think there's a degree of discomfort around this subject, because in my view, to do it well requires us to be vulnerable, revealing something inner about ourselves. I think many people are unwilling to go there even in the privacy of their own thoughts, much less making it all public. But I wonder if that's the place one needs to access, to make it work.
> 
> Perhaps this is why a lot of erotic writers seem to adopt _noms de plume_? Maybe that's the answer.



Yes. I think u are correct. Sexuality is seen as taboo a lot of the time. True sexuality. The fantasy’s we keep hidden away we are to ashamed to tell others as they may think it’s strange or weird. Or,,omg,,now I am a sexual pervert. We all have them. It’s a natural part of human sexuality. We don’t want to been seen as odd for our kinks and what our desires are. Erotica writers use their fantasy’s to their advantage by taking the reader on a journey into a sexual playground most are to afraid to actually go and play at.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 12, 2021)

bdcharles, River Rose, I am not very interested in looking at my reasons I am uncomfortable with writing sex scenes per se. I just realized I am going to write one for this Romance Novel. And it causes me to think of my audience for the first time. Am I writing this for gossipy women bartenders in a small town in Wisconsin or am I writing to 
please grizzled old men drunks. It is helping me think about who my audience is overall which is extremely intriguing. Who will be reading these sex scenes? This is a
very interesting question to me. And this entire discussion has been extremely helpful in me realizing I will write a minor sex scene in the middle of my fiction novel.
Hopefully given little notice and for me to move the plot.

Llyralen, I like live music and dance. When I was in Art School a badillion years ago you are given free passes to see all the student productions. I went to theater and dance and music all the time during my last 2 years of Art school. The first 2 I worked in a restaurant evenings and didn't have time or know about it. And really enjoyed Opera for students
in Santa Fe. I have seen many Operas there. One of my favorite was Salame. I don't have much music knowledge. I think I saw the Chicago orchestra for a 4th of july concert.
Is Muti English. He had a lot of charm if is the same conductor. I was a big painting viewer at museums for a long time. I love live performance. I feel dancers are the biggest risk takers of all Artists and the most aware socially of many things. Dancers are often 10 years ahead in their dances of most of society.


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## bdcharles (Feb 12, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> bdcharles, River Rose, I am not very interested in looking at my reasons I am uncomfortable with writing sex scenes per se. I just realized I am going to write one for this Romance Novel. And it causes me to think of my audience for the first time. Am I writing this for gossipy women bartenders in a small town in Wisconsin or am I writing to
> please grizzled old men drunks. It is helping me think about who my audience is overall which is extremely intriguing. Who will be reading these sex scenes? This is a
> very interesting question to me. And this entire discussion has been extremely helpful in me realizing I will write a minor sex scene in the middle of my fiction novel.
> Hopefully given little notice and for me to move the plot.



I suspect the old drunks will probably not be the natural audience for a romance novel, whereas the bartenders might?


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## BabesJJ (Feb 12, 2021)

bdcharlies, very funny bdcharles very funny. Yes I agree my audience will likely be women readers. My vivid imagination sees old grizzled Wisconsin drunks reading the sex scene out loud and mocking me. And this conversation has been great for me because it made me think of my audience. And I actually read my first 2 chapters total 10 thousand words. and have come to the conclusion it is not totally bad. As I usually think when I write. And now is the time for my 2 funeral crashers to go on a date. I planned 16 chapters of about 5K words each with trying to achieve my four main scenes in each chapter. This next chapter is a confrontation with an angry heir who is throwing trash on his front lawn out of anger and a date with May which I let the reader know there is a relationship in the works. Driving his ex girlfriend to the airport. Continue to empty Iggy's house out. 

I will try not to imagine grizzled old bar drunks in Wisconsin reading my sex scene out loud and mocking me.

Lyeralen, I actually googled Muti and the guy I saw at an outdoor 4th of July concert was not him. He seems very larger than life. I am going to email my old neighbor Mike who
I mentally hid his body and took his identity as a desperate woman wanting to take his identity for his social security and retirement in a past book I outlined but felt it was too dark. I will email my old neighbor and ask him who conducted. 

Oh you mentioned you are writing a book with prostitutes. The Handmaidens Tail by Margaret Atwood is very popular now. I remember reading it in the early 1990's I think.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 13, 2021)

I had the thought to google what do mermaids eat for lunch? And I googled and  the answer was seaweed and shrimp. Although my mermaid is a freshwater mermaid. And that got me thinking of other things about mermaids and I wondered how they have sex. And strangely some believe it is through the belly button. And they poop out of their belly button also. Otherwise they would have long stringy poop like a fish. In my book the unspoken mermaid I am trying to use this as a symbol. I am working that out in the story. She is a fresh water ice mermaid. Unspoken Mermaid is about the things that deeply drive us that are unspoken like sex I suppose.

Mistwolf so your comment about having sex through the navel was very fortuitous comment.

JBF were you the one that mentioned that Walter Tevis in his book the Queens Gambit had little emotion or sexuality. I woke up understand the meaning of that book better. I recently read a Washington Post article on Walter Tevis. His greatest success was supposedly working 10 years as a creative writing teacher in Ohio. Although these were the
very worst years of his alcoholism and he didn't write a single thing. And his son said in an interview he could never write when he was drunk, He wrote during spates of sobriety and ultimately did go to AA and died rather early of lung cancer at 56 in 1984.

I understood the Queens Gambit better today. I read a little of Walter Tevis childhood history. There is no book on him. He was born in California in 1929 and when he was 10 years old he got rheumatic fever and the treatment at the time was bedrest and tranquilizers and he was given phenobarbital in large doses for a year in a hospital. During
this time his parents moved to Kentucky from California as they got some sort of large piece of land. And after a year Walter was put on a train by himself to California. The 
abandonment and being totally alone in the world is carried out in the story of the Queens Gambit. Especially the barbituate sp addiction as a child. 

Llyralen I also had some more thoughts about music today. I think the Mermaid is going to have the special power of being able to pick up radio stations and she likes to do
this in the morning like a tuning fork.


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## MistWolf (Feb 13, 2021)

Ha! My comment about making love to her navel... well, just think about what options it leaves him if her feet are up against the window. I mean, has the guy who wrote that ever had sex in the back seat of a car? This is clearly where writing... what... you..... know.......

... ahem...

About _Queen's Gambit_- there was a scene of prepubescent "I'll let you touch mine if you let me touch yours" between the main character and another girl in the orphanage, but it wasn't innocent exploration and felt contrived. 

I started asking myself "why am I wasting time with this book?" Usually, I give a book a good chance before abandoning it. Not this time.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 13, 2021)

MistWolf, I have no plans for Iggy to have sex with the Mermaid. I was thinking of names for her and Chloe or Violette came to mind. Although it is possible I won't name her at all her mention her again except in descriptions by Iggy of her sighting as a child. Although,. I am considering incorporating the Mermaid as a running theme and totally unsure how to do it a a guardian of this frozen northern town. I did read some fun things about Mermaids. That they live 300 years and when they die they turn to sea foam that is why their bodies are not found. And that they always have a youthful appearance no matter their age. I am not writing magical realism. Although I read the most fantastic book of short stories called The Girl With the Flammable Skirt. And there is a wonderful short story of a librarian who silently gazes at all the men in the library and takes them to the back room and sleeps with them one by one. The last man she sleeps with sounds like Conan the barbarian and described her hips like a toy. Many silently wanted to marry her. As Conan is carrying her above his head for everyone in the library to see. Above the door frieze there are some paintings of angles and she crosses the mouth out of one and ends with daddy, It is a great book and the most interesting stories are based on sex. I hadn't thought about it much until now. Another story she is a wealthy girl with great dresses and a giant fast TV and she meets this guy that their relationship is he takes all her clothes off and doesn't let her move or talk to him and makes her sit there while he watches TV. I am certain both these short stories are full of deep symbolism that I am not exploring at this moment. Anyway it is a wonderful book. As for Walter Tevis not having many sexual or feeling comment in his writing. No wonder men love him so much. What I like about the Queens Gambit story is the abandonment and loneliness of the main character. I can see I will get a lot of sex scenes from this writer. I am still very interested in reading that book The Queens Gambit.

In general to no one in response. I have been thinking of one of my favorite writers John Irving. And how in the first book I read of his The World According to Garp and sometimes when my family is bored and we are going to sleep and we live in this giant old farmhouse with 6 bedrooms and very cold at night. We spend a lot of time in
the warmest room which is the kitchen with a large 6 person table. And sometimes we tell each other stories. JC my husband tends towards sad childhood stories, I like to tell
novels I read. Our kid I refer to as H----- likes to recall plots to cartoons he has watched all his life. I like to tell novels I have read. and I told them the story of the World According to Garp. And the entire story is about sexuality in many ways. The main character a nurse is a "sexual suspect" because she isn't married and becomes a nurse. And she sleeps with a brain injured man to get pregnant with Garp. She is from a wealthy family and inherits a mansion where all people who have sexuality issues can find refuge. One refugee is a 6 foot 6 inch former foot ball player who becomes trans gender played by John Lithgow. Jenny writes one book and it become very controversial on its modern ideas about sexuality and she is eventually assassinated with the giant linebacker trans gender guy grabbing her bullet ridden body and doing a football rush with her through the crowed. Meanwhile Garp marries and starts sleeping with babysitters and his wife in retaliation sleeps with one of her university students and the entire situations comes to a head. no pun intended when Garp playing a game with his 2 children of driving into the garage with the headlights off for excitement unknowing that his wife is in a car in the garage with the student and when they hit the back of the car at full speed parked in the garage she is in the middle of a blow job and she bites his penis off. And their little son Walter dies and the older child loses his eye. Anyway Garp is finally also assassinated by writing a controversial book on sexuality. Denouncing this group of fanatics. 

So me and my question what do mermaids have for lunch and how do they have sex, seem so tame after all the excitement of "The World According to Garp"


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## Taylor (Feb 13, 2021)

MistWolf said:


> About _Queen's Gambit_- there was a scene of prepubescent "I'll let you touch mine if you let me touch yours" between the main character and another girl in the orphanage, but it wasn't innocent exploration and felt contrived.
> 
> I started asking myself "why am I wasting time with this book?" Usually, I give a book a good chance before abandoning it. Not this time.





BabesJJ said:


> As for Walter Tevis not having many sexual or feeling comment in his writing. No wonder men love him so much. What I like about the Queens Gambit story is the abandonment and loneliness of the main character. I can see I will get a lot of sex scenes from this writer. I am still very interested in reading that book The Queens Gambit.



Started Queens Gambit last night.  I agree with MistWolf, that scene is awkward and out of place.  I think an innocent exploration would have been more in keeping with the characters.  She does become quite close to this one girl.  I wonder if he tried to convert something he personally experienced as young boy when he was placed in a convalescent home to a female version.  But either way, it doesn't work.  But I'm going to press on because the writing is not bad. I am curious to see how a man writes a female POV for sex scenes. I also give the author credit for an unique setting with the chess tournaments.   And I will post something in 'write what you know' as well, because the story makes me think of that.  Do you know if Tevis was a chess player?

I just noticed that my spelling mistakes were highlighted in this post.  Is that new for WF?


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## BabesJJ (Feb 13, 2021)

Taylor said:


> Started Queens Gambit last night.  I agree with MistWolf, that scene is awkward and out of place.  I think an innocent exploration would have been more in keeping with the characters.  She does become quite close to this one girl.  I wonder if he tried to convert something he personally experienced as young boy when he was placed in a convalescent home to a female version.  But either way, it doesn't work.  But I'm going to press on because the writing is not bad. I am curious to see how a man writes a female POV for sex scenes. I also give the author credit for an unique setting with the chess tournaments.   And I will post something in 'write what you know' as well, because the story makes me think of that.  Do you know if Tevis was a chess player?
> 
> I just noticed that my spelling mistakes were highlighted in this post.  Is that new for WF?




Taylor, After reading the Washington Post article I became interested in Walter Tevis and read what I could online about his life. Another article mentioned after being in a hospital for a year and his family left California and being put on a train to Kentucky by himself at 10 years old. My guess there is a chance that he was abused as a child. Sadly. In answer to your question about did he play chess. He was both an avid pool player and an avid chess player. When he got to Kentucky he became very interested in playing pool. And I think his first book about pool was made into a movie with Paul Newman. So yes he was an avid chess player. I did read that when they made the Netflix series they contacted a chess expert who was Walter Tevis's friend and read it and made all sorts of chess changes all through out the novel. That Tevis didn't include any of the changes this expert made but did use the title he suggested the Queens Gambit. I read with the first movie made from his first book he took his family to Mexico and stayed drunk every day for 8 months. And then came back to the USA and got a masters in creative writing. If I ever get motivated to buy the Queens Gambit I am also going to get his last book Mockingbird. 

This line of thinking or questioning how to include sexuality in the development of a character and feelings and thinking outlooks and communication styles has been tremendously helpful to me in my book. I am able just by this to make my characters more real. My first paragraph is my favorite character drowns ice fishing looking for a Mermaid. Oh Tevis was also a Science Fiction Writer. 

Toodles Poodles


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## JBF (Feb 13, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> JBF were you the one that mentioned that Walter Tevis in his book the Queens Gambit had little emotion or sexuality.



Wasn't me.  Might be you're thinking of an earlier thread about emotions and closed characters.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 13, 2021)

JBF  It was Mistwolf who mentioned her thoughts. I just forgot.

Taylor I googled the magic google and found the Walter Tevis Book that he made his first movie was The Hustler I copied the plot from wiki here it is. "Small-time pool hustler "Fast” Eddie Felson travels cross-country with his partner Charlie to challenge the legendary player "Minnesota Fats". Arriving at Fats' home pool hall, Eddie declares he will win $10,000 that night. Fats arrives and he and Eddie agree to play straight pool for $200 a game. After initially falling behind, Eddie surges back to being $1,000 ahead and suggests raising the bet to $1,000 a game; Fats agrees. He sends out a runner, Preacher, to Johnny's Bar, ostensibly for whiskey, but really to get professional gambler Bert Gordon to the hall. Eddie gets ahead $11,000 and Charlie tries to convince him to quit, but Eddie insists the game will end only when Fats says it is over. Fats agrees to continue after Bert labels Eddie a "loser". After 25 hours and an entire bottle of bourbon, Eddie is ahead over $18,000, but loses it all along with all but $200 of his original stake. At their hotel later, Eddie leaves half of the remaining stake with a sleeping Charlie and leaves.Eddie stashes his belongings at the local bus terminal, where he meets Sarah Packard, an alcoholic who is supported by her father, attends college part-time, and walks with a limp. He meets her again at a bar. They go back to her place but she refuses to let him in, saying he is "too hungry". Eddie moves into a rooming house and starts hustling for small stakes. He finds Sarah again and this time she takes him in, but with reservations. Charlie finds Eddie at Sarah's and tries to persuade him to go back out on the road. Eddie refuses and Charlie realizes he plans to challenge Fats again. Eddie realizes that Charlie held out his percentage and becomes enraged, believing that with that money he could have rebounded to beat Fats. Eddie dismisses Charlie as a scared old man and tells him to "go lie down and die" by himself."

Me personally love that there is an alcoholic student with a limp. How awesome is that.

This era of books reminds me of The book "The Last Picture Show". I read that book and I remember that the young man less charismatic character had an affair with the wife of the local coach who was gay,. I do remember the sex scenes. And the descriptions of her reaction to their love affair and when it was over. And I loved the translation of the book to the movie. 
That era of writing was seemed more sexual and sparse. I will mention the Hayes rules for movies that likely impacted writing sex scenes in Hollywood for years to come just not in the mood right this second will soon. My favorite Howard Hughes film is Three is a Match with Betty Davis.


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## Llyralen (Feb 13, 2021)

Well... I will get this done piecemeal, I think.   

Ti dom sex-scenes:   INTP
I type D.H.Lawrence as INTP (the mix of abstract and sensory— his second and 3rd functions— Ne and Si) and with healthy inferior Fe.  Feelings are a mystery, experienced almost unconsciously without much control of them.  High feelers have great regulation of constant intense consciously experienced feelings.  The tension in the book comes from top function to last function like for most authors.  The author is exploring (Ne) why sex matters, what is its purpose and ultimately in what way is he attached to the woman and is it logical or something that can’t even be explained?   Ti to Fe.  

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.in...hatterley-s-lover-dh-lawrence-931187.html?amp

If we wanted to we could go more into his abstract (Ne exploration of concepts) and sensory (repetitive and personally meaningful/historical Si).   Mullets compares his sexual intercourse with Connie to past sexual encounters.  He remembers how he is going to interpret his sexual pleasure based on the past.  Items that he mentions are mentioned in personal ways like his old army blanket.  Frequent mentions of his past and even the familiarity of the hut and working with the chicks and mentions of past entourage tera worth women.  This is Si where items are not just impersonal items, but have history.   I don’t know how much I need to describe Jung’s functions.  

Note for anyone new to MBTI/Jung I suggest tossing the descriptions of each type which is way too subjective for anyone to ever be able to really write and instead studying Jung’s descriptions plus if you’re interested in how this all shows up in the brain, the work of Dario Nardi.


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## Llyralen (Feb 13, 2021)

Ti dom sex scenes, ISTP 
Hemingway is mostly showing his Se and Ni in this scene, some inferior Fe underneath the same way D.H. Lawrence has.  I haven’t read too much Hemingway so I can’t comment on what is probably the same tension between independent logical decision-making (Ti) and the meaning of relationships (Fe) but if you’re a Hemingway fan, tell me if you see this.  The relationships can also be with family members or groups of people.  Hmm... I believe Kafka was an INTP and I think his tension is usually between himself and a group/family system or his family and specifically his sister in Metamorphosis— where the other people’s feelings are kind of nebulously important and significant— how?  That’s all the tension between TI-Fe.  I guess you can see that TI-Se pendulum in this scene where he is experiencing and exploring all this and then “Oh yeah.. I better check in with her” at the end. 

But this particular sex scene mostly shows Se and Ni together.  It starts out fairly abstract.  Hemingway worked hard on his tertiary Ni— I see this often in a near-genius ISTP who I know.  He really respects the Ni and often I hear from ISTPs that they feel that anything intuitive to come out of someone means they must have thought about it a lot and had much experience which is where Ni would come in for an ISTP.  (However this is just an assumption— for instance my brain starts with the abstract and works to break it down to sensory).  Anyway, Hemingway starts writing this scene with Ti and Ni together and then in the middle of “the act” his Se completely takes control. 

Ni is abstract and future oriented.  Se springs into action like a race-car driver or Michael Jordan making the most of every millisecond of every sense and what their body can do in it— exploring and mastering and being completely concretely present.  Se is about experiencing the now and completely owning the action and sensory experience of the now. There is a marked difference between Se and Si in both actions and in the relationship of objects to the person.  Objects are usually just objects to Se— they are usually not considered very personal and there is usually no significant meaning.  A cigarette case is used to hold cigarettes to Se.  An object to Si usually is viewed as personal— my father gave me this cigarette case before he died, or “this is my favorite, it has an emblem of... objects are viewed with history with Si.   Se is also very good with describing all 5 senses as they are masters of the exploration of senses in the now.  Check it out: 
https://www.google.com/amp/s/docdavesvoice.com/2015/05/27/maybe-the-best-sex-scene-ever-written/amp/


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## BabesJJ (Feb 13, 2021)

Llyralen, MTBI and Jung are very useful for a framework. I haven't been thinking about it while writing the first 2 chapters and am taking it into consideration now. I appreciate your insights. One thing I slightly disagree with are feelings are unmeasurable. They are measurable and can be studied scientifically. In fact feelings are studied a lot for advertising and used to manipulate us in politics. If I remember correctly the only sense that is not able to be measured scientifically is intuition or "N" on the Myers-Briggs. They have absolutely no idea how we arrive at intuition. I am not psychic per se but I have had strong intuition that have been accurate. I would be interested in how people experience feelings as I often have to dig down within myself to access them. When I wake up and am in a slightly altered state I can experience them. In some strange ways I am like a a gay man's brain in a woman's body. Except maybe a better explanation would be a a straight gay man's brain in a woman's body being thinking or "T" primary and "F" or feeling secondary.  I wonder more about feeling as it is more mysterious to me. I am attracted to comedians and the idea of standing before a brick wall in front of all your friends sweating and  bombing out. I think that is humiliation. Somehow I crave it like a comedian. Although Roseanne Barr is a very feeling comedian although likely a personality disorder, a borderline. Although feeling primary. 

On the music front I emailed a little with my old downstairs neighbor from Chicago and he still lives in the same place and he gave me the name of the conductor we saw it wasn't Mutti. I can't remember it now and am not motivated to re-check the name on my email. I am up because one of us gets up during the night to let our aging Corgi outside and it is me tonight. It is about 330AM here in France and I am keyboarding away waiting for him to meander back inside the house. 

Your commentary reminds me of when I for fun would do lengthy insurance psychiatric evaluation reports on characters from fiction for fun. I remember a blog I did doing a full psychiatric evaluation on Jane Eyre. It is intelligent to take ones knowledge to the next level and do creative things with that knowledge like you are doing with the MTBI and characters. 

On the writing and sexuality front. My 2 characters May a 45 year old funeral crasher who is dying of end stage pancreatic cancer and Henry a 20 year old who just inherited a substantial amount of money are both avoiding their fates at the moment and trying to escape with each other. I am trying to get the characters outside so they can kiss. I think they are going to go to the most expensive place in town and feel extremely uncomfortable, then go to a dive bar and karaoke Dont Go Breaking My Heart by Elton John and KeeKee Dee. and vandalize his great aunts car by writing Baroness (instead of Bitch) in lipstick on her expensive SUV window with May's lipstick and they kiss somehwere
during the vandalism. Oops Corgi back inside. Back to sleep.

Do you have any information about the study of feeling?


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## BabesJJ (Feb 14, 2021)

LLyralen, What you wrote above made me think that is the type of thread you would like to start. If you did start a MTBI thread I would copiously comment in wildly positive ways if you started such a thread. Oh and randomly hope all is well.

Somebody whom I have forgotten who didn't like Queen's Gambit that much. My dear husband just found the Queens Gambit online in book form that I can read on my computer for FREE. Somebody was not impressed with it. Maybe because I psyched myself up so much I was ready to fall in love with it. I have read a few paragraphs and I love it. I am already taken. It is 14 chapters. Wolf Mist or maybe Taylor. Anyway I am very interested.


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## Taylor (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> LLyralen, What you wrote above made me think that is the type of thread you would like to start. If you did start a MTBI thread I would copiously comment in wildly positive ways if you started such a thread. Oh and randomly hope all is well.
> 
> Somebody whom I have forgotten who didn't like Queen's Gambit that much. My dear husband just found the Queens Gambit online in book form that I can read on my computer for FREE. Somebody was not impressed with it. Maybe because I psyched myself up so much I was ready to fall in love with it. I have read a few paragraphs and I love it. I am already taken. It is 14 chapters. Wolf Mist or maybe Taylor. Anyway I am very interested.



I'm on chapter five.  I like it, and I feel like now that she is starting the tournaments it will get more interesting.  I'm never a big fan of reading about the under dog, and I was grateful that her experience at the orphanage was relatively normal.  No big traumas.  Stay tuned....


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## BabesJJ (Feb 14, 2021)

Taylor, Good news. I am truly smitten with "The Queens Gambit". I am nearing a kiss scene. I will post some variations when I get to that point.


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## Llyralen (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Llyralen, MTBI and Jung are very useful for a framework. I haven't been thinking about it while writing the first 2 chapters and am taking it into consideration now. I appreciate your insights. One thing I slightly disagree with are feelings are unmeasurable. They are measurable and can be studied scientifically. In fact feelings are studied a lot for advertising and used to manipulate us in politics. If I remember correctly the only sense that is not able to be measured scientifically is intuition or "N" on the Myers-Briggs. They have absolutely no idea how we arrive at intuition. I am not psychic per se but I have had strong intuition that have been accurate. I would be interested in how people experience feelings as I often have to dig down within myself to access them. When I wake up and am in a slightly altered state I can experience them. In some strange ways I am like a a gay man's brain in a woman's body. Except maybe a better explanation would be a a straight gay man's brain in a woman's body being thinking or "T" primary and "F" or feeling secondary.  I wonder more about feeling as it is more mysterious to me. I am attracted to comedians and the idea of standing before a brick wall in front of all your friends sweating and  bombing out. I think that is humiliation. Somehow I crave it like a comedian. Although Roseanne Barr is a very feeling comedian although likely a personality disorder, a borderline. Although feeling primary.
> 
> On the music front I emailed a little with my old downstairs neighbor from Chicago and he still lives in the same place and he gave me the name of the conductor we saw it wasn't Mutti. I can't remember it now and am not motivated to re-check the name on my email. I am up because one of us gets up during the night to let our aging Corgi outside and it is me tonight. It is about 330AM here in France and I am keyboarding away waiting for him to meander back inside the house.
> 
> ...




BabesJJ
You might need to re-read what I wrote after I make this more clear.  For someone with TI-dom then their inferior (last) function is Fe (extroverted feeling) and so INTPs and ISTPs experience feelings as almost unconscious.  I don’t remember if I said if they experience feelings as unmeasurable— I guess I did— but it is other people’s feelings that seem unmeasurable to them.  Actually, I stand by what I said if I put it that way— it is very difficult for a Ti dom to measure their own feelings or those of others.  It is kind of just a nebulous mass that they accept as existing but don’t know what to do with.  I think if I checked with INTPs they would agree.  I think both my INTP sister and INTP daughter would agree with that.  I would think that would be somewhat true for you as well, although you would get better at making heads and tails out of other people’s feelings with time.  

Fe is your third function and sometime in your 20’s other people’s feelings would be more obvious and why those people feel them more obvious, reading a group or understanding group feelings (especially those close to you) and morals becomes now something to consider more for you and at least be more aware of.  I am talking about ENTP growth through your 20s-30’s. 

Jane Eyre is written from a ENFP or INFP perspective. ENFPs and INFPs have strong Fi- introverted feeling.  I personally strongly argue for Charlotte being Ne dom on grounds that she is Si inferior.  Jane Eyre the character is INFP, though.  So this means very conscious and very measurable and accurate detailed knowledge with a lot of control and regulation of personal feelings that originate from the person themselves in reaction to thoughts and circumstances.  For strong Fi users they know their own feelings very well and high Fi users experience empathy by putting themselves into other people’s shoes and basically experiencing what the Fi user would feel in that situation and then double-checking with what the other person is telling the NFP they feel.  So for NFPs stories and information on circumstance (even if it’s only a little) is very important for empathy and for figuring out what the NFP thinks should be a morally right action in a situation. NFPs could discuss hypotheticals in this way for hours.    Fi is constantly trying to figure out “What is the right thing to do” in any given circumstance and Ti in an ENTP does the same thing except it’s “What would I logically do in that situation”.  All NPs really enjoy hypotheticals. 

When we (all humans) first wake up we are closer to our subconscious.  Your Fi— your own feelings— are pretty hard to access for an ENTP,  Fi is not one of your top functions.  It doesn’t mean it’s not there though, it would be more in the subconscious most of the time.  One day a bunch of ENTPs were talking about for their own feelings they only knew if they experienced anger or lust most of the time.  For me I am constantly experiencing my feelings consciously, I almost always know where they come from and I can predict how most any given circumstance would make me feel and I know what makes me happy.  So of course this is a valid way to make decisions based on all this feeling knowledge.  I’m not going to choose to do things that make me unhappy unless I feel it is the right thing to do under certain circumstances.  Expressing Fi is tougher and a matter of trust and is also why there are many NFP writers.  The morning is also a time for Ni predictions to come to me.  The two types of iNtuition are pretty different— as different as Fi and Fe, by the way.  We communicate well, usually between Ni and Ne users but it is experienced very differently and our brains are doing very different actions.  Ni boils down sensory information into concentrated abstract ideas, Ne expands, building concepts from everything we already know connected to what we are learning. 

Here is some information for you on Fi and Fe—  it’s the first post of each thread with the long quotes written by experts that should be read. 
https://www.personalitycafe.com/threads/extraverted-feeling.5996/

https://www.personalitycafe.com/threads/introverted-feeling.3065/


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## BabesJJ (Feb 14, 2021)

Lyeralen, all very interesting. Being and ENTP female was always a pain socially in my youth. I did make friends with another ENTP woman who was a college professor and she was very helpful to me. For Jane Eyre I didn't do Meyers-Briggs I did an insurance psychiatric evaluation. I used to do them for insurance purposes for years and I did her for fun. That was a long time ago. I appreciate the description of her MTBI though. I loved that book. I liked the images. A lot of plot to get through but always loved the pictures it brought up in my head. 

I wonder if I start posting sex scenes on this thread if they would move it someplace else? I dunno. Meanwhile I am reading "The Queens Gambit" and writing my 3rd chapter.


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## Llyralen (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Lyeralen, all very interesting. Being and ENTP female was always a pain socially in my youth. I did make friends with another ENTP woman who was a college professor and she was very helpful to me. For Jane Eyre I didn't do Meyers-Briggs I did an insurance psychiatric evaluation. I used to do them for insurance purposes for years and I did her for fun. That was a long time ago. I appreciate the description of her MTBI though. I loved that book. I liked the images. A lot of plot to get through but always loved the pictures it brought up in my head.
> 
> I wonder if I start posting sex scenes on this thread if they would move it someplace else? I dunno. Meanwhile I am reading "The Queens Gambit" and writing my 3rd chapter.



I gave up on making this thread only about the title question!  lol  But MBTI relates to all of it. 

After we talked the other day I wanted to see the statistics of NT women.  ENTP women are around 1% of the population, INTP women < 1%, INTJ and ENTJ women are each around 0.8-0.5% of the population.   I realized that I have a unique outlook because my best friends growing up are an ENTP and an INTJ.  My sister is an INTP and now my daughter and so...  I do not experience a lack of NT women around me and although my type (ENFP) is not scarce, I have been in the minority in my circle.   NT women and I seem to find each other and I find I feel very at home with ENTPs, INTP and INTJ women and something about it all also allows me to be me, or a big aspect of me.  You gals are a scarce and wonderful commodity.   =)

I wondered the same thng when I put those links to sex scenes up.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 14, 2021)

Lleralen, I think totally guessing my husband is an ISTP it is so hard to guess. He is Introverted and thinking that I know. Our son is an ENTP or J. Definitely extroverted and thinking. I can tell the extrovert or introvert thing and thinking or feeling very easily the other ones I don't try to much to think about. We are bunch of P's maybe it is hard to tell. Anyway, I worked in insurance for years and did these comprehensive insurance reports for a big hospital for years and that is how I got to do a hypothetical psychiatric evaluation for Jane Eyre. I also had this thing in childhood where I would hyper fixate on a book or project. So I would re-read various books again and again. I stopped doing that after my early twenties. I also would compulsively watch movies all through my teens and have gone through times were I would re-watch one movie again and again. I haven't done that in years. I have an ADHD or ADD quality that does that. So I am wildly random and tangential inter mixed with over focusing. I am middle aged now it is more of a problem in the learning process and not as much when in the working world. Anyway on the topic of MBTI and general evaluation. My first husband was an F. Bill Clinton is an F. 

Taylor are you the one reading the Queens Gambit? I think? I have read around page 87ish and the Netflix series follows it very closely. Some minor changes to move the Netflix series I noticed. I like how Walter Trevis writes. This was written long after he had gotten his masters in Creative Writing and was a drunk Creative Writing teacher for 10 years who played chess. And he wrote nothing during that 10 years. Then after he got sober he wrote the Queens Gambit. He wrote his first book The Hustler that made him rich and famous before he had a masters in Creative Writing. With the money he took his family to Mexico and stayed drunk night and day for 8 months and then used the rest of the money to get his Masters in Creative Writing. I enjoy seeing how novels are translated into movies or Netflix in this case. I mean there is not flagrant sex scenes but there are mention of normal development and thinking about these things. I really do think he is very gifted. I like how he switches from her state of mind and thinking to dialog.


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## Llyralen (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Lleralen, I think totally guessing my husband is an ISTP it is so hard to guess. He is Introverted and thinking that I know. Our son is an ENTP or J. Definitely extroverted and thinking. I can tell the extrovert or introvert thing and thinking or feeling very easily the other ones I don't try to much to think about. We are bunch of P's maybe it is hard to tell. Anyway, I worked in insurance for years and did these comprehensive insurance reports for a big hospital for years and that is how I got to do a hypothetical psychiatric evaluation for Jane Eyre. I also had this thing in childhood where I would hyper fixate on a book or project. So I would re-read various books again and again. I stopped doing that after my early twenties. I also would compulsively watch movies all through my teens and have gone through times were I would re-watch one movie again and again. I haven't done that in years. I have an ADHD or ADD quality that does that. So I am wildly random and tangential inter mixed with over focusing. I am middle aged now it is more of a problem in the learning process and not as much when in the working world. Anyway on the topic of MBTI and general evaluation. My first husband was an F. Bill Clinton is an F.
> 
> Taylor are you the one reading the Queens Gambit? I think? I have read around page 87ish and the Netflix series follows it very closely. Some minor changes to move the Netflix series I noticed. I like how Walter Trevis writes. This was written long after he had gotten his masters in Creative Writing and was a drunk Creative Writing teacher for 10 years who played chess. And he wrote nothing during that 10 years. Then after he got sober he wrote the Queens Gambit. He wrote his first book The Hustler that made him rich and famous before he had a masters in Creative Writing. With the money he took his family to Mexico and stayed drunk night and day for 8 months and then used the rest of the money to get his Masters in Creative Writing. I enjoy seeing how novels are translated into movies or Netflix in this case. I mean there is not flagrant sex scenes but there are mention of normal development and thinking about these things. I really do think he is very gifted. I like how he switches from her state of mind and thinking to dialog.



Question for you and for everyone. 
What are some of the best sex scenes that you've read?


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## Taylor (Feb 14, 2021)

Yes, I'm reading it now.  At chapter 5 and she is just started to be attracted to men, so no sex scene yet.  But I do like his writing.  Nice and clean.


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## Llyralen (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> LLyralen, What you wrote above made me think that is the type of thread you would like to start. If you did start a MTBI thread I would copiously comment in wildly positive ways if you started such a thread. Oh and randomly hope all is well.
> 
> Somebody whom I have forgotten who didn't like Queen's Gambit that much. My dear husband just found the Queens Gambit online in book form that I can read on my computer for FREE. Somebody was not impressed with it. Maybe because I psyched myself up so much I was ready to fall in love with it. I have read a few paragraphs and I love it. I am already taken. It is 14 chapters. Wolf Mist or maybe Taylor. Anyway I am very interested.



Yay!  Good, I think it is really helpful for me too and writing always helps you really learn something. 

Just real quick, but my goal was to find sex scenes written from every MBTI type.  So I was trying to think of writers who are ESTP last night.   I went on a website that tries to type celebrities and I would have some arguments for them on some of those, but they mentioned de Sade as an ESTP.  So I went looking and oh man...I'm about to give up this experiment.  But I don't think de Sade is a typical person at all.  

Taylor and BabesJJ, how fun that you're both reading The Queen's Gambit at the same time!


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## BabesJJ (Feb 14, 2021)

Llyralen, hey my idea is just put a sex scene from a novel, the worst and more embarrassing, it doesn't matter or great recognized art, anything, and we can figure out the Meyers-Briggs character from the sex scene. That way you don't have to do so much research. I remember if you google your profile whatever it is sometimes famous people with that profile show up. it would be hard to do that in literature as it is a fairly recent idea with Jung and MBTI. Maybe any sex scene will do and then we can figure out what is going on or how we see it? I dunno?

Taylor, I am around chapter 4 in the book. What I like so much about the Queens Gambit is that it is a total make believe world that he made up. The character is fiction the world is fiction and it is real enough that I don't really ever question the fantasy. And I appreciate how he uses his own experience with be given phenobarbital for a year as a child for rheumatic fever treatment and plus in a hospital by himself for a year, and what that was like. And able to get away with it because of how he constructs the story. It never feels creepy or unreal.

I think a lot of famous people had dreadful childhood experiences in hospitals. I read that Ringo Starr spent years in hospitals as a child with absolutely nothing to do and he would listen to sounds for entertainment. The drip of the rain the sound of a foot step and he became a drummer self taught. At one time they would keep people in the hospital for years if needed. The Netflix series kind of glosses over some of the details in the book. Which is normal when making films. I like how she gets out of the orphanage and ends up with the alcoholic adoptive mother and the abandoning father but she makes due.


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## Phil Istine (Feb 14, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> I wonder if I start posting sex scenes on this thread if they would move it someplace else? I dunno. Meanwhile I am reading "The Queens Gambit" and writing my 3rd chapter.



*Mod note:  In general, the Writing Discussion board is to discuss particular aspects of writing rather than posting scenes for critique.  However, if you need to post a short extract to discuss something about the writing technique etc., and that extract happens to incorporate a sex scene, it probably wouldn't be an issue. It would be better as a new thread so that you can include a prominent warning about adult content in the title heading - as required under our rules.  If this is seen as a green light to fill the board with sex scenes - don't; it would possibly cause a rule change.  Do bear in mind that this forum is viewable by 13 year olds upwards.
If you wish such a piece to receive critique, the workshop area is available - same conditions regarding the title heading.
For something raunchier, there is an area called The Red Light Area which has ticket-only access that must be applied for to a site Admin.  That area is 18+ only.
If you want a better explanation, it might be better to PM one of the Admins.*


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## BabesJJ (Feb 15, 2021)

Phil Istine said:


> *Mod note:  In general, the Writing Discussion board is to discuss particular aspects of writing rather than posting scenes for critique.  However, if you need to post a short extract to discuss something about the writing technique etc., and that extract happens to incorporate a sex scene, it probably wouldn't be an issue. It would be better as a new thread so that you can include a prominent warning about adult content in the title heading - as required under our rules.  If this is seen as a green light to fill the board with sex scenes - don't; it would possibly cause a rule change.  Do bear in mind that this forum is viewable by 13 year olds upwards.
> If you wish such a piece to receive critique, the workshop area is available - same conditions regarding the title heading.
> For something raunchier, there is an area called The Red Light Area which has ticket-only access that must be applied for to a site Admin.  That area is 18+ only.
> If you want a better explanation, it might be better to PM one of the Admins.*



Nice blue writing. Philistine. I will let Llyralen decide how she wants to proceed and follow her lead. As I think I can put any ideas under Fiction area for future writing critiques. I think Lyralen has some sort of idea about a certain kind of thread discussion. I don't mind continuing this link as it made me realize how I often avoid normal sexual character development.


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## Phil Istine (Feb 15, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Nice blue writing. Philistine. I will let Llyralen decide how she wants to proceed and follow her lead. As I think I can put any ideas under Fiction area for future writing critiques. I think Lyralen has some sort of idea about a certain kind of thread discussion. I don't mind continuing this link as it made me realize how I often avoid normal sexual character development.



*I write like that when I have my moderator hat on *


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## BabesJJ (Feb 15, 2021)

Llyralen and Taylor, I am reading the Queens Gambit. I am just blown away but the book. I wish I could write this well. What I thought you both would be interested about is that Beth is intuitive. Intuitive to the point of almost madness. I was going over a few really great intuitive experiences I have had in my life. I like Beth's trance like quality that happens which appears out of her control. I have always been more interested in intuition than by the other sense more because it is the only one unquantifiable and unable to study how it works or where it comes from. Beth the character goes into sort of a trance. And I am also finding her sexual development in a casual off handed no big deal way helpful. Also Walter Tevis seems very foward thinking and open minded on many issues. Very quietly he sees the issues of the women characters. I also find it fun who he introduces a lot of characters and doesn't seem to worry about it much. I get hung up sometimes on fear of anything other than main characters and Walters seems to just throw them in wherever needed. I wish I could write like Walter Tevis. The book is much longer than I thought it would be. And I like how the chapters are broken down and then how they are divided up within the chapters. Anyway, Beth the character being so hyper intuitive is very MTBIish. Also oh, the writing technique of using chess through the book as an anchor is one that is simplistic but somehow easy. Like scrabble or that book the Secret Lives of Bees. It gives a constant focal point to hold the thing together. I remember that from the one Creative Writing Class I took a badillion years ago.

editd to add; Beth is an insomniac it is never explicitly mentioned, just constantly mentions her difficulty going to sleep and talking about sleep.


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## MistWolf (Feb 15, 2021)

Wow. I feel like we're talking about two different books, here. I was so bored with _Queen's Gambit_ I couldn't finish it and had to struggle to get as far along as I did.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 15, 2021)

Mistwolf, Sorry I don't go back and re-read comments and I remember somebody didn't like it much. For me it is just AMAZING. I love how he moves the plot and the main thing I love are the transitions. I am not interested in any of the chess stuff. I am more interested how he moves the character around. Moves from inside her head to dialog. I love it honestly. I am around chapter 12 so close to the end. I am also very interested in the translation of a novel to a movie or netflix in this case. I took a screen writing class while in art school and the teacher had us read a novel that was written by the same author into a screen play and then see the movie and that was really interesting. So I like that part too reading the book and seeing the Netflix. What I find the best part about the entire things is all of it is made up. The girl the orphanage the chess people all these people are all just a figment of someone's imagination. 

I just worked out 3 algebra problems with my kid. Brain dead. Back to something fun for my brain reading Queens Gambit. I will re-read it again as it my habit. 

I love it!


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## MistWolf (Feb 15, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Mistwolf, Sorry I don't go back and re-read comments and I remember somebody didn't like it much. For me it is just AMAZING.


You've got nothing to apologize for. Just because _I_ hated the book and want everyone else to, doesn't mean anyone has to listen to me! :sorrow:


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## BabesJJ (Feb 15, 2021)

Mistwold, Aw thank you I was feeling guilty. 

In general to nobody in particular. Just to stay on the theme of sexuality in writing. One of my favorite books is an old book called the Confederacy of Dunces. I think the first scene he is in bed pleasuring himself while petting his dog. We used to make jokes about it to each other when I was in high school. And this is not meant to be suggestive. Just to see if anyone read the book. What I found interesting about that writer. Sadly he suicided at 30 years old. Is that I read his first novel and it was very sketchy and incomplete. It was called the Neon Bible. It was interesting to see his advancement between the first to the second novel. I don't know if he wrote more.

I am almost finished reading "The Queens Gambit". And often get up in the wee hours of the morning to let our aging Corgi outside as he doesn't have the bladder he once did. Anyway, so I am up at 345 in the AM. And I wake up full of ideas. Always have. I was reflecting on the Walter Tevis book sex scenes and I do not know how to do them myself. The first thing I notice is that they are sparse and not about the mechanics of sex at all.

The first is she has a one night stand with someone from this night Russian class she is taking. A second is one of the local chess champions. And third a higher ranked chess champion who has quite the chess champion personae developed of a pirate character and seems fairly narcissistic. While she has a crush on a handsome chess player who is also a journalist. 

What I find interesting in addition to the natural sexual development. Is that how amazingly close the netflix series follows the scenes in the book. There are a few minor variations for instance in the book she starts competing at 13 while in the series she is 15 and I can understand for condensing the action etc. Also her friend in the book has a masters in political science while in the netflix series she is becoming a lawyer. 

One thing I noticed is that Tevis starts the book with an old man. She learns chess from this old man in the basement. And finishes with old men. Seeking them out the old men chess players in the streets of Russia after she becomes world champion of chess. I find this hauntingly lonely somehow. And beautiful.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 16, 2021)

Llyralen, I just noticed something about Beth the character from The Queens Gambit. She is an I or Introvert. And extravagantly N or intuitive by her playing style. 

In general, I am going to re-read the Queens Gambit. It was an easy read. I read it while doing my normal activities in 2 days. And I am going to read The Secret Life of Bees. As I see clues there for how to incorporate the life of this solitary mermaid in the story by using the bee catch and also chess is used in the same way like a constant that drives the story. There is a writing term for it I remember it from when I took creative writing. When you use scrabble or bees or chess to link the story line,. For instance we played Scrabble in our family. Scrabble was the example I remember from my Creative Writing class.

edited to add I am re-watching the Netflix series and they have a lesbian sex scene that I missed on the first watching. Not mentioned in the book. anyway, I am also realizing maybe the reason I love this book sooooo much is the woman is a T thinking woman. So she is an INT either j or P. but it just dawned on my maybe the reason I love The Queens Gambit is that she is T on MBTI which would make sense since she was written by a man writer. Very interesting.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 17, 2021)

Sexuality in character development is becoming essential now to me. I have carefully read the Queens Gambit and there are small mentions of the character sexual interest and exploration. I have found it very interesting how the Netflix series was translated. What came to me this morning is that under the Meyers Briggs type Beth the main character is a thinking woman rather than feeling. As I am under that category under Meyers-Briggs test. Also highly intuitive as I am. I was never a great chess player but I loved Scrabble growing up and can unscramble letters effortlessly. And I was tested in 3rd grade because of my high reading ability in my small country school. I am not a genius. I will go to the grave with my IQ results but I do remember I aced the patterns part. In fact so completely they gave me a second test which I also aced. 

Anyway what came to me about Walter Tevis book the Queens Gambit today is that how alone Beth was going to Russia and how the lack of support had held her back. And how at the end she is really totally alone and just by her own wits and her own talent and especially her strong intuition she became the chess world champion. And I think Walter Tevis might have felt the same aloneness the same total abandonment by his parents and the same sense of propelling himself forward toward greatness bit by bit. Tevis died in 1986 of lung cancer at 56 years old. Sorry he went so soon. I am learning so much from his book the Queens Gambit. And in fact it is making me appreciate the pace and the descriptions of meals and showers just the day to day motions of life. Eating, showering and sex I will mention with my character Henry, 

Realization today how alone and abandoned Beth was and how wonderfully in a magical way Tevis was able to show that with symbolism.


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## Llyralen (Feb 17, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Llyralen, I just noticed something about Beth the character from The Queens Gambit. She is an I or Introvert. And extravagantly N or intuitive by her playing style.
> 
> In general, I am going to re-read the Queens Gambit. It was an easy read. I read it while doing my normal activities in 2 days. And I am going to read The Secret Life of Bees. As I see clues there for how to incorporate the life of this solitary mermaid in the story by using the bee catch and also chess is used in the same way like a constant that drives the story. There is a writing term for it I remember it from when I took creative writing. When you use scrabble or bees or chess to link the story line,. For instance we played Scrabble in our family. Scrabble was the example I remember from my Creative Writing class.
> 
> edited to add I am re-watching the Netflix series and they have a lesbian sex scene that I missed on the first watching. Not mentioned in the book. anyway, I am also realizing maybe the reason I love this book sooooo much is the woman is a T thinking woman. So she is an INT either j or P. but it just dawned on my maybe the reason I love The Queens Gambit is that she is T on MBTI which would make sense since she was written by a man writer. Very interesting.



I haven’t read the book, but that IS exactly the reason the Queens Gwmbit the show was so interesting in my opinion... it was about her difficulty with feelings and with relationships and what she comes to learn about relationships.  My best friend who is very good at typing people and as into MBTI as myself strongly argued that she is INTJ and I strongly argued INTP.  Chess is classically fascinating to Ti.   She argued Fi tert. I argued Fe inferior.  The thing is... with fictional characters an author rarely thinks to keep them in a certain MBTI type— different than real life.  A fictional character can show traits of both and go back and forth.  So in general, her character is very T and has the classic problems with F being last.  This tension/conflict was actually was what was fascinating about the story for me too— maybe for everyone?  Whether they know about MBTI or not?


Same with Sherlock, actually?  Doh! And in a very different way, same with Don Draper in Madmen.  And it is also there in Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Hemingway. T to F conflict/tension.  Ugh... stop me already. lol


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## BabesJJ (Feb 17, 2021)

Lyeralen, Yes, I can see that writers might stray from strict Meyers-Briggs typology as it is not a prerequisite. Anyhoo, I am still deep in smit with Walter Tevis's "Queen's Gambit".
I am making progress on my novel first draft. Working hard everyday now. Walter is guiding me like a lucky star. I wish I was an "I" Introvert as they seem to do tasks of concentration without as much struggle as me being an "E". I settle down but after exhausting all other options. I read that most physicians are INTP's and most nurses ENFJ's. INTP's are great at standardized tests which is really important to be a physician. I have no idea about ENFJ's. Just that doctors and nurses had few matching types to have good communication. I remember once hearing from that professor doing the study that SJ's held up the work force as they where loyal to jobs and would stay 25 years for little reason other than it was in their character. I am making progress now if I don't write as much don't take it personally as I enjoy the MTBI conversation immensely. I look forward to your future thread.


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## Llyralen (Feb 17, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Lyeralen, Yes, I can see that writers might stray from strict Meyers-Briggs typology as it is not a prerequisite. Anyhoo, I am still deep in smit with Walter Tevis's "Queen's Gambit".
> I am making progress on my novel first draft. Working hard everyday now. Walter is guiding me like a lucky star. I wish I was an "I" Introvert as they seem to do tasks of concentration without as much struggle as me being an "E". I settle down but after exhausting all other options. I read that most physicians are INTP's and most nurses ENFJ's. INTP's are great at standardized tests which is really important to be a physician. I have no idea about ENFJ's. Just that doctors and nurses had few matching types to have good communication. I remember once hearing from that professor doing the study that SJ's held up the work force as they where loyal to jobs and would stay 25 years for little reason other than it was in their character. I am making progress now if I don't write as much don't take it personally as I enjoy the MTBI conversation immensely. I look forward to your future thread.



I can’t believe I didn’t comment yet on the short piece you showed us of your writing in this thread.  I found it delightful!  The picture of that man dying corked!   It was a really good image and well-written!  I’m looking forward to hearing more of your stuff!!! 

Thank you for encouraging me to write my thread— so I’m in the medical field...it’s random for MBTI distribution like most fields, mostly S-dominated, really.  I think there is a cliche out there about ISFJ and ESFJs being nurses.  I think you probably want some stats?  Here’s just general demographics, but there might be more on professions somewhere on the CAPT website.  https://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-frequencies.htm


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## BabesJJ (Feb 18, 2021)

Llyralen, The professor who tested anyone who took science classes when I did would hold little talks sporadically. I went to them over the course of several years. She as a dumpy looking red headed woman who was rather old for a PhD but she was also very intrigued by the Myers Briggs I could tell. When I tested ENTP she kindly introduced me to a professor named Maggie who was getting her PhD in Sociology which I wonder sometimes if there are any jobs whatsoever in this field anymore or if the study even exists anymore. Her husband was a doctor so she likely didn't really need to work although she taught in Public Health. Anyway, Maggie was an ENTP like me and I was very young and maybe 20 years old and in Art School and was taking science courses out of curiosity not really a requirement for my studies. And she mentioned her reactions to having this make up of interfacing with the world and what that meant etc. And she really encouraged me to get a PhD and become a university professor. I did end up getting a masters that my work paid for at the time. And I did end up teaching English as a Second Language for 10 years when my son was small because I could work days part-time around his schedule. Not really a college professor. And I have thought about a PhD and if I have absolutely nothing else to do I will attempt it after 65 and my son is 25 and has some sort of job skill. Anyway Maggie thought this would be a more natural fit for me. I worked in the medical field for 15 years after University. Anyway the dumpy red head who gave little talks about the Meyers Briggs focused on medical professionals. And she said nurses were a mix statistically of I or E but the largest group attracted to the field were ENFJs statistically although you mention S. She knew all the statistics for careers and per population which I have no idea. But I do remember her saying like ENFJ was 5% or something of the population I can't remember exactly but made up like 25% of nurses. Also has a high showing of this personality in elementary teachers. Oh and almost entirely "F" for both nursing and teaching. And as I am sure you know 'F" are 80% of women as the interface with the world the dominant hand. Although I always say Bill Clinton is an "F" and it suited him well as appearing empathetic and he was and is empathetic it is not an act. Anyway, Ok, Oh thank you for reading Unspoken Mermaid. I am writing it in the third person he and him, her and etc. and sometime said I used to many hes and hims. Now I am reading New Yorker short stories circling all the hes and hims and third person indicators and its fun while I am in the bathroom. Reminds me of when I was 3 and my mother would pay me a nickle for every time I circled the word green in a newspaper and I read the entire newspaper at 3 and circled about 5 greens and my mother was agahst. Anyway, it is the color of a local sport club in our area. I am sure writers tend toward "I" and it is one of the professions were I wonder if the personalities are mixed and from all over the place. As one becomes a writer out of some sort of fire experience rather than a character trait is my guess. 

Thank you for the nice compliment but now I am obsessed with he in my entire novel. Hey are you writing first person or third person. I always struggle with which one. to include the mermaid who watches the city from afar it is easier to have the third person for me. And I will try and comment Meyers-Briggs MBTI if you start a thread. Put sex in the title of the thread and it will get endless views.


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## Llyralen (Feb 18, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Put sex in the title of the thread and it will get endless views.



LOL   So true!!!   

Older ladies with PhDs, they are real pioneers.  Love them!  So grateful for them.   I would say a really high percentile of nurses are high Fe users, whether N or S.  I'm not sure if things changed for ENFJs as women have been more accepted into more fields?  I don't know, the info would be on that CAPT website if anywhere.  I'm at a 25 bed hospital.  We've got a PA and a psych both who I type ENFJ.  That's Fe-Ni-Se-Ti.  

I have too many projects.  There is lots of sex in the story about the prostitute.  I am about 1/2 through, I've been writing in 1st person and it suits the story to have a narrator vibe---almost a sleuthy, advicey, explainy vibe in her Voice at the beginning--- except then I think people don't experience enough of the emotions throughout... and I really want to experience what she experiences, personally. I need to re-write. I think one of her men will get me there-- one who demands that she take a painting class with him. I think if I place it early enough then it will continue to put her up close and detailed.  He demands the brutal up-frontness, he is very challenging--- and all her men are interesting.  She curates men who she sees long-term for the most part.    Hopefully the reader is trying to figure out which one of her men end up killing her.  I write that she is bleeding out while he pins her down first, the rest of the story tells you about her last 3 days.   I will want feedback on the experience of reading it from you and others here, if you are up for it.    I think what interested me in this subject originally was something I heard years ago from a high-end prostitute on a talk radio program.  She said really her job is all listening.  She said men really just want to talk about their wives and problems with their wives that they can't talk about with anyone else.   Street prostitutes have a very different life than high-end prostitutes from my research, but I'm not sure how much the general public understands.  And I am not pro or anti prostitute-- I think so far I haven't felt hard-pressed to make any stance whatsoever and there are so many different issues in the different layers of the profession.  Sex trafficking, for instance, being an issue.  It's really too complex.  I see street prostitutes as victims of a failed society in most ways.  Eve since I heard about teens being kidnapped for prostitution in Oakland CA, which is one of the more common ways to become a prostitute there, it was one of the ways I knew this was a much more complex system than I think maybe people want to realize?    And in the Indian Reservation in my county 28% of their women are trafficked and probably a higher percentile of children, but kids are harder to track.   So....yeah.   How the johns figure into all this is harder for me to figure out and there has been less research on them.  From the few men I've talked to just about dancers, I'm not sure why the woman "acting" doesn't bother them?   (We will see if we get comments here).  It would bother many men who I know.  But lately I am thinking about the women who never have close friendships with men and the men who have never emotionally had close friendships with women...and are these the people who "real" doesn't matter for?  I don't know.   The prostitute who I'm writing has that long-term clientele.  Mostly men who work in the city who want their marriages to stay in tact or older men who are bachelors or widows.  And I am exploring what might be the complications of all of that through my story.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 18, 2021)

Everything I know about prostitution to help you...

Llyralen, sometimes aren't women more interesting than men. I think Walter Tevis using the female character who was obviously an autobiographical story about him was a clever trick. Anyhoo, everything I know about prostitution...

I lived in the Marais in Paris for a year. Hopefully I won't be blathering about this fact in my nursing home in France while ordering old lady underwear on Amazon for fast delivery. Anyway, the Marais is known for three things, GAYS, JEWS and OLD FRENCH MONEY. In no particular order. And also the artisan guilds and that is another tangent. The Marais was were most of the high end sex trade went down in Paris. Until of course the internet took over. And I will give some examples of that. I lived on 3 rue de Birague and my second landlord in the Marais Eric and I loved to watch the beautiful older women in their early 60's. Wonderful hairstyles with red dyed bangs and blond dyed hair with black tips and no manicures that is an American thing. They chew their nails and wear giant diamonds. The coats long beige camel hair coats with the lightest fabric like a kitten. The perfect shoes difficult bossy and impossible. You would see three lined up in all different beautiful coats and shoes and hair looking as sophisticated as anyone is possible to look sophisticated. And I and my landlord Eric would rate them if they were old french money or worked at the brothel around the corner for women in their 60s.

It has since closed as many of the libertine clubs in the Marais due to the internet and at home service. Nobody needs to come to a brothel anymore. I laughed I read an article outloud at the dinner table from the new yorker about Europeans it was a mock article with all sorts of old ideas but hilarious and very offensive in a fun way to my French husband. In the article it starts that all French mens mistresses come over at midnight after the 11PM six course dinner and play charades and always win because the wife is too tired. Anyway, I could go on and on the difference between a French marriage and an American marriage. Both are equally impossible but its how society is organized. Anyway, so me and Eric rating the beautiful women. How we ultimately could tell is some equally handsome young man from Belgium or Germany would show up with the most heart felt boquet of flowers. so delicately selected to wonderful so poignant with feeling and longing for all the time he had waited. Ah a prostitute not a rich French lady or Jewish lady. Of course the bright American would be sitting by someplace oblivious awkward unknowing ready to scream if her needs are not immediately and promptly met.

So we had a brothel in our neighborhood and it had a lot of action. And also a big sadly boy sex trade. Most from post communist countries trying to make a living. 30 year old men trying to look 16 ready to give a blank job to anyone for 5 euro. I would see them eating together in the morning at the local mcdonalds sitting at a table for 10 all in dog collars and tight pants pretty faces and hair. buying breakfast on last nights earnings. Some did look too young to be working in the sex trade and my guess is although they worked in the homosexual sex trade many were not gay. People came from all over the world for the sex trade in Paris. It is actually regulated. And the big thing is now ads and coming to your house with a white van. Or the woman sits alone on a country road with an umbrella with a van ready to swoop in. We drove to Spain on a vacation and these women sit along the roadside every few miles. My husband made a joke about it all these young ladies need the country air. Although if I was a man it would take a certain bravery to crawl into the back of a white van. 

In India I read that there were warrens of a town that was 600 years old of prostitutes it was a caste actually. I saw a documentary on it I imagine there is information online. 100s of thousands of people who worked in the sex trades generationally and the businesses that grew around this trade lived in this community of prostitutes. And gone in an instant with the cell phone and the internet it is a ghost town now. Once the sex trade did not need a site like a brothel or a town like in India. It all went online and cell phones and vans. I know living in Chicago every other craigslist ad is for the sex trade although they take them down they stay up long enough to get their message across. in wisconsin amazingly they actually have prostitution arrests which i always find surprising. One thing that I noted from living in France 10 years and returning to Chicago was they report rapes on the news in Chicago that was a lot for me to wrap my mind around when i got back that and the Kardashians. 

There is one story that strikes me. There was a terrible kidnapping and murder of her parents in the kidnapping and rape. Jamie C. I don't want to write to much in respect to her and her dear departed parents who died fighting for her life and safety. She was 13 and the attacker saw her get off her school bus and methodically planned his kidnapping and killing her parents. He shot the father through their front door and Jamie and her mother hid in the bathtub he taped the mother mouth and shot her in the head and taped Jamie up and put her in his trunk. The mother had managed a strangled call to the dimwitted police who let the killer pass on the way to the house and never investigated that car again. She was searched for endlessly and was of course raped. He brought her to some house in some small town and kept her prisoner. She escaped and is free now. He is in prison in NM as they transfered him from wi. what i found curious is they never mention the rape not one time not ever. Unspoken Mermaid.

I am so mad I could just have a tantrum I lost 20euro after going to the grocery store. My weekly extra budget is 50 euro and I went to the store and got a flat of strawberries and 6 pain chocolate, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes for a quiche for lunch. and came home and threw the receipt with the left over change on the table and threw the recipet with the 20 euroe bill in the trash but cant find it anywhere. and my husband said are you writing about you lost the 20 euro and are upset. i was like no i am writing my new friend about prostitution and our ongoing conversation about sexuality in writing and the meyers briggs character types tossed in. Oh he kind of said. I will have him help me put the shoe picture up if we can figure it out. I like those shoes. My trannie shoes. Oh speakign of which John Irving is one of my favorite writers. If you want a great prostitute scene read "Widow For a Year". I think John Irving is saving the world. A good first person book is "I speak pretty one day" by david sedaris. he really pulls it off.

your fan BabesJJ


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## Llyralen (Feb 18, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> I am so mad I could just have a tantrum I lost 20euro after going to the grocery store. My weekly extra budget is 50 euro and I went to the store and got a flat of strawberries and 6 pain chocolate, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes for a quiche for lunch. and came home and threw the receipt with the left over change on the table and threw the recipet with the 20 euroe bill in the trash but cant find it anywhere. and my husband said are you writing about you lost the 20 euro and are upset. i was like no i am writing my new friend about prostitution and our ongoing conversation about sexuality in writing and the meyers briggs character types tossed in. Oh he kind of said. I will have him help me put the shoe picture up if we can figure it out. I like those shoes. My trannie shoes. Oh speakign of which John Irving is one of my favorite writers. If you want a great prostitute scene read "Widow For a Year". I think John Irving is saving the world. A good first person book is "I speak pretty one day" by david sedaris. he really pulls it off.
> 
> your fan BabesJJ



LOL!   So you're back in France it sounds like?   Or in Chicago? 

I was reading something interesting about the archeology digs in the old red light district "Storyville" of New Orleans.  It would be a very interesting place to write about.  There is a lot more to learn about some of those madams too if you look them up individually, they were fascinating. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...titution-jazz-heroin-drugs-guns-a8666671.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...ing-sun/9026797e-333d-4f8c-bc40-f8863ac4b215/


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## BabesJJ (Feb 18, 2021)

BabesJJ said:


> Everything I know about prostitution to help you...
> 
> Llyralen, sometimes aren't women more interesting than men. I think Walter Tevis using the female character who was obviously an autobiographical story about him was a clever trick. Anyhoo, everything I know about prostitution...
> 
> ...



Oh now you have gotten all Brigetons the Netflix series on me. Although I love the disapproving queen black character. She rocks.


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## BabesJJ (Feb 18, 2021)

Oh now you have gotten all Bridgetons the Netflix series on me. Although I love the disapproving queen black character. She rocks.


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## Darren White (Feb 18, 2021)

*Stay on topic, stop the wild accusations.  I've removed all comments derailing the thread. If this continues, the thread will be closed. Thank you*


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## Phil Istine (Feb 18, 2021)

*MOD NOTE:  Although the offending posts are now hidden from most people's view, I am now locking this thread as it seems to have gone too far.
Locked pending staff discussion.*


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