Well, as you may notice, I didn’t write at all yesterday.\u00a0 My wordcount meters are both down significantly, especially the 7 day one.\u00a0 Grr…I will get them back up before too long!\u00a0 New goal: get both meters in the red by the end of the week.<\/p>\n
However, I have a reason for not writing, and it’s not a lame excuse that such-and-such happened outside my control and I had to put my writing on hold.\u00a0 It’s a lot more complex than that.<\/p>\n
Basically, the scene that I’m stopped at has some graphic content, and I didn’t feel that it would be appropriate to write that scene on a Sunday.\u00a0 At the same time, I’m starting to wonder if I shouldn’t write this scene at all.\u00a0 In terms of the story, I think<\/em> that this scene is necessary, but I can see people taking it the wrong way when they read it.\u00a0 I can also see myself feeling somewhat embarrassed when my friends read it.\u00a0 I’m not usually the kind of person that avoids controversy, but this is something where I’m not sure how to proceed.<\/p>\n Basically, here’s what I have in mind: Tristen, the main character, is on a mission to find his birth family.\u00a0 He’s left behind this futuristic Bedouin camp that’s raised him, except that the sheikh of this camp will do anything<\/em> to get Tristen to stay.\u00a0 The first leg of Tristen’s journey is a pilgrimage to this famous temple, and the sheikh sends his daughter with Tristen, ostensibly because she want’s to make the pilgrimage too, but won’t have the opportunity in the future.\u00a0 Really, though, the girl has conspired with the Sheikh to try and seduce Tristen to convince him to stay.<\/p>\n That’s the background, but it really has nothing to do with this specific scene.\u00a0 In the scene I have in mind, Tristen and the girl are in a bar\/restaurant halfway around the world, way far away from home, when this graphic performance occurs on the stage at this place.\u00a0 Basically, there is this major religious cult in this part of the world whose priestesses are basically holy prostitutes<\/a>, like many Ancient Near East goddess cults.<\/p>\n The scene would involve some suggestive nudity and would raise the already existing sexual tension between Tristen and the daughter of this Sheikh.\u00a0 Basically, he’s been raised in this ultra-moralistic conservative environment, so the dance of this temple prostitute shocks him to the point where he doesn’t know what to think about it.\u00a0 He gets these images in his mind that he can’t get out, and he feels confused, guilty, passionate, and just…well, weird.\u00a0 This confusion gets him to the point where he doesn’t know what he’s doing with this girl who’s supposed to seduce him, so that she is able to break through his resistance and almost<\/em> succeed in getting him to stay (and all that that implies).<\/p>\n Also, I want to throw this scene in to show the moral depravity of the society that Tristen passes through.\u00a0 By demonstrating just how graphically immoral the mainstream society has become, I’m hoping to show who Tristen really is–a morally upright person.\u00a0 I want to have this contrast in the story, even if it does mean writing a scene that might cause a lot of LDS readers (and even some of my friends) to throw the book across the room.<\/p>\n So how do I do this?\u00a0 How can I write a scene that is graphic and yet not pornographic?\u00a0 What do you think about my ideas here?\u00a0 What should I do–and not do?\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, as you may notice, I didn’t write at all yesterday.\u00a0 My wordcount meters are both down significantly, especially the 7 day one.\u00a0 Grr…I will get them back up before too long!\u00a0 New goal: get both meters in the red by the end of the week. However, I have a reason for not writing, and… Continue reading No writing yesterday…but there is a reason<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44],"tags":[42,8,599],"class_list":["post-292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ds","tag-frustrations","tag-writing-in-general","tag-thoughts-reflections","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4I","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}