(From the archives)
I’m in the air over the Atlantic somewhere as this post goes lives. That being the case, I’m doing seasonal re-runs with a 
post from the archives on one of my favourite topics — sex and chaos and their effect on story. Enjoy.
In my opinion, there are few things a writer can do to a story that will kick-start it quite as much as creating a little chaos. A calm and happy life in the real world might be just the ticket, but in story, there’s one word for it – BORING! A story is all about upsetting the apple cart, breaking the eggs, turning the bull loose in the china cupboard and — heart racing, palms sweating – seeing what happens, while we’re safely ensconced on the other side of the keyboard/Kindle/book. Oh yes we do love that adrenaline rush — at someone else’s expense!
One of the best tools for dropping the character smack-dab into the middle of the chaos – and the reader vicariously – is sex. And the more inconvenient, the more inappropriate, the more confusing, the more SO not what the character was expecting, the more delicious the chaos will be.
The thing about those big brains that I spoke of a few posts back is that they like to make us think we can control all the variables. The thing about the biological housing for those big brains is that it doesn’t always want to be controlled. Oh and that big brain, well that means there’s all sorts of stuff going on up there that can lead us down the havoc-wreaking road to sex and chaos. It wants what it wants. And the ole grey matter can be so damned stubborn at times. Oooh! I get goose bumps just thinking about what happens when the big brain gets a hankering and the biological soup starts overheating and sex happens.
If we look at Western history from the point of view of religion and its effects on culture, there are few things the religious powers that be have made more of an effort to control than sex. And in story, in myth, there are few things that have caused more chaos than a little rough and tumble in the wrong place at the wrong time. Troy lost war and was destroyed over it, King Author’s realm fell because of it, David had Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, killed because of it.
The resulting chaos that sex unleashes in a story can be nothing more than to create self-doubt in a cock-sure character, which is always a delight to see. Or the resulting chaos can be world-destroying, and anything in between. Sex can cause the kind of chaos that will make the reader laugh, or the kind of chaos that will make the reader say, ‘if only they hadn’t done that.’ However, the one thing sex should never do in a story is leave things the way they were before it happened. Can it be used for bonding? Of course! But the tighter the bond, the more chaos can be caused if that bond is tested or broken. I shiver with delight at the thought.
And because our big brains don’t give a damn if our sexual thoughts and fantasies are ‘socially acceptable,’ nor is it discriminating about who we might have those thoughts and fantasies about, the resulting internal chaos can be almost as delicious as the external – maybe even more so. That lovely mix of guilt and desire and self-loathing and arousal and denial and shear over-heated lust. OMG! It’s a total writer’s paradise there for the taking.
I’m sure I’m like most writers in that I analyse what I read for pleasure in terms of what worked and what didn’t, what I
would have done if I’d written it, and what I’ve learned from the author’s writing skills that can be used to make my own writing better. I have to say one of the biggies for me is how well the author uses chaos to move the story forward
at a good pace; and especially how effectively sex is used to create chaos. I’m sure I pay a lot more attention to how sex is used in a story (or not) now that I write erotica, but it’s the resulting chaos that fascinates me and keeps me reading 
in almost any kind of novel. The world is not a static place, and especially the world of story should not be static. Happy endings are called happy endings because they are at the end. They follow the chaos and happen when the story is finished. There is no more story, or at least none the reader wants to follow. It’s the chaos that pulls us in and keeps us turning the pages, and when that chaos is directly tied to sex, hold on to your hat!
Raymond and I have just been to 
right — that’s Helvellyn. Its iconic Striding Edge put me to the test in one of the most adrenaline-laced, exquisite walks I’ve ever done in the Lake District.
It’s a solemn occasion, one that should be handled with great dignity and serious introspection. Just kidding! It’s actually a happy occasion. It’s time to retire not one, but two pairs of walking boots. One pair has walked across England through bogs and bracken, through bolder fields and fast moving streams. The other has lived fast and dangerously mostly with city walking. From London to Rome, from Dubrovnik to Guildford, they’ve made the winter in-town walks a pleasure for my feet while protecting my delicate knees.
As a lot of you already know, my walking has been enhanced by the addition of a Fitbit to my daily routine, which, at the very least, functions as a reminder to walk ten thousand steps a day if I don’t do anything else, and at the most, challenges me on to walk farther that I’ve ever waked before. By the very act of pushing my walking boundaries, I’ve reached new depths of creativity and new levels of fitness. Why yes! I do love my Fitbit!
cheer each other on all day. I want her to go as hard as she can, because then it means that I have to go harder. I got fancy walking shoes–they look like Mary Janes but they are powerful! I take time to stop and smell all of the flowers, even though I envy K.D.’s walks in the countryside. But we luckily will be in each other’s countries in the next few months, and I am excited to walk together…and maybe reach our highest step counts ever…together…
babysitting job for some whimpy-arsed kid who would whine every time he didn’t have a Wifi connection for his little games on his little phone. Doc wondered how the hell the bloke could even heft the backpack sitting on the floor beside him, and those brand new, straight-out-of-the-box walking boots guaranteed major blisters. This was supposed to be twelve glorious days alone on the Wainwright Coast to Coast path across England. This was supposed to be total outdoor bliss. He had been looking forward to it for months and then, at the last minute, T4B ruined it all by insisting Will fucking Charles tag along with his expensive little camera phone to record the event. Bromance, they said. Adventure and companionship, they said. Merry fucking Christmas! T4B didn’t pay him nearly enough for this shit.
Toys for Boys blurb:
Some days I just need to write something, but I don’t know what. I want to write something, but everything in my brain is a jumble, a bit like picking raisins out of a scone. I’m looking for the tasty bits, the sweet bits, the bits that will take me by surprise and get my pulse thumping with thinking outside the box and letting the imagination run wild. Some days those things I want to write, those things I really need to write only show up in my mind when I’m walking or when I’m just going to sleep or when up to my elbows in dirty dishes, and I think I’ll write them right down in just a moment, just as soon as I can settle in front of the computer, and then they’re gone.
become real once we’ve written them down. At least that’s how it is for me. The fact that I can write my
One theory is that kissing evolved from the act of mothers premasticating food for their infants, back in the pre-baby food days, and then literally kissing it into their mouths. Birds still do that. The sharing of food mouth to mouth is also a courtship ritual, and birds aren’t the only critters who do that. Even with no food involved the tasting, touching and sniffing of mouths of possible mates, or even as an act of