#poshhelpers

Ging: it's only because i was on her page

Ging: looking for color schemes

POSHHELPERS! Is that a trick question? :D 

I would suggest:

Molly Quinn

Jacqueline Emerson

Nicole Fox

Rachel Hurd-Wood

Caleb Landry Jones

Rose Leslie

James and Oliver Phelps

Felicia Day

Lindy Booth

Jayma Mays

Damian Lewis

Tilda Swinton

I saw this question go by on my dash earlier and thought I'd take a stab at answering. While both poshhelpers's and benedicthelps's answers are 100% correct, I think there's more to be said. Yes, your character will be called a whore or a slut if they sleep around or flirt a lot, but what about the mechanics of writing a character who actually is, by trade, a whore? What about a character who self-identifies as a slut, independent of what other people may think?

The first thing to keep in mind is that a whore and a slut are technically two different things. A whore is someone who sells sex, while a slut is someone who has sex with many different people, usually without any kind of sale or barter involved (or, at least, not as a regular part of the deal). This is a very important distinction to make. It's the difference between writing about someone who sells books for a living vs. someone who reads as a hobby.

Let's talk about a whore character first. A whore will likely have a nuanced relationship with sex. Going back to the bookseller vs. reader analogy, a bookseller may have become a bookseller because she loves books and wants to be surrounded by them all day. Or she may have simply needed a job and it was the first (or only) place she could get hired. She may love her job, she may hate it, she may be ambivalent toward it. She may love reading, she may hate reading, or she may be ambivalent toward it. Maybe she reads in her spare time away from work, maybe she doesn't. Maybe she loves to read, but hates the types of books she actually sells. Maybe she's friends with some of her coworkers, maybe she isn't. Her feelings about books and reading may change over time due to outside factors. She may love some of her customers and hate others. Her boss might be awesome or he might be the spawn of satan. Maybe her boss favors her over her coworkers, or maybe he treats her like crap and treats her coworkers like gold.

I probably don't have to clarify that all of these points apply to people who sell sex just as much as they apply to people who sell books. People get into it for different reasons, people feel differently about it depending on their personalities and circumstances. Their relationship to sex while working is probably different to their relationship to sex outside of work.

A slut will also have a nuanced relationship with sex, but the factors involved are different. Let's go back to the analogy of someone who reads for a hobby. A reader may read as broadly as possible on lots of different subjects, or may read the same couple of books or authors over and over again. Maybe she's the type to walk into a bookstore or library and pick up any ol' book, or maybe she likes to spend hours browsing to pick just the right one. Maybe she only likes fiction or only read self-help. Maybe she hates poetry. Maybe she loves re-reading old favorites, maybe she absolutely hate rereading things and never opens the same book twice. Maybe there is one book or genre that is her guilty pleasure. Every reader has a different way of deciding which books are worth their time.

Similarly, every slut has a different way of deciding which people they're going to sleep with. Tastes, preferences, and standards vary from person to person.

Essentially, a whore is a person with a job, and a slut is a person with a hobby. As with any job or hobby, there are safety precautions that should be observed (and, depending on your character, may be ignored). There are rewards and consequences. Your character will likely have a nuanced relationship with this job/hobby, and will feel differently about it depending on their circumstances.

So now that we've established that your character is a whole person outside of their bedroom, let's talk about how to write her. If you're at a loss for how to write your whore/slut character, consider a smut-writing ban. This may seem counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

There was this sitcom on the WB in the early 2000s called "What I Like About You", which starred Jennie Garth and Amanda Bynes as sisters living together with no other family nearby. One thing that really caught my attention about the show was that, even when Amanda Bynes's character was a high school student and spent most of her time at school, we never actually saw her at school. Most of the show took place either at the apartment that she and shared, or at the cupcake shop that her sister owned. When the story did take place at the cupcake shop, very little actual cupcake selling happened- it was generally a backdrop against which the story and characters could develop. "What I Like About You" made a show about a high schooler and a baker, yet we never had to go to school or witness any baking. School and baking were things that the sisters did, but those things did not define the sisters' characters.

To use another example, think of Meredith from The Office (spoiler alert for the series finale in this paragraph). Throughout the series, we get to know her as a brash, confident drunkard with a YOLO attitude an not one ounce of shame. In the finale, we learn that Meredith was in college getting her Master's for the first seven years of the show. Yes, it was meant to be a funny 'aha!' moment for the audience, but I think it was an excellent illustration of this same concept- take the job (college student) away, and focus on the character's character, relationships, and behaviors.

As another example, think of Rory on "Gilmore Girls". As much as it was hammered home that Rory was a bookworm, how much actual screentime was devoted to watching Rory read? We might see her pick up a book before the camera cuts away, we might see her put a book down at the beginning of a scene, we saw her bookshelf in her room, we saw her freak out over the size of the Harvard library, we heard her talk about and reference books at appropriate times, we know that Dean first noticed her because of her intense focus on a book she was reading, but we almost never saw her sit down and read for an extended period of time.

If you can write your whore or slut character without having to write smut, you're on the right track. Does this mean you should never write smut? Of course not. It means that smut should not be your character's defining characteristic. In "What I Like About You", Holly was defined by her impetuous nature and naivety more than her status as a high school student. Meredith of "The Office" was defined by her frankness and apparently shamelessness, not by what she did during her off-hours (in fact, Meredith was self-admittedly a slut, despite never having a single sex scene in the entire show). Rory was defined by her studiousness, adherence to rules, and love for her mother, not her reading hobby.

evening for me, love.

I support this.

I knew you would.

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