*Howls* The Bad Sex In Fiction Awards.

[Katie-Ellen]

"Costello was cited for a passage that included the line: “She begged him to go deeper and, no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection.” Decoin made the cut for a selection of passages, one of which included a woman handling a man’s genitals in a way that “felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws”.

A marmoset, I wonder. A golden lion tamarin. A gibbon?

It's that time of year again. Literature's most dreaded (funny) prize. Do I think I could I do better? Not saying that. Nah nah.

How to write it well, I've had to *go there* and I'm keeping it minimal. No need for detail if the story doesn't demand it.

Bad sex award: shortlist announced for 'Britain's most dreaded literary prize'

 

[Paul Whybrow]

At least she didn't spank his small monkey....

 

[Eva Ulian]

If written with style, I think sex can be quite poetic and not vulgar at all. I have written a poem along those lines. Then, look at D.H. Lawrence. But i think what most people want is smutty sex and that sells best... now, I do wonder why?

 

[Steve C]

“felt as though she was manipulating a small monkey that was curling up its paws”.

Now you know what us men have to put up with sometimes

 

[Paul Whybrow]

It’s hard not to think that some authors deliberately write excruciatingly bad sex scenes for the publicity derived from being nominated for the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction award.

It’s been stated, that the aim of the award is "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it". But, we all know that sex sells...and far from discouraging sexual description, the award is promoting it.

Its existence says much about the British attitude towards sex, which is both prurient and disapproving. Do other countries run such an award?

Why not have an award for Good Sex in Fiction?!

As I found last year writing Book 5 in my Cornish Detective series giving my protagonist a sex life caused a dilemma of melding genres...Crime and Romance/Erotica. My detective had been chaste throughout the first four books, having been widowed two years before Book 1. Struggling with depression in the first two books, he couldn’t raise a smile let alone anything else!

His lover was a witness who discovered a corpse on a beach in Book 1. She’s appeared in passing in the subsequent stories staying in touch with him by email and Skype from her native America. I thought it important to have continuity and progression before they went horizontal to do the do, a protracted form of modern courting.

Writing their first love-making scene I combined sensuality with humour, theorising that if a reader smiles they’ll like it more and maybe be less disapproving. The first time is one thing, but how does a writer include sex as an everyday habit? I haven’t found out yet.

Thinking about novels I’ve read in recent years which dealt with sex well I’d choose Stef Penney’s Under A Pole Star which had its lovers going at it in a tent in the Arctic...most unexpected and surprisingly erotic.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

That's a new name to me. She can write. There are grease monkeys in the first paragraph but they are strictly aeronautical. Thanks for flagging her up @Paul Whybrow