Writing about sex - how do you do it?

[James Marinero]

I know that there are several experts on this and its more 'specialist' aspects, here in the cafe'. That came out wrong - I didn't mean on the table (he recalls first rule of holes - non-sexual - and stops digging). Anyway, I picked up an old newspaper this morning to cut out the Toughie Crossword for future puzzlement (they usually take me about 3 weeks to complete with a little help from my friends). The paper was the Daily Telegraph of 30 May 2017.

There was an interesting piece in there about the Hay Literary Festival and specifically on the subject of Jane Austen and the way she wrote about sex. I'm not a Jane Austen lover (mainly due to lack of exposure) and the article was illuminating for me.


I don’t often write steamy scenes in my novels, but in Sicilian Channel there was an exception. The explicit scene just flowed from the story and seemed perfectly natural in the context. Only one person has commented on that scene I wrote and he said that it made him feel uncomfortable. There was nothing ‘unnatural’ in that specific scene (although some other scenes were arguably sexual from an S&M perspective as one of my characters is a lesbian psychopath).

There is of course a difference between 'writing about sex' as in a manual, and writing a sexual scene in a novel, and I'm ready to take instruction from experts.

By the way, the pic is a colorized engraving of Jane Austen, based on a drawing by sister Cassandra. (Photo: Author unknown, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

 

[Carol Rose]

I suppose it depends on a lot of things. Your own comfort writing about it, the genre in which you're writing and the expectations of a sex scene in that genre - and how specific it should be, plus the story itself. The characters and their arc will also dictate whether sex scenes are necessary, how many are needed, or how explicit they need to be.

To be fair, Jane Austen lived during a time when people weren't supposed to enjoy sex let alone write about it. LOL! "Graphic novels" were still quite underground, and hidden. Sex was dirty at worst, private at best. It wasn't something civilized people discussed, let alone wrote about or read in popular fiction.

And, also to be fair, there are plenty of books - including romance novels - without a sex scene, or with "closed-door" or "fade to black" sex scenes. There is a market for that, the same as there's a market for the kind of sex scenes I write in my books.

As to the mechanics of it, you just ... write it. The same as you do any other scene. Of course, if you're not comfortable with the subject, or with the intricacies of the many ways in which two human beings can perform the most intimate act possible, then yeah. Writing the scenes might prove a challenge for you. It won't come across as authentic, the same way writing about any other act or situation with which you are not entirely comfortably may prove challenging.

Reading them might help, but you want to consider reading them in books that are similar to what you're writing, and which are set in the same time period. You also want to consider that if they don't flow naturally from the characters themselves, and from the situation in which the scene takes place, it will show.

For example, we joke about this one a lot during Indiana RWA chapter meetings. An author, in an attempt to sneak in one more sex scene, had the hero and heroine running from the bad guys, but also has them stop to have a quickie... just because. Yeah. Right. Cause that's the first thing on *my* mind when someone is trying to kill me. LOL!!

Hope this helps answer your question.

 

[Patricia D]

Many years ago (pre Google) I went to a writing workshop in an Atlanta suburb. Most of the other attendees were ladies who either wrote or wanted to write romance, and this question came up. The speaker suggested they rent or buy porn videos and take notes, which could then be used as a starting point for their sex scenes.

I left the workshop with visions of suburban ladies carpooling--probably in a caravan, there is safety in numbers--into Atlanta in search of porn. I wished I could be a fly on the wall at the shop. Now, thanks to the Internet, you can do the same without venturing from the comfort of your home. But be careful, those site are often hotbeds of viruses. ;-)

 

[Carol Rose]

As long as one understands that the sex in them is over the top ridiculous. LOL!! Friction is no longer comfortable after a few minutes. You need a boatload of lube to make it so, and even then, people need to take a break to drink water or you know... pee once in a while. LOL! Plus, most (all) of the movies demean women to the max, and showcase them as nothing more than vessels. I suppose if you need inspiration for new and varied ways to insert tab A into slot B, porn will do it, but they're useless for plot or dialogue ideas. LOL!!

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I've been pondering how to include sex scenes in my next Cornish Detective novel. For the first four stories, my protagonist Chief Inspector has been a grieving widower, but an email relationship with a witness from an old murder investigation is about to catch fire when she moves back from Wyoming.

I'm not remotely embarrassed about writing about sex, having a history of composing erotic tales to order for a subscription journal back in the 1980s, and also through training as a marriage guidance counsellor. What concerns me, is potential confusion through mixing genres—crime and erotica. Then again, Jo Nesbo's detective Harry Hole is constantly shagging, wanking and thinking about sex, and the copulation is sometimes pivotal to his investigation.

One thing that I intend to do, when I get down to my characters doing the do is to make it fun! Making love should be warm, enjoyable and humorous. Porn actors look like they're having as much enjoyment as they would moving a grand piano, busting a gut with strained faces!

 

[Carol Rose]

I agree, @Paul Whybrow. It doesn't have to be all or nothing when writing sex scenes. There are far more warm, loving sex scenes in novels across genres than sex simply-for-the-sake-of scenes. Even in erotic romance novels, readers want emotion. They want a story. They want a *reason* the couple is having sex. It's not porn we're writing. It's an actual novel with story and characters arcs. If the sex scene fits the story and fits your characters, you can write it as erotic or not as you see fit. If it's genuine, it will work.

 

[James Marinero]

For example, we joke about this one a lot during Indiana RWA chapter meetings. An author, in an attempt to sneak in one more sex scene, had the hero and heroine running from the bad guys, but also has them stop to have a quickie... just because. Yeah. Right. Cause that's the first thing on *my* mind when someone is trying to kill me. LOL!!

Hope this helps answer your question.

I'm not sure that it is altogether a joke in a wider sense. The nearness of death does increase (it is said) the pressure to promulgate one's genes. This is evident in wartime, for example. There's always time for a quickie! Just think Boris Becker and the broom cupboard. OK, that was between courses.

 

[James Marinero]

One thing that I intend to do, when I get down to my characters doing the do is to make it fun! Making love should be warm, enjoyable and humorous. Porn actors look like they're having as much enjoyment as they would moving a grand piano, busting a gut with strained faces!

My Dad used to tell me that when he was a young man in the Army (1944) it was not at all unusual to see a couple making out in the corner in a dancehall. I can't imagine that being more than urgent and desperate.

 

[Howard]

One could argue that there are as many ways of writing about sex as there are ways of having sex.
Is it a passionate, desperate act of pure physicality, of urgent need, with no entangling emotion? Is it old lovers, moving comfortably through a slow, familiar dance, knowing what enjoyment lies ahead? Is it the clumsy, short-lived first encounter of young virgins, driven by little more than hormones?
It entirely comes down to the motivations and psychology of the characters, in my mind. If one wants to write a sex scene simply for the pornographic titillation, then have at it, if that is the sort of book you are writing; for anything else, the why of the sex is probably more important than the blow-by-blow (snicker) of the act.

 

[Carol Rose]

I'm not sure that it is altogether a joke in a wider sense. The nearness of death does increase (it is said) the pressure to promulgate one's genes. This is evident in wartime, for example. There's always time for a quickie! Just think Boris Becker and the broom cupboard. OK, that was between courses.

Our readers don't see it that way in the books, though.

 

[Howard]

Our readers don't see it that way in the books, though.

They don't?

 

[James Marinero]

Our readers don't see it that way in the books, though.

Like jokes, it's the way you tell them...;-)

 

[Quillwitch]

Many years ago (pre Google) I went to a writing workshop in an Atlanta suburb. Most of the other attendees were ladies who either wrote or wanted to write romance, and this question came up. The speaker suggested they rent or buy porn videos and take notes, which could then be used as a starting point for their sex scenes.

I left the workshop with visions of suburban ladies carpooling--probably in a caravan, there is safety in numbers--into Atlanta in search of porn. I wished I could be a fly on the wall at the shop. Now, thanks to the Internet, you can do the same without venturing from the comfort of your home. But be careful, those site are often hotbeds of viruses. ;-)

I´ve heard that suggestion too. And I´ve tried it. I´d say --it might work as a way to get the juice flowing ( that´s not what I meant!) And it works to an extent. I´d also say that your imagination is a lot more vivid. The videos get boring after about 5 minutes.

 

[Carol Rose]

They don't?

Not romance readers, no. Readers get quite upset when an author stops a scene like the one I described above to toss in a gratuitous sex scene.