Tips on writing sex scenes

 Yes, this is a bit tongue-in-cheek, or tongue in someone else’s cheek to borrow a well-worn witticism. This arose from reading an interview by Benjamin Law (Aussie writer) of Pulitzer-prize winning author, Viet Thanh Nguyen, who briefly discussed writing sex scenes. He gives this advice: 

Not being utterly male-centred, if you happen to be a man or masculine. Not being too vulgar. Don’t be too florid. And humour always helps.

 

Many years ago (over a decade) I attended a writers’ convention, where there are always a lot of panel discussions, and there was one on ‘How to write sex scenes’, which was appropriately entertaining and unsurprisingly well attended.

 

Even longer ago, when I attempted to write my first novel, with utterly no experience or tuition, just blindly diving in the deep end, there was the possibility of a sex scene and I chickened out. The entire opus was terrible, but over about 3 years and 3 drafts I taught myself to write. I sent it to a scrip-assessor, who was honest and unflattering. But one of the things I remember is that she criticised me for avoiding the sex scene. I was determined to fix that in subsequent attempts. I still have a hard copy of that manuscript, by the way, to remind myself of how badly I can write.

 

But there are a couple of things I remember from that particular panel discussion (including a husband and wife team on the panel). Someone asked for a definition of pornography, and someone answered: the difference between erotica and pornography is that one you don’t admit to reading (or watching, as is more often the case). So, it’s totally subjective.

 

The first editor (a woman) of ELVENE, took offense at the first sex scene. I promptly sent the manuscript to 2 women friends for second and third opinions. Anyway, I think that you’ll invariably offend someone, and the only sure way to avoid that is to have all the sex happen off the page. Some writers do that, and sometimes I do it myself. Why? I think it depends on where it sits in the story, and is it really necessary to describe every sexual encounter between 2 characters, who start doing it regularly?

 

The other thing I remember from that panel is someone explaining how important it was to describe it from one of the character’s points of view. If you describe it from the POV of a ‘third party’, you risk throwing the reader out of the story. I contend that the entire story should be told from a character’s POV, though you can change characters, even within the same scene. The obvious analogy is with dialogue. You rarely change POV in dialogue, though it’s not a hard and fast rule. In other words, the reader’s perspective invariably involves speaking and listening from just one POV, as if they were in the conversation. The POV could be male or female - it’s irrelevant - but it’s usually the protagonist. I take the same approach to sex scenes. It’s risky for a man to take a woman’s POV in a sex scene, but I’ve done it many times. 

 

I often take the POV of the ‘active’ partner, and the reader learns what the other partner is experiencing second-hand so to speak. It generally means that the orgasm is described from the other partner’s perspective which makes it a lot easier. If they come in unison, I make sure the other one comes fractionally first.

 

I don’t write overlong sex scenes, because they become boring. Mine are generally a page long, including all the carryon that happens beforehand, which is not intentional, just happenstance. I wrote a review of Cory Doctorow’s sci-fi novel, Walkaway, a novel (full title) which has a number of heavy sex scenes which I did find boring, but that probably says more about me than the author. I’m sure there are readers who find my sex scenes ‘heavy’ and possibly boring as well. 

 

I have some rules of my own. They are an interlude yet they should always serve the story. They tell us something about the characters and they invariably have consequences, which are often positive, but not necessarily so. There is always a psychological component and my approach is that you can’t separate the psychological from the physical. They change the character and they change the dynamic of a relationship. Some of my characters appear celibate, but you find them in real life too.

 

I take the approach that fiction is a combination of fantasy and reality and the mixture varies from genre to genre and even author to author. So, in this context, the physical is fantasy and the psychological is reality.

 

One should never say ‘never’, but I couldn’t imagine writing a rape scene or someone being tortured, though I’ve seen such scenes on Scan-noir TV. However, I’ve written scenes involving sexual exploitation, to both men and women, and, in those cases, they were central to the story.

 

Lastly, I often have to tell people that I’m not in the story. I don’t describe my personal sex-life, and I expect that goes for other writers too.