The Reason I Avoid Writing Sex Scenes

[dr_pretentious]

What amazes me about having written 3053 words today is that I had several 3K days last November. How on earth did I do it?

Only 7684 words to go. How that will fit into two more days, I have no idea.

42,316 / 50,000 (84.6%)

For the first time, I have written a sex scene that is more than one sentence long. I'm too tired to reopen the file and count, but I would guess that the sex scene in question takes up maybe five or six sentences.

As a matter of general principle, I think one sentence is about the right length for a sex scene, since no writer can titillate the reader's mind as perfectly as the reader can titillate it for herself. If readers didn't prefer to imagine sex scenes for themselves, entirely unfettered by whatever the author has put on the page, there wouldn't be so very much fanfic out there.

Comments

flaw

[cthulhia]

That sexy fan fic has such an audience (i.e., not just the person who wrote it) suggests that readers don't want just their own imagination, they want the voyeurism of reading other people's sex fantasies. (And perhaps the guidance of finding out what other people find sexy.)

A sentence is probably too short. A chapter is probably too long.

Dialogue is likely pretty important, since it's a more effective way of getting the reader into the characters' heads than just observing them get it on.

Re: flaw

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

what you said.

with one additional comment: the more ink spilled on a particular topic, the more a story is about that topic.

Re: flaw

[cthulhia]

well, sex is already a major part of the book.

It's a career choice for some major characters.

It certainly is, in the mind of some, the entire point of the well-named month prior to journeyman.

That one social group has a more relaxed attitude (per sex outside a legal relationship) than a "traditionalist" group causes a Major Plot Point.

Re: flaw

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Sex is important in the Big Book, and it's looking like I will have no choice but to put more of it on stage in Big Book Volume 2, once a certain character is established at the College of Courtesans. I guess I'd better get good at writing sex. Considering that I taught myself to write violent scenes that don't suck despite my having almost no experience of violence, it can't be all that hard to learn to write sex scenes. After all, it's not an accident that I've been married to the same person for 12 years.

Sex isn't quite as central to events in the Little Book, but then the Little Book compensates by having far more on-stage violence than the Big Book does.

The thing is, the sex in the Big Book is as much a result or expression of some other issue as it is an act in itself. The characters worry about things like, What is my proper work in the world? Who can I include in my family? What would it mean to be free? Sex impinges on all those things, but the book itself is more about stuff like right livelihood, the bonds of biological and chosen kinship, and liberty than it is about sex.