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

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

I've tried getting into the Anita Blake books, but they don't do anything for me.

They don't do all that much for me, either. I'm a very reluctant Anita fan; I read Narcissus in Chains (like the tenth book) first and enjoyed it well enough, but then went back and tried to start at the beginning, and spent way too much time being annoyed; there are things about Anita's character that make me want to smash her skull with a tire iron on a regular basis, and they are more prevalent in the early books than in the later ones. I'm all for character growth, but sheesh -- get over it, already. Whiny bitch.

I just wanted to point out that the phenomenon itself, with which I don't much identify personally, points to an enormous reader population that DOES like it spelled out for them. :-)

Maybe my brain just lacks the erotica receptor.

I suspect you just have a much more well-developed imagination than many people, and you hang with enough similar people that your perspective on the imaginitive skills of the general populace has gotten a bit skewed. :-)

Who do you think writes the very best sex scenes?

I don't think I'm remotely the best person to answer this. I don't get enough new reading in these days, and haven't for ages. When I shamefacedly confess how fond I am of Hamilton's Merry Gentry series, as opposed to the Anita Blake books, I have to do it with all sorts of caveats: yes, the writing is sometimes Not Good to the point that I want to shoot her editor and then beat her with a stick; yes, the last book didn't even cover an entire day of real time; yes, there are Many Annoying Things. But they're still an awful lot of fun: they're told from the perspective of the Unseelie Court [and while we know the real Court isn't actually split in that way, it's nice to see the legends addressed from the other side of the mirror; the underlying mood is right on], the magic is interesting, the sex scenes are many and plenty kinky without being all leather-and-whips in ways that bore me, and she nicely captures some of my taste in men, and describes them very, very well. (Bring me the elf-boys with hair down to their knees, one by one or multiple, and I'm a happy boy. :-) That's not my only taste, but it's certainly high on the list.

The other casual reading I've been doing in the last year has been more in the same genre, because that's what people keep bringing into the house, and we keep passing them back and forth, and I can't afford new books right now anyway. Mary Davidson, Kim Harrison, etc. -- there's a level on which they're all Hamilton clones, really, and for that matter, they're all just downstream a generation from Anne Rice. But hey, they're fun, and they have lots of verbal "eye candy". But there must BE better writers of erotic scenes in the world, surely.

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

LOL!!!
I like her Unseelie Folk as well. They are very entertaining. (I must tell you, however, that the long haired elf boys, while adorable, tend to be fairly lousy at pretending to be Human. They stink at things like money, remembering to take out the garbage, and generally being anything other than Lost Boys in need of a Wendy... I have one. catpaw67 has one. I'd offer you a loan, but I think they're both het....

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not so hot at money, either, or the garbage, so I can't talk. In terms of "traditional household roles," I'm good at cooking, cleaning (although I tend not to clean when I live alone because I'm too easily distracted -- but when I live with others, I'll clean just about anything as long as I can have my super-duper gloves on, I just can't be bothered to actually LEAVE THE HOUSE with the garbage :-), and a number of other wife/consort sort of things, but I'm just not very practical about money stuff.

And anyway I didn't say I wanted to MARRY one. >>:-)

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Smirks....
They follow you home like stray cats and ask to stay!
(In fact, mine actually had coveralls from when he worked as a mechanic embroidered with "Stray"!)
I always think of the character in the Merry Gentry books who was born of the Sidhe who had been spelled into feline shape when I see my Mate.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

Your descriptions of the things that annoy you are delighting me. I'm imagining how readers will talk about my books. Well, Avery gets self-indulgent with the assonance and alliteration, and sometimes I want to smack her around with a copy of Beowulf and tell her, if she wants to write poetry, to go write poetry, but aside from that, it was mostly a ripping read.

So, Kim Harrison doesn't suck? The cover art on her books really bugs me for some reason, but I keep hearing my friends talk about reading her.

Elf boys with hair down to their knees? Duly noted.

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

re: Harrison -- the first one was okay, a bit slow going at first but it kinda grew on me. Picked up the second because there was nothing else to read, and about halfway through, I realized she actually had me hooked and I was genuinely enjoying them.

Yes, the covers are shitty.

Now, for pure FUN, the Davidsons are really quite good. And they're set in Minneapolis, so lots of fun for us. Fun in general, really. And better writing, in terms of craftsmanship, than the Hamilton stuff. I *never* want to throw the Davidson books against the wall for sloppy editing or poor turns of phrase.