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.

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

I have to do just over 2000 words each tonight and tomorrow. Last night was lost to Banging Headache (the horrible chesty cold has decided it likes my sinuses now), but I have done NaNoWriMo twice before, and never come anywhere near finishing. I told my parents that if I can do this, I can definitely write a novel; whether it's something anyone else would ever want to read is an entirely different thing, but I reckon it can be done. Dad said, "So, you could crank out a novel every 3 months!" And laughed when he saw my expression. But they're very excited, and now I throw some of their excitement at you: Go, You! And promise me, promise me I can read it when it's done. I have been sans Beltresa Crack for too long.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

As a reader (who also has written some fanfic) I have to say that I *like* sex scenes in books. My complaint is often about the fade=to-black. I want more!

(And ALL fanfic isn't about sex. Just 75% of it.)

[onyxtwilight.livejournal.com]

The Anita Blake phenomenon provides a great deal of evidence arguing against your conclusion. Just sayin'. >:-)

Me, I like erotica, and erotic scenes in regular books. I like to let other people's words paint the scene sometimes. :-)

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.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

You're going to finish this year. 2K per night for 2 nights is doable.

I met a woman in Seattle who cranks out an 80K novel every month. She's selling them, too, and you can find them on the shelves of the big chain bookstores around my town. I don't know if they're any good, but I know I wouldn't want to write that fast.

One novel a year is perfectly respectable by anyone's standard. One novel in two years is quite reasonable. You're going to finish this one, and if the fragments you sent me the first time around are any indication, the finished product will be loads of fun. Any novel with formerly vegan vampires struggling to uphold as undead the principles they ascribed to in life is a novel that knows how to laugh at its genre conventions.

The moment I have a complete working draft, I'll be shipping it out to you, warts and all. Shall we exchange prisoners? Because I want to see what Alys gets up to.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

It's my loss, really, that I find most sex scenes in fiction so dull. If I found a writer of fiction--any writer of fiction--whose sex scenes I admired from the point of view of craftsmanship, I would dread less the prospect of having to write such scenes myself.

Who writes the sex scenes you like best? I have tried, in a halfhearted kind of way, to find writers who write sex scenes that entertain me, with no luck at all. Every time my search strikes out, my motivation to keep looking diminishes. I guess this is my tiny glimmer of what my unhappily single friends are going through in their searches for mates. Such scenes manifestly exist in films. I wish I knew why print's different for me.

It's not that I don't imagine sex scenes for my characters when I'm writing. There were times in the writing of the Big Book when I thought about nothing else, for days or weeks at a stretch. If I could believe in my heart of hearts that there actually was such a thing as an entertaining sex scene, I'd try putting more of that stuff on the page.

It's just that, when I'm reading other people's novels and I come to a sex scene, their stories stop dead, and I'm bored bored bored with what they imagine will titillate me, and usually nothing is happening in the sex scene but sex. Even if they've somehow threaded some plot through the sex scene, I spend the whole scene thinking about how much more entertainingly they could have presented the same bit of plot in some other way. There are two options--skim ahead and hope the story starts up again when the tedious heavy breathing is over, or abandon the book and pick up another in the hope that there's not a lot of blow-by-blow choreography of coitus cluttering up the plot. Usually I skim, but there are authors I've given up on permanently because of the sex clutter problem.

Maybe it's that I'm waiting to see anyone write sex that sounds better than the sex I have in my actual life. Apparently that's a high standard to meet.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

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

I managed to limp through Kushiel's Dart because I was about to be on the volunteer staff of a very small writing conference where Jacqueline Carey was going to be guest of honor, and I wanted to know enough about her work to be gracious. I have to say, Carey managed to keep the plot threaded through the sex scenes so that I couldn't just skip ahead, so she was doing something right. She had enough moxie in other aspects of her writing, I ended up reading the other two books in the series, which I would not have predicted would happen when I started the first volume. Still, other readers connected with those novels in ways I'm just blind to. Other readers wanted more; I was relieved when it was over, because I was ready to be done watching characters get flogged and cut up as the price of admission for watching the court intrigue.

Sometimes I wonder if it's like the way evilbunny gets no analgesic benefit from opiates. Maybe my brain just lacks the erotica receptor.

Who do you think writes the very best sex scenes? Sooner or later, I'll have to find a writer I'll want to learn this from.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

My last wild guess (Maybe it's that I'm waiting to see anyone write sex that sounds better than the sex I have in my actual life. Apparently that's a high standard to meet.) can't be the explanation, either, of course. The erotica afficionados I know don't seem any less happy in their love lives than I am in mine.

Is a puzzlement.

[calene.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not that you lack the erotic receptor. Maybe the specific factor that turns you on, personally, is missing from most sex scenes because it's different from what your average person finds erotic?

I don't know. I know I don't get a whole lot out of most sex scenes in novels either, but some movies can be different. The closest thing I can see as a reason for me is that most sex scenes in novels just lack the certain level of intense intimacy that gets me going. It's not so much about the choreography or visuals for me; it's about that certain connection some people get when they're together. Perhaps, it's the whole "chemistry" thing. Or maybe I'm totally full of crap (and pain killers right now lol.)

[vgnwtch.livejournal.com]

Well, Alys isn't in this one. It seems that Violet's story doesn't want to be finished yet, but this one is, I think, set in the same city around the same time. I have a sneaking feeling that when I've done this one, Violet will turn up. She might even turn up as one of the background characters in this. So we'll see how that plays out.

I will definitely exchange my raw 50000 for yours :D

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

I dislike vanilla erotica... I find myself going "la la la are we there yet?" I like Kushiel's Dart because I found myself identifying with the characters. (I lusted Melisande and I identified at times with Phedre... Well, duh.) I think you lack kink receptors like evilbunny lacks opiate receptors.... LOL!
Anyway - Yes, there has to be more there than the sex, or it is boring. There has to be some plot point, or power dynamic or forward movement.

[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]

When you say raw 50K, do you mean you want to see it entirely as is, complete with my bracketed fix-this notes [WHICH ARE OFTEN IN ALL CAPS SO I CAN SEE THEM, WITH THE RESULT THAT IT LOOKS LIKE I'M SHOUTING AT MYSELF][or else they're all in lower-case, because i got sick of looking like i was shouting at myself, and they kind of ramble, like the time i got distracted because renee had made her word count at the table right next to mine, so congratulating her snuck into what i was typing...]

I'll send you the raw 50K if you really can't wait, but a person has a right to know what she's getting into. Raw is raw.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

The lack of kink receptors is a hypothesis I've considered, but there's plenty of kink in Carol Queen's essays. Anyone who thought feminism was sex-negative can be referred to Real Live Nude Girl for a wake-up call. You'd think that fiction could be more engaging on that level than mediations on sexual politics, but apparently not.

[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.

[dr-pretentious.livejournal.com]

I think the lack of intimacy was one of the things that made the sex scenes in Jacqueline Carey's books uninteresting. The characters were getting it on because the protagonist was, um, pumping her clients for information. On the one hand, that made the sex scenes plot-crucial, but on the other hand, it made the relationship between the characters who were getting it on an instrumental relationship rather than an intimate one.

Hope the painkillers are working.

[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.

[calene.livejournal.com]

Aye, I had a similar response to her books for the same reason. It also felt like she was pulling her punches in a lot of places that could have been the most powerful, but that's another topic entirely, I think.

Thanks. The painkillers did work well that day.

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