Why might people want more sex in my writing? Why don't I?

July 15, 2015 10:37 AM

I'm no prude. But I don't like writing sex scenes. I've been told on multiple occasions that my writing suffers from a lack of detail when it comes to getting it on. Are you a writer? Did you face a similar issue? How did you resolve it?

I've read porn of all varieties and have read more high-brow stuff that has pretty raw sex in it, like Anais Nin and I'm sure more, she's just the last that comes to mind. I get that maybe nobody here has supernatural powers and can discern from this question why I have this hang up and why people think there should be more boning in my work. But has anybody had a similar experience?

But somehow, I'm leading my readers to expect sex and I don't deliver but for in a summary fashion. I need to learn either how to write about people fucking in a way that's compelling or I don't know what.

I know writers have wrestled with this a bit -- I remember Franzen bloviating about the subject at some point.

Any writer here work through this issue?

posted by angrycat to Writing & Language (20 answers total)

Just for clarification, is the problem that people are bringing up that there isn't enough sex or that the sex that is there isn't great (lack of detail, etc.)?
posted by magnetsphere at 10:42 AM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm not a writer, but I am a reader. I personally do not love reading explicit sex scenes for the most part. Obviously people differ on this point and have a range of preferences over how much detail they prefer, but I'll just say that I don't feel like you NEED explicit sex for a book to be good or to sell -- there is plenty of very popular fiction out there with either no sex or non-explicit sex.

I'm not sure exactly what your writing is like, obviously. Is it possible you're including sex scenes but making them overly vague? I do think sometimes sex scenes that feel full of weird euphamisms can feel quite awkward, and take me out of the momeny. If that's the case, have you tried just skipping the sex scenes all together? Or is it a genre issue -- like, you're writing super steamy romance novels, but then skipping the sex part, which would interfere with the expectations of the reader for that particular genre. This is probably more of an issue you need to fix, if there are strong expectations of explicit sex for your particular genre.
posted by rainbowbrite at 10:44 AM on July 15, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I think sex scenes go wrong when people decide that they should mechanically describe the action of sex in great detail. It sounds like you don't like writing detailed sex scenes because you don't feel comfortable, well, detailing the sex. But you don't actually need to do that.

Think about any other physical action scene you might describe - someone is running away in fear, or discovering the joy of sailing, or something. You would never just describe the movement of their bodies moment by moment - in fact, that would be really a weird choice in most cases. What you would instead focus on is what their senses are picking up and how they feel, both physically and emotionally.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:50 AM on July 15, 2015 [14 favorites]

Did your readers say why they wanted more detail? Did they ever ask for more detail in, say, a fight scene, or any kind of montage?
posted by Mogur at 11:06 AM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: I had an instructor who gave some pretty good advice on this. If people are asking for more detail, it's because something crucial to the story is missing. If the story requires that a character be particularly giving, or reluctant, or uncooperative, or whatever, then you'd better tell us what happened. If there's nothing revealed and nothing that advances the story, then what's the purpose of the sex scene in the first place?
posted by roll truck roll at 11:06 AM on July 15, 2015 [7 favorites]

Best answer: What's your genre, and who's telling you this?

Unless you're writing erotica (well, and even then) sex is for moving the plot forward. It's clunky as hell when the sex doesn't do that, but you can also run into sort of the opposite issue where you have an intensifying relationship between characters and then they go in their room and slam the door in the reader's face and come out later, having changed, so that the reader gets left out. You need to either keep the door open OR let them have that catalyst in some other format that's not so private - which is sometimes the more craftful solution than falling back on the shortcut of "because sex though".

Plenty of writers don't write sex well, and some of them know it so they don't, and many writers don't go there because that's not what the story is about. I agree that if people are complaining about wanting more of something, don't take their something at face value, just the wanting. There's a need they aren't getting fulfilled, but it's your job to decide what that is.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:12 AM on July 15, 2015 [8 favorites]

What are you writing? Is it a genre which conventionally has more sex scenes? Does your plot depend on some kind of sexual experience by your characters?

Who are your readers? What do they normally read?

Frankly, I read relatively little serious fiction with explicit sex in it - the kind of books that I tend to read don't really depend much on explicitly describing sexual acts. If I regularly read slash fanfic, erotica, many subgenres of romance or certain types of "literary" fiction, I might be so used to encountering the explicit that I would feel that it was missing, but that doesn't mean that it is actually missing.

What would sex scenes add to your work?
posted by Frowner at 11:15 AM on July 15, 2015

Response by poster: i guess i write lit fiction

members of my writing group are telling me this. I've heard it before as a comment on a different iteration of this piece, and the person who made that comment was quite skilled and knowledgeable, but not really accessible to me now.

I think this is sort of along the lines of what Lyn Never writes, which is that the door is pretty much closed in the reader's faces. Thinking on it, the sex is pretty sudden, and what I'm not describing well is the reasons for the changes of the motivations of one character in particular.

Which is very interesting, because I had the options were something along the lines of detail a la Penthouse Forums, and my heart was kind of sinking at the thought that I would need to write about throbbing whatever.

Thanks, folks!
posted by angrycat at 11:33 AM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Hi. I'm a book editor, and most of what I edit is romance and erotica. Definitely agreeing with the idea that if it's not straight-up erotica and/or porn, your sex scene(s) need to carry their weight in the story, just like any other scene. What does it mean for the characters? How does that meaning change before, during and/or after? What changed in the plot to make this moment happen? What changes in the plot BECAUSE they've now had sex?

Here's a blog post by author Cara McKenna from wonkomance discussing dialogue in sex scenes. It might be helpful for you. That blog, in general, also has lots of good writing about writing about romance, sex scenes, conflict, etc. (Good writing on romance is a good place to start because romance novels are explicitly about the relationship + other stuff, not about the other stuff + the relationship, if that makes sense.)

It's not that it must be explicit, or even that sex must be included in your story. But yeah, if readers are telling you're they're unsatisfied, then you have to figure out the character and conflict issues that are lacking. If they'd be solved inside a sex scene, then so be it. If they must be solved outside of a sex scene, then that's also an answer.
posted by BlahLaLa at 11:48 AM on July 15, 2015 [9 favorites]

Best answer: If the sex is an emotional event that changes the characters/plot, describe those emotions and that change. I think you can get through that without the word throbbing.
posted by French Fry at 11:48 AM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: If it really does need to be sex, draw the veil over the throbbing and all that, but rejoin the action briefly during, or just after, so you can capture the mood or the thing that gets said or the awkward shower or whatever happens to make things different from then on.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:57 AM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: There's nothing more disruptive to me as a reader as a poorly written sex scene and, unfortunately, that's how most of them are written. I'm not trying to insult your writing, only pointing out that this is where many otherwise skilled writers fail spectacularly. There are lots of ways to get things done in a story without adding in a ham-fisted sex scene.
posted by quince at 11:58 AM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: I read and write about sex a lot (and a lot more about not-sex, but that's less relevant to your question). My general feeling is that sex scenes, if they're going to be present in a piece, need to contribute to the work as a whole. They can do important character work, contribute to the story, create nuance or changes in a relationship, or just turn the reader on. All of those things can be important to your writing, but all of those effects (even the last!) can be reached without a sex scene.

If you're including a sex scene of sorts in your writing, and effectively letting the room go dark on your reader, and if that reader is asking you for more from the sex scene, I'd suggest that maybe you're asking that implied sex to do work that it just can't do without some more attention to detail. That doesn't mean you have to get comfortable with sex writing: it just means you should find other ways to hit whatever that target is that you're missing.
posted by libraritarian at 1:20 PM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: I hate writing and reading sex scenes. The way I see it, the reader needs to know who did what with whom, but not which bit went where. I linger on the build up, then throw in a symbolic end of scene (a door slams, a dress slides to the floor, whatever) and then the next thing we know the characters are waking up the next day. Or maybe one of them is lying awake looking worried. Or in the bathroom scrubbing themselves raw. That should tell you all you need to know about the sex went. If you want titillating detail I think you should just get some porno and be done with it.
posted by intensitymultiply at 1:30 PM on July 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: As a reader and writer of smutty things it's my opinion that a well-written sex scene is all about the climax. Not the orgasm- I mean the high point of a scene, a chapter, or even the whole story. It seems that your audience feels they are being bait-and-switched. Does all the action lead up to a climactic sex scene or is the climax something that takes place after it? If the sex scene happens at the height of the narrative tension then the reader is going to expect that that's it- that's the payoff (and be subsequently disappointed when it's not).

Even in something erotic the climactic bit could be a breathless admission of desire, the hero finally making a decision to act, a heated argument that resolves a conflict- and the sex itself might be a big purple footnote for the audience to enjoy at their leisure.

If the sex isn't the important part then you might simply need to change something about your timing/pacing in order to let your audience know that there's something more important going on than two characters bumping uglies.
posted by contemporarySlob at 1:48 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: I think workshops and writing groups are really useful, but they also frequently generalize from what's written in the rest of the group. It's possible that your stories are writing sex checks that they can't cash, but it's also possible that they just have ideas that are different from yours about the function of sex in writing.

I am for the most part really deferential in workshops, because I don't assume I'm any better than the rest of the writers there. But I do always try to contextualize constructive criticism within the writing of the people who are giving it. In your case, then: How do you feel about the sex scenes in their stories?

If you find them really vital and important, think about what functions they could serve in your work. If you find them really extraneous and distracting, well, you might just have fundamentally different ideas about good writing. That doesn't mean you're right, but it's important to know before you end up with a story that functions like one of yours except with a vestigial sex scene from somebody else's conception of lit fiction bolted onto it.
posted by Polycarp at 2:00 PM on July 15, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm a writer and a reader of literary fiction, and unless you're writing erotica, in which case, yes, this is something you need to work on, you don't need to work on this. On the other hand, if you'd like to be able to write confidently and well about sex, then study how writers you admire do it. Many don't, of course. But you might read the magnificent library scene in Ian McEwan's Atonement. Or read The Human Stain by Philip Roth, which has some sex scenes in it, as I recall. But really, if you don't want to write explicit sex scenes, try to get at what's underneath them, which is more interesting for the reader anyway.
posted by swheatie at 5:01 PM on July 15, 2015

Best answer: Let me introduce you to Jennifer Crusie and her thoughts on this topic.

"My advice there–and this won’t be new to longtime readers of the blog–is “Don’t write sex scenes.” Instead write scenes that move plot and arc character, and if those characters are having sex, have at it. If you write a scene in which the characters have sex but the plot stays in the same place and they’re the same people after the scene that they were before, cut it. The sex in that case is garbaging up your story in the same way too much story can garbage up the erotic part of erotica. Decide what you’re doing and focus on that."

" How much sex a story needs depends on what happens during the plot and what happens during the plot depends on the kind of characters whose actions are driving the plot. Character is the reason the sexiest scenes may have no sex in them at all, while some explicit sex scenes are about as erotic as a shopping list. That’s because actions without context have no emotional impact; that is, unless you’re invested in a character who’s invested in the action and who is experiencing emotion because of that action, you can write detailed sex scenes that leave your reader yawning. But if your character is invested emotionally in the action, and if that action does change her, then your reader will be affected by that action, too, so you can write vanilla sex scenes with very few details that have a highly erotic charge because your reader is invested. A single glance across a room or a brief kiss can be hotter than a stereo-instructions-insert-Part-A-into-Part-B explicit sexscene because of the emotional impact on the reader.

That means that the key to writing sex scenes in romance is to write what your characters feels, not what she’s doing. Anybody who’s reading your book has either had sex or seen it on cable TV; she does not need instructions. What she wants is what every reader in every book wants: to experience the story through the protagonist, see what she sees, feel what she feels, become a part of the story vicariously. Adding detail can make a sex scene less arousing because it undercuts reality. "

posted by jenfullmoon at 5:47 PM on July 15, 2015 [3 favorites]

For many people the sex scene is the payoff for the romance. It's like you were writing about a long lost child finally being reunited with the desperate parent.... and then not actually showing the scene, ending the story by drawing back so that you draw a veil over a scene so filled with tender emotion, dear reader. Ending in the wrong place makes your reader sit up and howl, "Why did you end it there!?"

Sex scenes need to be written the same way as any good writing. That is no unnecessary detail. We know it goes in and out or up and down, so you don't need to write each in and out any more than you need to write that on getting out of the car your hero shut the vehicle door, the door latched and it locked automatically. Besides, a close description of biological hydraulics becomes an-erotic.

The exception to this is porn (erotica) when repetition is used to increase the sexual tension. "The cocks were big. The cocks were fat. The cocks were red, swollen and stiff ." You get to depersonalize the participants.

You need to use the right vocabulary. If the rest of your hard boiled novel is peppered with "Fuck!" "Some cocksucker..." and "Bust a cap in his ass," then those words belong in your sex scene. One the other hand if you are writing a novella about Miss Marple and a gay couple have been outed with the label of having a relationship that is "... not entirely wholesome" then your four letter Anglo-Saxon and Dutch derived words have no place in the bedroom either.

Similarly, "the moist core of her femininity" has no place in their sex scene unless the rest of the story has been written in emotive euphemisms at which point the poor male has a manhood rather than a prick.

You need to keep the same pacing as the rest of the story. If the sex scene takes place during five minutes, then it should take roughly the same number of words as any other five minutes of action.

You need to zero in on the details that are universal, specific and convey the emotion your characters are feeling. Sex can be comforting, alienating, uneasy, a relief, embarrassing, languid, silly, sensual or any other mood. So write with words that convey the mood of that particular bout. Sex is not always just a blast of mutual horniness that results in intimate almost telepathic bonding. If you describe it that way you are not going for suspension of disbelief only for the continuation of a myth about what sex is supposed to be like. Which you might want to do, if your story is wish fulfillment fantasy where your heroine is the most beautiful woman at the ball.

For erotica describe the erogenous organs. For erotica describe the orgasm(s) For non-erotica describe the people. In erotica (porn) your participants get reduced to their sexual parts. In non-porn you bring in the idiosyncrasies: her death grip on his collar bones, the sequins of sweat that glitter on the side of his neck, a smell like compost on the forest floor, the prickling of tiny hairs that were invisible until they stand up with the shudder that travels down her body with the passing of his hand, huffing breaths, a smile that spreads unguarded, impossibly wide.

It is possible that you don't like writing sex scenes because you are writing for the emotional payoff rather than the erotic payoff. In that case your payoff make come without sex either when she saves his life, or he admits to the ILY, or because for you abstention and denial are part of your writing repertoire. In that case it's not that your sex scenes are wanting but that your readers have missed the fact that in your story the sex is unnecessary or undesirable. You would far rather than he continues to burn with unrequited passion. It wasn't a build up, but a character study. In that case some of your readers will never be happy but you need to make it plain that you don't want to actually have that sex scene so you substitute a strong scene where you underline the hopelessness "farewell - it can never be!' or the depths of his renunciation where he groans alone, "Never, never. I will not. I must not!" and then he gets on a train and goes to the front to make sure he doesn't break his vow.

Okay, my prose has gotten emotive and awful but I was trying to be obvious.

As an exercise try writing a few pornographic descriptions of sex. It may be that you are being mealy mouthed due to lack of practice, or you may discover that there are particular themes or words that turn you off and all you need to do is write sex scenes without using the word ass, or to write your scene so that the female takes the lead and there are no possible non-consensual elements.
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:50 AM on July 16, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's a lot of good and varied advice here that I'm not going to add to. But I hope you won't mind if I link to a relevant cartoon from Posy Simmonds's wonderful book Literary life, originally published as a series in The Guardian back in 2003. It's quite lo-res: when it was published, newspaper websites were presumably watching their bandwidth a bit more carefully than they need to today. (The book is worth reading for any aspiring writer, or for that matter anyone who cares about books.)
posted by lapsangsouchong at 11:09 AM on July 17, 2015