On Writing Sex Scene
The bad news is that, sometimes, you have to get them to that point of sexual one-two-three go, go through the whole event, and figure out (as in life) how to negotiate the post-coital landscape. Unless you are writing erotica or pornography where the point is only to titillate and even if you are writing a sex-saturated romance novel, you need to worry about plot, character, and theme. Will love win out? Will they ever see each other again? Do they like each other? What's going to happen to their relationship now?
And worse, how to write the things that are of the body � internal, visceral sensations and emotions � in English? Or, for that matter, any language (what is the word for vagina in Spanish anyway?) How to label the body parts and the actions and bodily fluids that no one really likes to talk about anyway, except with a girlfriend and even then, sometimes you get the, "Wow! That was TMI!�
I have read some sex scenes that have made me want to spit up my morning orange juice. The terms that some writers give to body parts boggles my imagination. The worst I�ve ever read was "silken purse." Are we in the Victorian era? Vagina is a difficult word to use except at the gynecologist office but silken purse? And let us not get started on the male member. Penis is a clinical term as well, and it isn't a word people often articulate in the throes of passion. But man pole? Throbbing "shaft . . . member . . . man-ness� is pretty ridiculous as well.
So here's my take. You don't have to label any of those terms. You don't have to describe the stages of arousal and orgasm to convey sex fully and wonderfully had. You just write about the body. What does this coupling, this touch, this person, this sensation "feel" like inside your character? In the chest and heart and belly. What does the air around the skin feel like? What are the thoughts in the mind, the colors, the memories that come to the character as the sex act commences?
The movement is in the act of touching and being with another person, not the blow-by-blow (no pun intended) of the act itself. Yes, there is usually a goal to lovemaking in a literal sense, but there is this symbolic union, the bringing together (even if it is for a short and solo time) of two people. What does that represent to the relationship, to the narrative, to the story?
All sex scenes need to forward the theme of the story, the development of the characters, the arc of the plot. There is a purpose for the sex, not just a need to put a sex scene into the story because it's page 45 and about damn time.
We tend to get mystical about sex in life and on the page, imagining that this fundamental human act symbolizes our hopes and dreams. We tend not to write well about hopes and dreams, either. As Elizabeth Benedict states in her book The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers:
�when we sit down to write a sex scene, our circuits can jam, our feelings of self-consciousness can surge, and we might as well be beginning writers of English as a second language.
Basically, her idea is that good writing is good writing. Sex is the basis of character exploration and forwarding plot. So, do all that the way you do anything in fiction: with detail, specifics, emotion and sensations. Benedict has four rules for sex scenes and she presents them early on. The following two really help us focus on character development and the writing itself:
A good sex scene is not always about good sex but it is always an example of good writing.
The relationship your characters have to each other�whether they are adulterers or strangers on a train is critical to what happens in a sex scene.
When I decided to try my hand at romance writing, I swore I would not wander into the land of the gigantic male bits and bobs and strangely euphemistic female parts. I would not have my characters� sex erupt like a nuclear explosion, changing the course of all known history. I read a few such sex scenes and one, unfortunately, stuck. While I can�t remember the writer or the book, I do recall that the sex act occurred on a run-away stallion (anyone for a metaphor?) The hero and heroine were supposedly having the most amazing sex of their lives while this horse went full tilt down some mountain. I almost fell off my chair with laughter. The couple ended up at some frozen lake, snow everywhere, and still managed to have the most mind-blowing sex of all time. A few times. In the snow. With the horse looking on. Listen, I can�t even stay on a horse, so the idea of managing multiple orgasms while a horse runs away just about had me calling the Guinness Book of World Records.
So my tack was this. Stay with the plot and stay with the emotions and sensations. While in a romance, the hero and heroine have to end up together, but it doesn�t have to be a circus act. The sex arrives out of their potential or growing connection.
And then�stay �in� the body. Don�t focus on the body itself. As I mentioned earlier, we don�t have to look at the parts, rather, we want to feel or sense the parts. And sex doesn�t have to be in the genitals but can be in fingers and rib cages and toes. Things don�t have to be literally explained either. As one writing teacher told me, avoid fluids. I am big on avoiding fluids. There are enough fluids everywhere, so can we please stay with the emotions and sensations?
In some stories, the sex isn�t always good. The emotions aren�t always wonderful. Bad sex has its place in literary fiction. When characters have bad sex, it helps explain what is going on with them in the story. It shows their inability to connect.
One scene that I really liked in the last Sex and the City film is when Miranda is having sex with her husband, Steve. They are enjoying it, and she says, �Can�t we just get it over with?� Wow. Talk about a bucket of water. But, it worked well to show how their relationship was moving along. Or not moving, literally.
So in a nutshell: Use the characters and the plot to inform the type of sex scene you write. Stay in the body, don�t focus on the body. Try using alternative body parts to explain the sex. It�s not all about part A fits into part B. Avoid fluids, stay with the emotions and the senses. Make the sex reflect, in a realistic manner, the relationship that the characters have with each other.
Now, some recommended reading. The sex scenes from these following novels are diverse and informative � good case studies for all writers. You will see how writers use sex to present powerful themes and ideas, and/or how writers use the sex act to excite us.
But first, a tidbit from Wicked, a romance novel by Susan Johnson. The aim of this story is to titillate. I use it not to make fun of the genre, the writer, or the story, but to show you how the function of this sex scene is to arouse the reader. By using known terms, moves, language, and gender roles, see how this couple�s coupling lends itself not to plot put to a rapidly beating reader�s heart:
A man of finesse, he knew how to sharpen that fine edge of feeling, to intensify her quivering ecstasy. Sliding his hand up her thigh, he touched the pale silky hair of her mons, his fingers slipping downward, delicately stroking the satiny tissue of her labia.
"Can you feel me?" he murmured, his question rhetorical with his fingers in two of her orifices. "Or is this better?" he asked, slipping a second finger deep into her throbbing cleft.
�Or this?" he added over her low moan of pleasure, forcing a third finger inside.
Salacious feeling overwhelmed her, so violent and unrestrained she bit down hard on his finger.
We can feel the �sliding his hand up her thigh.� His fingers slip downward. Ohhh,
We think. But here we have the part problem. The mons. The labia. Pretty clinical. But then the question: �Can you feel me?� Yes indeed. We leave science and learn about her �throbbing cleft.� But the low moan of pleasure (a known moan, I say) brings us back to the sex at hand, quite literally. This sex scene goes on for pages. The point of this book is the sex, and as such, the story does its job. The focus is not the character development or the themes.
In the following examples, you will see how sex works as Benedict earlier proscribed in her rules.
This next sex scene from A.S. Byatt�s novel The Virgin in the Garden shows sex at its most ordinary and human. Ed even evokes the old hand on the fly front move. The characters clunk about the scene but still are excited and aroused. It�s the kind of scene we might hope would end quickly if we were watching a movie, but as readers, we are allowed a window into this relationship, never mind we might wish the window had blinds. Here goes:
"Comfy?" he enquired. "More or less."
"Better if you relax a bit and lie down." She lay down.
"Good girl," he said, and humped his body over to hers. He threw one leg over hers and applied his face to her face, kissing, pecking, with hot, firm, dry lips, every bit of it, brow, cheeks, closed eyelids, chin, lips. He had a kind of daemonic proficiency, he had entered upon the performance of a routine technique. After a certain time spent on this dry kissing he began to apply himself simply to her mouth, nipping it, with lips, with teeth, rubbing it sideways, finally pushing it open with his tongue, which seemed monstrously huge, round and swollen, breathing nicotine, beer and tea. Their teeth clashed and jarred.
Frederica tried to twist away, which increased his activity, he clamped her close with one arm and lifted the weight of his body onto hers. She felt his hard front pressing on her, rubbing, rubbing, and her own tongue, curled back in retreat, relaxed momentarily and brushed his, which caused her to quiver with anxiety, revulsion, and the persistent and appalling anonymous curiosity. Perhaps he was a sex maniac. She should have thought.
At this point he ran his hand up her leg, inside her skirt, as far as her thick school knickers. These he began to rub as efficiently as he was rubbing her face. Frederica wanted to twist away in embarrassment or revulsion. I shall go mad, she thought, I have got to know and I can't stand it. It doesn't matter how you get to know, it has got not to matter.
She tried to close her legs, to say no, but her mouth was occupied, her pelvis weighted, and the busy hand was slowly moving round to the inside of her knickers which was, to her intense embarrassment, becoming. hot and wet. It was strange: the more she disliked the whole business, the more a kind of automatic greed in her body took over, so that it rose of its own accord to meet, to invite the intrusive fingers so that when finally, he thrust two of them into her she twisted in anguish on them, convulsed by something, and tears started to her eyes.
She imagined those working fingers, blunt, unknown, nicotine stained, not too clean, and went wild with contrary passions, biting back at the biting mouth, arching her body, flinging up an arm to beat at or caress the wiry hair which turned out to be, in fact, baby-soft and giving. Her dress was thrown up and her legs were both cold and wet. It occurred to her to wonder what if she were to want to pee, and this thought stilled her. Ed then took her hand and guided it gently to his fly front.
There�s nothing romantic here but need and desire. And look at the language. Some of the words alone threaten to pull us right out of the mood: humped, pecking, proficiency, clashed, jarred, and so on. There�s nothing �sexy� about it, but Byatt stays with Frederica, allows her character her disgusted feelings (regardless of how unsexy they are) and finishes the scene, both the characters and their relationship more developed.
In Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley, we see how sex is power and lust and abuse. Nathan, who has been abused by his father, and Roy, a neighbor boy barely aware of his own sexuality, have sex. There has been some foreplay, flirtation, touching, but this is the first sex they have. Nathan is afraid to show his experience, seeing is how he arrived by it through abusive means, but also his experience is his way of leading Roy toward him:
Suddenly Nathan feels older than Roy, and from within him comes some force in answer to Roy�s fear. He moves with surety, kissing Roy�s face, reaching for Roy�s shirt, making each motion easy and gentle, what he understand will answer Roy�s need. Nathan leads Roy quietly in the car. The passenger cabin offers the most protection they have ever had.
It is a gamble. Nathan must never reach for too much, he has learned better. The trick is to gain access to the knowledge he has stored inside, without remembering how it got there. To move in a way he knows will please Roy without revealing the knowledge, which has a source. The motion of their bodies becomes a balancing act. They have abandoned most of their clothes and Roy is lost in the sensation of Nathan. Nathan has been kissing Roy�s cock with his mouth but then rises over it and presses it against his buttocks. Roy groans in surprise as Nathan guides him inside and they finish in violence, straining and sour.
Because the narrative voice is slow and clear, words like �cock� and �buttocks� don�t pull us out of the scene. But, even with these two words, the scene isn�t graphic. We are given insight into Roy�s thoughts, his motivations, which go beyond sex. We stay with the sex, the scene, and with this young couple as they head into their story.
This small portion of Beloved by Toni Morrison presents a clear moment of sensual feeling after Sethe and Paul D have sex for the first time. Here�s how Morrison writes about their coupling.
It was over before they could get their clothes off. Half-dressed and short of breath, they lay side by side resentful of one another and the skylight above them.
But moments later, Sethe contemplates her long-ago marriage to Halle and their first sex. She and Halle made love in the corn fields as the other slave men (Paul D among them) watched the rustling corn stalks. This small scene reveals Sethe�s and Paul D�s memories, both intermixed, bot full of longing and sensation and anticipation. Also, we see how sex is equated with freedom, which neither of these characters had at the time.
. . . she remembered that some of the corn stalks broke, folded down over Halle�s
Back, and among the things her fingers clutched were husk and cornsilk hair.
How loose the silk. How jailed down the juice.
The jealous admiration of the watching men melted with the deast of new corn.
They allowed themselves that night. Plucked from the broken stalks that Mr. Garner could not doubt was the fault of the raccoon. . . . What he [Paul D] did remember was parting the hair to get to the tip, the edge of his fingernail just under, so as not to graze a single kernel.
The pulling down of the tight sheath, the ripping sound always convinced her it hurt.
As soon as one strip of husk was down, the rest obeyed and the ear yielded up to him its shy rows, exposed at last. How loose the silk. How quick the jailed-up flavor rain free.
No matter what all your teeth and wet fingers anticipated, there was no accounting for the way that simple joy could shake you.
How loose the silk. How fine and loose and free.
Though the above scenes occurs in characters� heads while there are in a post-coital doze, the writing is poetic and powerful. We see their need for connection, sensation, and freedom, so lacking in their slave lives. Morrison uses sex to inform the story, enrich the plot, and deepen her characters. May all your literary sex scenes strive to do the same.