How to Write a Damn Good Sex Scene—the Basics

I don’t know about you, but I have yet to see a mainstream writing conference with a break-out session on this. Yet, sex is a basic human need. Characters eat, sleep, drink—and yes, characters have sex. I resist the idea that “good” or “serious”  fiction only involves celibate characters or, at most, a one sentence summary of the act. So be kind to your characters (and your readers) and let them be fully human. I’m hoping to expand on these in upcoming posts, but here are a couple of basics:

1. Don’t back down from a sex scene—let the character’s perspective shape what type of scene it will be. As an author, I believe you have an obligation to be true to your character. If your character wants a sex scene, by all means give it to her/him.
2. A sex scene is a great chance for an unusual character detail or twist—take advantage of this.
3. Stay in perspective. Pick one of the character’s perspective and write from it throughout the entire scene. You can always switch to the partner’s perspective in a different chapter.
4. Watch the pronoun usage. This is especially true for same sex or multiple partner scenes. I find myself writing the first draft almost entirely with pronouns, but this creates a distance for the reader and stylistically deviates from the rest of my normal pronoun usage.  Well-placed names in a sex scene can drive momentum, enhance the connection, or create a plot twist.
5. Choose your words carefully. Remember, you have to use the words that your character would to describe male and female genitalia (side note: I have yet to have a a character use the word genitalia). The time period of your characters will also dictate your word choice. While dick is a more modern usage, cock—although more crude—is timeless; seriously, just ask Shakespeare. At all costs, try to avoid member. Similarly, some verbs have become cliche like throbbing, pulsating, gyrating, etc. Also, in general, beware of the gerund.

Writing without Future Problems

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I don’t write. Okay, there’s been a lot of times when I haven’t written. Too many times actually. And then there’s what I do instead of writing. Sometimes while not writing, I actually think about my writing; this is mostly productive—kind of like daydreaming in my character.  Other times, I may spend 30 minutes or more reading about some tangent after I look up an obscure reference for my book, but I really don’t mind this either (seriously though, if you don’t know about wood ducks, they are awesome).  More often than not, my non-writing involves a swirling loop in my brain of what I should be doing but currently am not. So I asked my writing partner to see if he ever experienced anything like this and, also, to get a double check on my sanity.  “It’s not that I don’t know what to write, it’s like I can’t write sometimes. Does that make sense?”  My writing partner is the type who can just crank. I don’t mean to be disparaging; he’s faced his own set of writing problems; we all struggle; we just do it in our own way.  But my extremely lovely writing partner can authentically be non-judgmental in times like these, and after I gave him some more details of my non-writing time, he calmly but assertively stated, “Those are future problems. You just need to concentrate on what is going on now.” He has a way with words. And these words stuck. Writing without future problems, besides being productive, is actually really, really fun.