On Writing Sex Scenes

without making them gross.

I read something really lovely in a book that you aren’t allowed to read (yet)¹ that got me thinking about this. Something really beautiful and true. If you are a women interested in the ways that women interpret and express our sexualities, in lieu of this mysterious book you aren’t allowed to read (yet) you should go read Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, and possibly also Kushiel’s Dart.

Anyways.

Most of the advice for writing good sex scenes is just good advice for writing in general. Yes, sex should advance the plot and reveal things about the characters²; yes, setting a scene with a few concrete details and knowing exactly how much to explicate and implicate³ is important; yes, you should obsess over your pacing. Always.

There are however some sex-scene specific considerations.

First I should define what I mean by sex scene. Let’s start with what I don’t.

Revolutionary Girl Utena has an artistically impeccable and morally disgusting scene where two people have sex⁴: beautifully depicted and representative of a truth but not “beautiful and true” in the sense that got me writing this. There are absolutely times and reasons that the author may choose to portray violation but this should be done with great care, and perhaps not in a sexual context unless the author really knows what they’re doing. A sex scene is not fundamentally about eliciting laughter or dryly listing actions undertaken, even though those are both ways that sex can be portrayed and also occur in real life.

I’m also not talking about base Sadean fetishism (not to be confused with sadism)⁵. Revelry in filth is masturbatory and worse, uninteresting.

Also you should know what sex is. “You know it when you see it” is true but not particularly helpful in this instance — and besides, I keep discovering that people do not, in fact, know it when they see it. Straight people think it must necessarily involve a man and a woman, and many of my fellow gays are sadly little better. Sex is not even necessarily a thing that requires physical contact.

Sex is about the creation and resolution of sexual charge through the enactment of roles⁶⁷. Your characters are not necessarily aware of this but you must be; the contexts in which they exist and relate to each other should be weighed and balanced with great care. You should be aware of your character’s kinks, especially, and how those and their relationships towards them inflect on all their actions.

So: a sex scene should be about the feelings between two⁸ characters; it should draw the reader in with eroticism; it is often, given the significance of sex, a significant narrative turning point. If you have been writing correctly, the sex scene should have been foreshadowed by the whole work before it — it is a payoff to/development of a dynamic that should already exist.

Further Thoughts:

A sex scene should not be gross. Perhaps, in the course of events, a girl ends up streaked with various fluids; her breath shallow, her makeup running. If done correctly, this is not gross; this is a specific counterpointed chiaroscuro wherein she shines most beautifully. For her to maintain her dignity is a mark of her true heart’s nobility. If you want to write a self-described slut, then do so! But you have to make sure to represent her internality or lack thereof ⁹ appropriately. Internality is absolutely critical to eroticism.

You should write at least one of them like a girl. Now you might think that this is for lesbian or even straight cases¹⁰, and not for, say, BL, a genre where men and boys are depicted having sex with each other. It might seem to you, that because it is defined by not having any girls as main characters, writing one of the boys like a girl wouldn’t make any sense. But this is actually one of the keys to BL, going back to our foremothers the Year 24 Group. Gilbert and Serge; GerIta; SebaCiel; Cloud and Sephiroth; KyoTama, NaruSasu; ExR; Kurodachi; Victuuri — in every great yaoi ship, at least one of them is a girl ripe for cathection¹¹. Remember, girls become fujoshi to escape how hard it is to be themselves.

As a writer it is your responsibility to be less weird about anal. Obviously anal is a bit weird for anybody who isn’t a gay or possibly bisexual man but that’s part of the point. Not everybody is having the normal kind of sex (whatever that means for you and your orientation/demographic/etc). In fact I at least have found it very interesting to write characters with fetishes I don’t have, as a means of increasing personal growth through empathy. Not evil ones though.

Practice writing sex with fanfic: you get to practice interpreting canon dynamics without having to write a whole work, you have an emphasis on character rather than hook, and you have a built-in reader base willing to criticize.

Oh and you should have some music that fits to listen to while you do it. Rhythm is especially important for this kind of thing. I was listening to this on repeat while working on the example, since it was very slightly relevant.

There is an example here below!

(if you’ve spoken to me in person or chatted with me enough (more than a bit but less than a lot), dm me and I should be able to send you a link.)