The F Word

In my personal life as well as in my writing, if I had to put my finger to one truth, its that sex is absolutely vital, and one of the most telling aspects of personality and mental state. Sexuality is an essential thing, yet how we choose to act sexually is influenced so very much by our gender, our class, our education, our mood, our luck, our love. I love to think about it, especially in the context of my characters, because it helps me know them and helps me explore my own biases, feelings and desires. That being said, writing a good sex scene is really hard!

This morning, I read through the top ten entries on The Guardian's annual Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction awards. I wanted to see "what not to do", and compare it to my own work, from my novel The Wide and Burning World, which is, in parts, a veritable treatise on writing about sex. Let's take a look, shall we?

The following article contains sexually explicit writing that's NSFW (no pictures, though) as well as triggering things like non-consensual sex, sexualized violence and rape. 

Check out the article here, for a rollicking good time, and more chuckles than all but the most intimate of sexual encounters provides. To enumerate the flaws with each would be tedious here, though I will weigh in on the more outstanding few. Better to take them as a whole picture, not only of admittedly terrible sex scenes, but also what other people think makes a terrible sex scene.

The objectively bad first (yes, things can be generally reviled frequently enough that they are accepted as poor writing practice):

The word "pudenda" and its cronies must never come near a sex scene, ever. Automatic DQ for overly technical language.

• You should avoid putting language that makes it sound like you'd rather not be in the same room with an aroused body in a scenario involving them. Language that's anatomical is ever-so-much-less enticing and ultimately more ridiculously than flowery "purple prose". It does help dispense with the difficulty of describing things, the cardinal obstacle in translating abstract, complex concepts into concrete interpretations, aka writing. Unlike with describing a voice or a facial expression, there are highly specific vocabularies that indicate exact regions of the genitals, tempting tools for explanation. But is precision really the goal here? The best lovers, like the best erotica, are expressive in their action, rather than strictly exact. That's a function, not a feeling. Technical terms make your novel into a manual. Show don't tell. 

The above caution noted, purple prose is the opposite, if not the equal, misstep. Description is expressive, and expression is key, which is why I consider floridity a preferable option to being clinical. But it is the hallmark of bad writing when it comes to sex scenes.

• Think Harlequin, think heaving bosoms: It's roundabout at best, downright silly at its worst. It smacks of insincerity. Sex at its best should show off how your character views themself and their partner(s). What words would they use, based on their class, their race, their level of comfort with their ability? Are they comfortable? Do they ardently want to have a sexual encounter, but not really have the words to express what their body is doing in an articulate way? One of the reasons I gravitated toward the article's fourth entry is that I use the words clit and cock to describe my own body, immediate identification. That's not to say the all your characters should talk like you do. Arlo, my farmboy, has a cock and stones, very rural. Davidson Lasche, a boy in many ways, has his manhood. These choices were deliberate and it makes me feel good to deploy them: I know when my characters are up for a poke, as Lasche would say, that they are expressing themselves naturally. 

Onto the more subjective side of things. Here comes my bias, but hey, as all writing should expose you, shouldn't sex scenes reveal the most?: 

How many times have you had the best sex ever? Do you always come at the same time as your partner? Do you always come? According to my experience, mind-blowing, the-universe-gapes-wide sex is a) possible and b) infrequent. That's what makes it so, well, exceptional, and it's what makes descriptions of the first, the best, the ultimate lay seem so cheesy. There's so much more nuance available through imperfection, so much more intimacy--an exemplification of mature interest in sex that's about more than orgasm.

• Not that orgasms don't rock. But this isn't life, it isn't real: It's your novel, and a statement of "everything was perfect" doesn't carry as much weight as something more characterful could. That being the case, if you simply use sex as a narrative tool more frequently, it can become a substory in itself. In an upcoming chapter in Salt Spray and Fine Things, I have one plot-essential sexual encounter, two that blend character with the story and a fourth that's a straight up pornographic fuck. The chapter covers two years in a relationship, and I wanted the realism of a variety of types, meanings and levels of love-making. More on this later. 

Perhaps the reason The Guardian singled out a number of these is because they (as presented, perhaps there's more in situ) really do represent bad sex, by which I mean sex without the proper consent.

• It's the sodding new millennium; it's a new day. And it's time we, as authors, began representing sex in our work in a progressive, positive role model. I used to really wrestle with this: My sex scenes took forever, they "lacked passion", because my characters were constantly checking in with each other. Then I realized, that yeah, it's easier to write--and do--if you don't bother with consent. Which also means you suck. It doesn't have to be spicy, or scripted, or even that eloquent. It does need to be there. That way, when it's not there, your reader will notice and take a cue from the absence. Not having your characters communicate during sex should say something, not be their default. Let's write about--and bring about--a brighter world. 

The most important thing I picked up from reading these snippets was how crucial context can be. When taken out of their natural habitats, all of these scenes are rendered flaccid, or dry, or they just aren't in the mood. Seriously, though, there's some terrible writing on display, but bad writing can ruin anything. Without a relationship with the characters themselves, it's hard to be involved in a sex scene, hard to know what's what. I was looking through my first novel, trying to decide which scene(s) to post here, I realized that they are all several hundred words long: They cover dialogue, internal monologue, actions, reactions, description of setting. namely, they are as detailed as any other scene on my writing. The most successful of these "bad scenes" are the few that provide a real sense of personality, of history. Flowery language used to express general physical features? Ha ha! Flowery language used to talk about your lover as you experience them? Now we're getting somewhere!

The final thing I would consider is what your sex scenes say about you, not only as a writer, as a person. Are they exposing your desires? Your biases, your kinks? Are they actively working against how you personally experience sex, and if so, where's your inspiration coming from? Getting deep into characters who aren't like you is a great thing, but research is required for sure. And if you're writing a sex scene--or any scene-- thinking "this is what people want to hear" it will show. Expose yourself, confront yourself, embrace yourself.

Now for some practical examples from my own writing, wherein I put myself out there. Here there be spoilers, as well as the full complement of triggers from the warning above. 

As a bi-gender person, writing my novels has been a moving and revelatory experience, a way to uncover and process my understanding of myself as both a bisexual woman and a homosexual man. As a victim of sexualized abuse and other emotional trauma, I most certainly have taken my prior advice to heart and exposed myself within my work. Taking stock of the sexual landscape in my first novel, I realized how very little sex between happy, sober, consenting people there is. At its most healthy, I've got a few scenes of a damaged and conflicted man, able to overcome the abuse he suffered as a child and be a partner to his wife. Beyond that there are tangles of grief and farewell, transactions with prostitutes and outright, graphic rape. So! That's a big part of my mental scenery, which I'm not ashamed to admit. In keeping with the length of the snippets from The Guardian, I've selected the "healthy" scene I referenced, between Daniel Larkin and his wife Marieve:

I didn’t knock upon my arrival. It was still my house, after all. Marieve was out, so I settled at our table. Just to pass the time, I sampled one of the sweetmeats she liked to have on hand, the ones with the little dab of jam baked in the center. I was entertaining the thought of indulging in a second one, when my wife walked in, a basket of greens hung from the crook of her arm. 

“Daniel!” she cried, surprised. I just smiled, lidding my eyes halfway like they were heavy with desire and sauntered toward her. Silent, I plucked a curl of lettuce from the basket and nipped the tip of the leaf.

“I was just stopping by, when I decided I wanted something to eat,” I murmured, moving close enough that we almost touched. 

“Are you still hungry?” she asked, understanding me immediately. 

“Ravenous,” I purred. Then I carried her to our bed and made my satisfaction hers. It was silent and masterful and so exquisitely executed that it massaged the sore spot of my longing only to make it ache that much more. 

That was what I had planned to have happen, at least. I didn’t even get past getting to my feet before I realized how hollow it would sound to actually say, how foolish passion like that was for a bookworm in his thirties, as if I came close to living up to that standard. And why should I? I had other concerns, other goals worth my attention, and the energy I might spend practicing a husband’s duty could find better use. As it was, I let her have her way with me and she seemed content enough.

Obviously, I've gotten fairly meta here, referring directly to the best-sex-ever flaw in much sex writing. Poor Larkin, he has such a tenuous grip on his self-esteem. Things get worse for him from here, unfortunately. The next excerpt is from a chapter that didn't make it into the book, from the same perspective:

To have called it a climax was an insult to sex itself. It was really more of a spewing, a sudden spilling that concluded my ability to make another thrust. It was always the same now, whether it came premature or after many slow minutes of tense exertion, whether Colette cried out in pain or pleasure; or simply took it silently, as I deeply preferred. It was always the same, in that I felt something had ruptured, something that was no longer knit whole by the promise of Marieve’s love. It was with morbid surprise each night that I discovered only my seed and not a gout of blood had ushered from me. Afterward, Colette always slept. I always rose and went to my desk, took a scanty palmful of the blackcress I now swallowed whole to fight my tolerance. It has been like this since I came back to Marrasfield, though I have lost count of the days it feels like an eternity. I have not slept since Tamar.

And so on. Yikes! This is just one character of course, and since his relations have the least to reveal about the story, I'll not add more here. Suffice it to say that each encounter, almost without exception follows these lines. I do consider these to be sex scenes: This is what sex is to him, and in some ways, what sex was to me.

That's the beauty of a narrative, though. Things can always change. The grouping of sexual encounters I said I'd come back to earlier is one such. What a payoff! I've been writing these characters through most of their lives, as well as for years of mine, and finally they get the sweet loving they deserve. Sure there's some plot stuff, there's nothing perfect, but they are going to get to cry out, to tremble in vulnerable abandon, to laugh and smile as they pleasure each other and receive pleasure in return. I've been waiting to give them this, to give my readers this, to give it to myself. My characters who come to know themselves, who are brave, who strive to achieve the goals they want, are rewarded in kind. It's the moral of the story, as it were, as delivered under the auspices of the most symbolic and yet most grounded of human interactions.