Sex on My Mind
More so than many other aspects of writing craft, there seems to be a shortage of guides on how to write a good sex scene. I’ve mostly learned via osmosis, taking notes from works that I liked, passages that made me go “Oh!” in different registers. Reading it and writing it are two different things though, and though it’s fairly easy for me to say whether a sex scene that I read is good or not, I’m always in doubt as to whether one I’ve written is any good. (Of course that’s also my normal mode for anything I’ve written).
One thing that’s helped though, is comfort. I’m not inhibited by the idea of incorporating sex in my stories. I’ve never preemptively feared that my parents will end up reading a sex scene I wrote, haven’t felt any doubt about the value of portraying sex in art. Growing up gay in a very hetero and very Catholic country might have added a layer of difficulty there too, but it’s never given me pause. Those circumstances might have even helped me be more comfortable reading and seeking out sex (particularly queer sex) in my media, since I had no role models, no real-life guides early in my life as a gay man.
That’s one hurdle down, I guess. The rest of it is craft. Just as actual sex, technique matters. I don’t know that there are techniques for sex scenes that are independent from those that are needed for any type of scene. A good scene is a good scene. It has shape, it uses the right words, and it does two things. To paraphrase George Saunders paraphrasing someone else, it should (1) be entertaining in its own right and (2) advance the story in a non-trivial way.
It’s quite easy to see those two things in a fight scene (something that gets compared to sex scenes a lot, for good reason). A fight scene can be made entertaining with tension, reversals and so on, and it advances the story in that usually someone wins and another loses. But what about a sex scene? What makes a sex scene entertaining? And how does it advance a story?
The first question is a little tricky, in that what makes sex entertaining or fun to read is so idiosyncractic. The baseline for what makes an entertaining swordfight scene is probably easier to find than what makes an entertaining blowjob. For me, a sex scene is entertaining, i.e. fun to read, when it brings up the right associations. Do the words evoke the right mental and emotional associations required by the scene? The scene might want to evoke finally-fulfilled longing, or disappointment, or danger, or shame, or yes, romance--things that can be elicited with a dialogue scene or a dinner scene, yes, but not in the same way a sex scene might. If it’s sex between two people in love, does the scene described and does it progress in a way that elicits the idea of romantic desire? Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things does this really well:
Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. Like her children did when they wanted to exclude the outside world. She slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate brown stomach. She sipped the last of the river from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erection against her eyelids. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth. He sat up and drew her back to him. She felt his belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple in his mouth and cradled her other breast in his calloused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper.
This passage does not only elicit passion (and with such gorgeous prose too), but also evokes a sense of secrecy (drawing hair “like a tent”, “excluding the world”, the closed eyes), and contrast (velvet vs. sandpaper, wetness vs calloused) which matters because Ammu and Velutha’s inter-caste relationship is forbidden.
Advancing a story in a non-trivial way with the use of sex scenes can be tricky too, because it seems to require “plot-relevant” sex. I don’t think sex scenes should only exist if they are relevant to the plot. Sex scenes can and do work well independent of “plot” or “events” when the scene changes the reader’s view of a character, or characters’ relationship with each other. The sex can also reveal more about the world—expand the reader’s understanding of how sex is viewed in the story’s world, like in God of Small Things, or even how sex is done at all, as in Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. None of those examples strictly count as plot, but they sure as hell advance a story in a non-trivial way via context and characterization.
(This is threatening to veer into a conversation about what plot is and whether it means what we think it means and whether it’s as important as people say it is, but I’m just gonna save that for another day.)
Of course, if the sex scene impacts the forward momentum of the story, that’s even better. (There’s a brilliant post-coital scene toward the end The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson that does this really well). That means the scene is impacting the events in a non-trivial way, and also widening the lens on the characters and the world. It’s working on several levels. And if it’s also got good words that bring up the right thoughts and feels, well, those are what make a great scene, whatever kind it may be.
Image credit: Human figures photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash