Writing Smut: A Study of How Hard I Suck:
From what I can tell, I’m a fairly latecomer to smut. I start going on the internet at 10 years of age, and stuck to a single forum because I literally didn’t know other websites existed. I eventually stopped being a dumbass and expanded out a bit, but still stayed firmly on the censored, government-controlled, sanitised side of the Chinese internet, because I was too stupid to find illegal porn. So, it wasn’t until I had become a fairly fluent English speaker and tentatively stepped over to the English side that I’d encountered smut.
For a fairly lengthy period of time, I only used the English internet (like Wikipedia) for school-related purposes, and didn’t discover fanfiction.net until I was old enough to be firmly out of my Suethor stages (thank god). I think I was about 14/15 then.
I clearly remember the first explicit smut I had read in the English language was between Ichigo and Aizen from Bleach. It was…er…extremely badly written (and kinky), and traumatising. I guess it’s pretty tame as far as the internet went, but it was my first time and I had VIRGIN EYES, dammit!
Since then, I’ve come on far, FAR better smut, most of which is written by Mervin. The rest of which is written by Hyde. And a small, SMALL percentage of which is published.
To be honest, at the start, I was completely baffled by the purpose of porn for the sole sake of titillation. I mean, sex was basically just a bodily function, and you can’t base an entire story around it. At least I’ve never seen a story based entirely on any other bodily function, like coughing or scratching an itch. And if they were writing sex as an interaction (which is entirely valid, since sex IS about interaction), that’s still not enough to base a whole story around. I mean, think about a story entirely based on, say, shaking hands or high-fives.
It wasn’t until I’d seen the Sweeney Todd fics by Mervin that I realised that you could use sex to explore the themes in a story and to develop and explore characterisation…and just how great sex scenes were as a tool for that. I mean, it made sense, since sex is one of the most primal ways two characters can interact, and you can tell a whole lot about a character by their views of sex and the way they act during it.
And that’s what ultimately struck me to attempt to write smut, because it’s a very valuable skill that would come in VERY handy for me as a writer.
The only problem was?
I couldn’t do it.
Even though I knew the mechanisms and the “usual” routine from reading all that smut over the years, somehow, that something that turned meh smut to GREAT smut always escaped me. In fact, I couldn’t even write meh smut. Every time I tried, I’d freeze up and no words would flow. Eventually, I forced myself to crap out a vague sex scene (which still faded to black, because I fucking SUCK). And while I was so greatly tempted to spork the damned thing, it was centred around original characters in an original setting, so no one would get it when I started ranting about how much I got my own fucking characters OOC.
Damn, I fail.
So, instead, I’m going to write a bullet point list about just how much I suck, so I can find a way to improve…and so I won’t feel like a hypocrite when I mock Suethors and Stuthors for writing terrible sex scenes.
1. Adhering to one old, tired, cliched formula.
This is actually one of my major, MAJOR complaints when it comes to sex scenes - they all look the same. It didn’t matter who was involved and what the circumstances were, as soon as you got two characters in bed, they performed the same actions, were described using the same set of adjectives, recited the same lines…I don’t know if this is just bad smut writers copying other bad smut writers until there was nothing left but bad smut, or just people being lazy, but the formula is applied so widely that once you’ve seen a smut fic, you’ve pretty much seen them all.
I’m thinking it’s probably the first option, though, because that’s exactly what happened when I tried my hand. Unsurprisingly, my brain froze and died as soon as I even started thinking about writing smut, so there were just no words. Nothing I typed down worked. Hell, I couldn’t even type anything down, because I had no idea what to.
So I fell back to what I knew.
I remembered what sex looked like in all the smut I’ve read, so I ended up just doing the same, because I had no idea what to do otherwise, which leads me to my second point:
2. Writing what you don’t know.
Sometimes, it’s just PAINFULLY obvious that a Suethor or Stuthor is a complete and utter virgin. The purple-prose-y, over-the-top, simultaneous orgasming is kind of hard to miss. Or the complete inaccuracy; that’s pretty telling too. And I think a big reason is that it’s almost EXPECTED these days, that if you write about two characters getting together, the story is going to involve sex at one point. And authors know that a “lemon” would be relatively easy to write (just apply the formula) and will also net them a lot more reviews. So most seem to gravitate towards writing sex…and most of the time, they have no idea what they’re doing.
Just like me.
I know a virgin can write good sex just fine, but she’d (he’d?) have to be a KNOWLEDGEABLE virgin. As in, RESEARCH. I really don’t know where they get accurate information from (I think they just have enough common sense to tell what’s exaggerated and what’s good enough to remain in mediocre smut), but all of my research comes from, well, reading porn. And I’m too much of a stupid bastard to be able to say for certain which parts are COMPLETELY inaccurate and which parts are mostly inaccurate. And while I can spot the really glaring mistakes, I don’t know the right answer. Like I can tell penises aren’t supposed to ‘spring to attention’, but I’m not sure what an accurate erection looks like.
So, afraid of making mistakes on my own, and FAR too afraid of trying to Google this sort of stuff (the safe search isn’t foolproof, and I’m easily squicked), I just fall back to the old standard and hope that because so many people have made the same mistake, I won’t look particularly stupid.
*Bitchslaps self* DUMBASS!
3. Laundry-listing.
A lot of what I don’t know about sex is the more subjective parts. I mean, I know all of the mechanisms. Sex Ed is, after all, compulsory. I know Tab A needs to go into Slot B, and most of what foreplay looks like. But I don’t know about all the human aspects of sex, because you can’t get that from biology textbooks (the only safe place to do research on sex, as far as I’m concerned). So while I know all the actions needed to be performed to complete intercourse, I don’t know how those actions are supposed to feel. I don’t know what people think about during sex, or if they think at all. I don’t know how coherent their thoughts are. I don’t know if people talk during sex, and if they do, I don’t know what they talk about.
And probably because I personally am just the slightest bit repulsed by sex (the thing that goes into your vagina produces URINE, for god’s sake), I can’t quite grasp what characters see in sex. I’m afraid that if I have them get TOO into it, it’d turn into the sappy, simultaneous-orgasming crap that’s been sporked so many times. But if they don’t get into it enough, well, the sex doesn’t happen. Somehow, I just can’t immerse myself in the mind of someone who enjoys and actively wants sex.
So, in fear of making mistakes, I just decided to remove the chance of portraying the thought process of someone in sex completely wrong by not writing it. I didn’t write about their thoughts or feelings, or even any interaction between the two characters, because I was certain I’d get it wrong. And as a result, I didn’t write a sex scene so much as a list of actions, with no emotion attacked.
BECAUSE I FUCKING SUCK.
4. Too much waffling.
I was aware of the laundry-listing problem even while I was writing the smut, which says a lot, considering the amount of crap I was willing to let flow out of me in order to just COMPLETE a sex scene. So I tried to compensate by injecting more reflections and internal monologues. After all, they’re what I’m the best at (which is pretty pathetic, considering I fail at them too). But as I said in the previous dot point, I just CAN’T, because I have no idea what people THINK to convince themselves that sex is a tolerable experience.
I knew I couldn’t just list the actions. I knew I can’t portray sexual thoughts accurately. So I chose the third option. The stupid, STUPID third option.
I had the characters waffle on and on and on…about completely unrelated things. They’d get sidetracked and start reflection about their life, other characters, waxing philosophy, and the smut was less like smut and more like an average internal monologue I write, but while two characters are groping each other.
And it fucking SUCKED.
As a smut scene, it didn’t work, because things were dragged out too long, and you got the feeling that the character wasn’t that into whatever was happening, because he was too busy thinking about that one time his pizza arrived late. As an introspective character study, it also didn’t work, because I was throwing whatever came to mind in there just to avoid laundry listing, so it was disjointed and pointless and jarring.
Because whenever I try to solve a situation, I always come up with the WORST method.
Because I’m an IDIOT.
5. Characterisation rape
In order to motivate myself into writing a sex scene, I asked a friend of mine for a request of something she’d like. And we argued back and forth quite a bit (which I’m terribly ashamed of), because I kept objecting to her requests, because it involved characters that were…not into sexual things, as a general rule. Again, almost all of my characters are asexual or just too busy to engage in sex. So when she proposed a sex scene between two previously established sexual characters, I just couldn’t stand up and say no, it wouldn’t work. After all, I’ve been objecting to so many of her requests, I was already being a terrible friend.
But the thing is, those character? Would never have had a one-night-stand together. Under any circumstances.
One of them was very virginal, and I don’t see him having sex with anyone unless they’ve been in a long relationship and have established a very strong bond. And even then, it would be awkward and he’d be embarrassed. He’s just not the type to have sex with someone…just for fun. I don’t see him EVER having sex outside of a committed relationship. And his partner in this scenario? He’s INTIMIDATED by her. He’s very, VERY intimidated by her. They don’t even have that much of a FRIENDSHIP, because while she looks out for him, she’s got a far too overwhelmingly strong personality, and they never have much in the way of interaction, because she usually just steamrolls over him.
The other one, while sexual, is very, very concerned by consent. Unless she can make sure that her partner absolutely wants it and enjoys every second just as much as she does, she’s completely turned off. So, it’s not like she’ll pressure him into having sex with her, because there wouldn’t be point. It wouldn’t be fun. And she doesn’t like partners that she can steamroll over. She might have liked it a long time ago, but definitely not now. She wants someone that can stand up to her and banter with her and be on equal footing with her. She likes strong, determined people who’ll call her out on her bullshit. Having someone just bend over for her is BORING.
So no. They wouldn’t have sex. They wouldn’t EVER have sex.
But I made them anyways.
I thought I could wank up a scenario where it’d make sense…but clearly, I was just an arrogant asshole.
So the result is that I again made the same error that I’ve mocked Suethor for making. It didn’t matter the nature of the characters, I forced them in bed anyway. Because I’m a fucking HYPOCRITE and I should be ASHAMED of myself (which I am).
But amazingly enough, that’s not the worst mistake I made.
No, because apparently, I’m capable of FAR more fail than I thought.
6. Plagiarism.
Yes, I fucking went there.
I FUCKING PLAGIARISED.
I had no idea how to get two characters who CERTAINLY won’t be having sex with each other into bed, so I just thought back to all the GOOD authors I’d seen (in this case Mervin), and did what they fucking did. I never intended there to be dirty-talking, but she had that in a lot of her smut and it was good smut, so I tried my virginal hand at writing it, just because she did it. And despite never planning to, I somehow ended up writing shower-sex, again not because it was appropriate or it made sense, but just because Mervin did it.
Whenever I had no idea what to do, I just threw whatever kink MERVIN had wrote about in there, because a FAR better writer than me had done it, so it’s a good thing to have in my fic. And of course, it didn’t fucking work, because my characters aren’t her characters, and I’m nowhere NEAR the same league as her. And I just ended up defiling some of my favourite works.
BECAUSE I’M A MORON.
AND I’M A FUCKING ASSHOLE TOO.
I just…ugh, I’m so disgusting.
Looking back, I suppose the only solution I have to my problems right now is to step firmly away from all smut scenes until I learn to grow the fuck up and stop being a DUMBASS. A PLAGIARISING DUMBASS.
I should really just stick to what I KNOW for now, and maybe one day, when I get over being a fucking wuss, I’ll muster up enough courage to research into how sex fucking works, and THEN I’ll try again.
And maybe next time, I’ll use fandom characters, so if I fail, at least I can put the shitty writing to some use by sporking it for everyone’s entertainment.
Gah, I’m such an idiot.