Sex as War, War as Sex: Writing Action in the Bedroom and Beyond
Many thanks to Mithen for allowing me to talk to you about one of my favorite things to write in the whole world!
One of my favorite things to write is action, dramatic events, exciting developments and the big moments that everyone remembers for ages. It's exciting to portray those huge events in ways that paint pictures in people's heads and very satisfying when a reader tells me that they enjoyed it, that it was like watching a movie.
Of course, big battles are not the only sort of action. There are also sexy moments ranging from tension-filled UST to out and out porn. I enjoy writing sex too, quite a lot. What might surprise people is that I write sexy moments in much the same way that I write huge battle scenes. I've worked out a method that I find highly effective for my writing, which I hope will be helpful for you too.
Sex and combat are two forms of interaction between individuals that are driven by emotional needs and physical action. Most of the time the line between making war and making love is very thin indeed, which is great fun to play with. Making sure that a sex scene is clear and has an impact is no different than making a battle clear, at least in methodology.
This is what I do to make sure my sex scenes are clear, have impact and contribute to the story:
1) Know the environment.
This is basic for me. I'm a world builder so I can usually tell you what the weather patterns in spring are and what the staple food is for the people I'm writing about. Heck, much of the time I can tell you if they have knitted fabric or woven, and how well woven it is. I get a little obsessive about my world building, even when the story is Fanfic.
It's in no way necessary to be that obsessive about your environments but you really do need to know if the characters are in a closed room with one window or if they're in a public location where people could see them and overhear what's going on. The environment always affects how your particular characters react. Bruce will be much more open about showing affection to Clark if they're in private than he would be at a big party where people are watching them together. Unless you're doing a story in which Clark has a secret kink for semi-public sex he's certainly not going to let Brucie feel him up at the party, either.
So, knowing the location affects your characters behavior. It also affects what they can do physically.
Let's move Bruce and Clark to a drawing room at Wayne Manor. You can reasonably expect that there's a couch, probably several comfy chairs and some area tables with fragile and/or expensive knickknacks on them. The windows will probably be closed but the curtains will most likely be open, as Alfred would want to let light into the room. I'm going to say that there's a fireplace in the room but it's not lit at the moment.
With this setting, there are limits on what Bruce and Clark can do. Clark's strength means that the fragile knickknacks are in danger of destruction if they get too passionate. Bruce also isn't likely to shove Clark around and make a mess for fear of Alfred's wrath. Change Bruce to Lex and the potential for destruction goes up immediately as Lex isn't likely to care if something that belongs to Bruce gets destroyed while he seduces Clark. Of course, the likelihood of the encounter turning into a fight also goes up.
Back to Bruce and Clark in the drawing room. We've got our setting, we know how the two individuals are likely to limit their actions within the space, so now we need to consider them.
2) Know your characters.
I'm not referring to their personalities in this case. I think anyone writing Fanfic (or original fiction for that matter) would have a relatively decent grasp on the personalities of their characters by this point. No, I'm talking about their bodies, their size, strength and relative builds.
Bruce and Clark are both big men, burly with well-developed bodies. I would have no problem with Clark pushing Bruce back onto the couch and straddling his lap, however if I tried to say that he did that with one of the comfy armchairs my mind starts squawking. Quite simply, there's no room for two big guys in one armchair, not in that pose anyway.
Physically, I don't think that there'd be room for Bruce to sit and then Clark to put his knees on either side of Bruce's thighs. I've actually tried that personally with my husband and it doesn't work, even though neither of us is anywhere close to six foot tall. It's uncomfortable to put it mildly and we're nowhere near as large in size as Bruce and Clark. The couch would give them room. The armchair wouldn't. Specify that it's an area chair with no arms and my problem is solved.
Now, if we bring Lex back again and put him in Clark's lap in the armchair I can just see it happening but only because Clark's invulnerable. He wouldn't feel squished; threatened maybe, but not squished. Still, a more likely scenario for using an armchair for the encounter is to have Lex leaning over Clark, hands on his shoulders to keep him in place as he kisses Clark. Lex is more slender than Clark and I suspect that he'd want to have the stronger position of standing, looming over Clark and then appearing to keep him in place as he did what he wanted to Clark.
Which brings us to the third step that I use for writing sex scenes: cause and effect.
3) Follow a logical stream of cause and effect to develop the scene.
So Clark has pushed Bruce back on the sofa and straddled his lap. The next question is to ask what Bruce does. How does he react? Depending on what you've had leading up to the scene in question he could: try and push Clark away, run his hands up under Clark's jacket, or smirk at him and settle back so that Clark has to lean even closer to kiss Bruce. We'll say that Bruce enjoys making Clark work for it so he settles back and smirks.
Now what does Clark do? He can follow Bruce's lead and lean in. He can pull back and get all flustered and blushy but stay in Bruce's lap. He could decide that he was being a fool and get up, back away, possibly knock something over as he retreated. It was a pretty bold move for Clark, after all.
The direction you choose will influence how you write the scene and each moment will influence the next moment. For every action (Clark pushing Bruce into the sofa) there has to be a reaction (Bruce smirking at him and not responding immediately), which leads to another action (Clark retreating) and reaction (Bruce catching his wrist so he can't flee), and so on.
I try very hard to be scrupulously aware of cause and effect as to how it affects the characters actions and how the environment both limits and supports their behavior. Say I wanted to turn this Bruce/Clark scene into actual sex rather than an emotional encounter that ends with kissing and a fade to black. It's going to be hard for the guys to have sex in the drawing room. There's sex up against the wall which doesn't have the intimacy I want, or somewhat awkward sex on the sofa (which is seriously awkward, no matter who you are).
However, if I want this to be a tender first time between them I think I'd rather that they were somewhere that allowed them to actually get properly horizontal and snuggle together afterwards. That necessitates changing my environment. Instead of a drawing room, let's make this a bedroom suite with a sitting room, connected bedroom and private bathroom. I don't have to change anything of what I've written so far except to add a reference early on to a connecting door that leads to a bedroom. It's an easy edit that opens up lots of possibilities.
So I can have Bruce pull Clark into the bedroom, kissing him along the way to keep him from freaking out. That gets them to a horizontal surface, the bed, and lets us move onto the next challenge: getting naked together. A lot of the time I skip this with a "they stripped each other clumsily while kissing and exploring each other's bodies" which works. If you want to really focus on the growing connection between them and maybe add conversation that reveals things about the wider story and about them, then you need to slow down and describe the stripping in detail.
Being aware of what a man's suit is like, how many layers, how hard the buttons are to open or close and the like will help. It's another level of environment to consider. Clark's dress shirt will have buttons on the cuff as it's relatively cheap, but Bruce will have a much more expensive dress shirt with cuff links. Clark might not have encountered them before so you have an opportunity for them to separate, talk, laugh and then you get to have Bruce strip his own shirt off while Clark stares at his body. Always fun!
Stripping is sexy, the process of revealing yourself to your lover in bits and pieces. Leaving a shirt on because you're so hot to get to bed is sexy too. Forgetting to take off the shoes before they try and remove the pants is an opportunity for comedy and lightening the mood if they're getting too serious for your plot. Laughter is a wonderful thing in the bedroom.
This same level of attention to detail applies once you get them in bed together. There are many, many ways that two bodies can fit together, many poses that they can take together, but the human body does impose limitations. Even Clark's not going to be able to look directly at Bruce if he's lying on his stomach with Bruce draped over his back. His neck simply doesn't bend that way. He can turn his head and present a cheek, twist his torso and get a bit more but they aren't going to be gazing deeply into each other's eyes if they're spooning. They have to be lying face to face to meet each other's eyes.
I try and plan out the moment-by-moment action of sex scenes in the same way I would a battle or any other scene. Yes, seriously! It's so easy to get things wrong and catapult your reader out of the story by having two left hands on Bruce or impossible poses for Clark. Paying close attention to the action going on will let you be confident in describing what they say and do to each other. No matter how detailed I get when writing sex or how vague, that knowledge of their bodies, environment plus following logical cause and effect lets me write with confidence.
Onto another issue that I know people worry about and that I still struggle with: how do you handle all those he's in a story, as many of us write slash?
Most Fanfic is slash, with means you can't just go 'he said this' and then 'he did that' without risking confusion on the reader's part. Too many references to 'he' or 'him' in a row can be very confusing both for the reader and the writer. Don't be afraid to use the character's names frequently. The reader is probably going to mentally skip over 'Bruce said' and 'Clark moaned', only registering that it's this character doing that action. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a pro writer was don't be afraid of using 'said'. It's an invisible word when you're reading.
My general rule of thumb is that I have three lines of dialog that contain descriptions of action or reaction and then a block of description. So it would look something like this:
"I'm supposed to be interviewing you," Clark said as he slowly rocked against Bruce's body. "This… this isn't appropriate."
"Mmm, you can interview me later," Bruce said with a smile into the nook of Clark's neck. The smile bloomed into a grin when Clark gasped and shuddered. "Much later."
"I haven't, that is, I've never, I don't," Clark said in a breathless tone of voice.
He was just on the right side of stammering but he didn't care. Bruce's hand had just slid south to regions that only Lois had ever explored before and he was surprised that he could speak at all. More surprising was that his legs fell apart easily, allowing Bruce the access that he sought.
I'd probably follow that with descriptions of Bruce pulling back as he registered what Clark was not quite saying, allowing them both to look at each other and assess if they want to go on and then proceed to looking for lube and condoms for sexy times, but it would be in blocks similar to this.
Note that every action has a reaction even on this small scale: Clark rocking against Bruce invites a smile that makes Clark shudder that encourages Bruce to grope Clark, which makes Clark admit that he's never been with a guy, which then drives the story onwards.
Every action also has an emotional reaction. Clark's rocking makes Bruce happy in the effect he's having on Clark. Bruce's grope gets a double reaction, the admission of inexperience plus the physical encouragement of Clark spreading his legs for Bruce. I try very hard to follow up on both the emotional and the physical actions and reactions. Bruce could pull back when Clark admits it but still keep rocking against him so that Clark knows that he's not saying 'I don't want you' with the withdrawal.
In all of this, there's a key thing that I haven't mentioned but which I hope is clearly implied. Sex, like any other form of action, can advance or derail your plot. If you're writing a PWP where the sex is the point of the story, no problem. Have at it and enjoy! But if the sex occurs in the middle of a wider story, you really should consider whether it advances your plot or derails it.
A sex scene out of nowhere can throw your reader out of the story like nothing else. Sex never happens for no reason. There is always buildup to it, emotional development and the creation of the opportunity. The best sex scenes (IMO) are the ones that happen after the characters have developed a relationship, established that they're interested in each other and then worked their way around to the point that they're ready to go forward.
It's something that I plot into stories in the same way that I plot in fights and down time and necessary exposition. This is part of why I say that I write my sex scenes in the same way that I write my action scenes: every scene needs to contribute to the story, needs to have come from somewhere and lead to somewhere or it doesn't belong and needs to be removed.
There are times where detailed sex is exactly what you need and there are other times where a fade to black will work better. Each story and each writer handles the decision of how detailed to be differently.
Which brings me to my questions for you: How do you write romantic / sexy scenes and keep them from sounding completely ridiculous (as in two left hands, physically impossible poses, etc)? What sorts of tricks have you developed to make writing sex more believable, more comfortable or more enjoyable? Share so we can all put them into use!
One of my favorite things to write is action, dramatic events, exciting developments and the big moments that everyone remembers for ages. It's exciting to portray those huge events in ways that paint pictures in people's heads and very satisfying when a reader tells me that they enjoyed it, that it was like watching a movie.
Of course, big battles are not the only sort of action. There are also sexy moments ranging from tension-filled UST to out and out porn. I enjoy writing sex too, quite a lot. What might surprise people is that I write sexy moments in much the same way that I write huge battle scenes. I've worked out a method that I find highly effective for my writing, which I hope will be helpful for you too.
Sex and combat are two forms of interaction between individuals that are driven by emotional needs and physical action. Most of the time the line between making war and making love is very thin indeed, which is great fun to play with. Making sure that a sex scene is clear and has an impact is no different than making a battle clear, at least in methodology.
This is what I do to make sure my sex scenes are clear, have impact and contribute to the story:
1) Know the environment.
This is basic for me. I'm a world builder so I can usually tell you what the weather patterns in spring are and what the staple food is for the people I'm writing about. Heck, much of the time I can tell you if they have knitted fabric or woven, and how well woven it is. I get a little obsessive about my world building, even when the story is Fanfic.
It's in no way necessary to be that obsessive about your environments but you really do need to know if the characters are in a closed room with one window or if they're in a public location where people could see them and overhear what's going on. The environment always affects how your particular characters react. Bruce will be much more open about showing affection to Clark if they're in private than he would be at a big party where people are watching them together. Unless you're doing a story in which Clark has a secret kink for semi-public sex he's certainly not going to let Brucie feel him up at the party, either.
So, knowing the location affects your characters behavior. It also affects what they can do physically.
Let's move Bruce and Clark to a drawing room at Wayne Manor. You can reasonably expect that there's a couch, probably several comfy chairs and some area tables with fragile and/or expensive knickknacks on them. The windows will probably be closed but the curtains will most likely be open, as Alfred would want to let light into the room. I'm going to say that there's a fireplace in the room but it's not lit at the moment.
With this setting, there are limits on what Bruce and Clark can do. Clark's strength means that the fragile knickknacks are in danger of destruction if they get too passionate. Bruce also isn't likely to shove Clark around and make a mess for fear of Alfred's wrath. Change Bruce to Lex and the potential for destruction goes up immediately as Lex isn't likely to care if something that belongs to Bruce gets destroyed while he seduces Clark. Of course, the likelihood of the encounter turning into a fight also goes up.
Back to Bruce and Clark in the drawing room. We've got our setting, we know how the two individuals are likely to limit their actions within the space, so now we need to consider them.
2) Know your characters.
I'm not referring to their personalities in this case. I think anyone writing Fanfic (or original fiction for that matter) would have a relatively decent grasp on the personalities of their characters by this point. No, I'm talking about their bodies, their size, strength and relative builds.
Bruce and Clark are both big men, burly with well-developed bodies. I would have no problem with Clark pushing Bruce back onto the couch and straddling his lap, however if I tried to say that he did that with one of the comfy armchairs my mind starts squawking. Quite simply, there's no room for two big guys in one armchair, not in that pose anyway.
Physically, I don't think that there'd be room for Bruce to sit and then Clark to put his knees on either side of Bruce's thighs. I've actually tried that personally with my husband and it doesn't work, even though neither of us is anywhere close to six foot tall. It's uncomfortable to put it mildly and we're nowhere near as large in size as Bruce and Clark. The couch would give them room. The armchair wouldn't. Specify that it's an area chair with no arms and my problem is solved.
Now, if we bring Lex back again and put him in Clark's lap in the armchair I can just see it happening but only because Clark's invulnerable. He wouldn't feel squished; threatened maybe, but not squished. Still, a more likely scenario for using an armchair for the encounter is to have Lex leaning over Clark, hands on his shoulders to keep him in place as he kisses Clark. Lex is more slender than Clark and I suspect that he'd want to have the stronger position of standing, looming over Clark and then appearing to keep him in place as he did what he wanted to Clark.
Which brings us to the third step that I use for writing sex scenes: cause and effect.
3) Follow a logical stream of cause and effect to develop the scene.
So Clark has pushed Bruce back on the sofa and straddled his lap. The next question is to ask what Bruce does. How does he react? Depending on what you've had leading up to the scene in question he could: try and push Clark away, run his hands up under Clark's jacket, or smirk at him and settle back so that Clark has to lean even closer to kiss Bruce. We'll say that Bruce enjoys making Clark work for it so he settles back and smirks.
Now what does Clark do? He can follow Bruce's lead and lean in. He can pull back and get all flustered and blushy but stay in Bruce's lap. He could decide that he was being a fool and get up, back away, possibly knock something over as he retreated. It was a pretty bold move for Clark, after all.
The direction you choose will influence how you write the scene and each moment will influence the next moment. For every action (Clark pushing Bruce into the sofa) there has to be a reaction (Bruce smirking at him and not responding immediately), which leads to another action (Clark retreating) and reaction (Bruce catching his wrist so he can't flee), and so on.
I try very hard to be scrupulously aware of cause and effect as to how it affects the characters actions and how the environment both limits and supports their behavior. Say I wanted to turn this Bruce/Clark scene into actual sex rather than an emotional encounter that ends with kissing and a fade to black. It's going to be hard for the guys to have sex in the drawing room. There's sex up against the wall which doesn't have the intimacy I want, or somewhat awkward sex on the sofa (which is seriously awkward, no matter who you are).
However, if I want this to be a tender first time between them I think I'd rather that they were somewhere that allowed them to actually get properly horizontal and snuggle together afterwards. That necessitates changing my environment. Instead of a drawing room, let's make this a bedroom suite with a sitting room, connected bedroom and private bathroom. I don't have to change anything of what I've written so far except to add a reference early on to a connecting door that leads to a bedroom. It's an easy edit that opens up lots of possibilities.
So I can have Bruce pull Clark into the bedroom, kissing him along the way to keep him from freaking out. That gets them to a horizontal surface, the bed, and lets us move onto the next challenge: getting naked together. A lot of the time I skip this with a "they stripped each other clumsily while kissing and exploring each other's bodies" which works. If you want to really focus on the growing connection between them and maybe add conversation that reveals things about the wider story and about them, then you need to slow down and describe the stripping in detail.
Being aware of what a man's suit is like, how many layers, how hard the buttons are to open or close and the like will help. It's another level of environment to consider. Clark's dress shirt will have buttons on the cuff as it's relatively cheap, but Bruce will have a much more expensive dress shirt with cuff links. Clark might not have encountered them before so you have an opportunity for them to separate, talk, laugh and then you get to have Bruce strip his own shirt off while Clark stares at his body. Always fun!
Stripping is sexy, the process of revealing yourself to your lover in bits and pieces. Leaving a shirt on because you're so hot to get to bed is sexy too. Forgetting to take off the shoes before they try and remove the pants is an opportunity for comedy and lightening the mood if they're getting too serious for your plot. Laughter is a wonderful thing in the bedroom.
This same level of attention to detail applies once you get them in bed together. There are many, many ways that two bodies can fit together, many poses that they can take together, but the human body does impose limitations. Even Clark's not going to be able to look directly at Bruce if he's lying on his stomach with Bruce draped over his back. His neck simply doesn't bend that way. He can turn his head and present a cheek, twist his torso and get a bit more but they aren't going to be gazing deeply into each other's eyes if they're spooning. They have to be lying face to face to meet each other's eyes.
I try and plan out the moment-by-moment action of sex scenes in the same way I would a battle or any other scene. Yes, seriously! It's so easy to get things wrong and catapult your reader out of the story by having two left hands on Bruce or impossible poses for Clark. Paying close attention to the action going on will let you be confident in describing what they say and do to each other. No matter how detailed I get when writing sex or how vague, that knowledge of their bodies, environment plus following logical cause and effect lets me write with confidence.
Onto another issue that I know people worry about and that I still struggle with: how do you handle all those he's in a story, as many of us write slash?
Most Fanfic is slash, with means you can't just go 'he said this' and then 'he did that' without risking confusion on the reader's part. Too many references to 'he' or 'him' in a row can be very confusing both for the reader and the writer. Don't be afraid to use the character's names frequently. The reader is probably going to mentally skip over 'Bruce said' and 'Clark moaned', only registering that it's this character doing that action. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a pro writer was don't be afraid of using 'said'. It's an invisible word when you're reading.
My general rule of thumb is that I have three lines of dialog that contain descriptions of action or reaction and then a block of description. So it would look something like this:
"I'm supposed to be interviewing you," Clark said as he slowly rocked against Bruce's body. "This… this isn't appropriate."
"Mmm, you can interview me later," Bruce said with a smile into the nook of Clark's neck. The smile bloomed into a grin when Clark gasped and shuddered. "Much later."
"I haven't, that is, I've never, I don't," Clark said in a breathless tone of voice.
He was just on the right side of stammering but he didn't care. Bruce's hand had just slid south to regions that only Lois had ever explored before and he was surprised that he could speak at all. More surprising was that his legs fell apart easily, allowing Bruce the access that he sought.
I'd probably follow that with descriptions of Bruce pulling back as he registered what Clark was not quite saying, allowing them both to look at each other and assess if they want to go on and then proceed to looking for lube and condoms for sexy times, but it would be in blocks similar to this.
Note that every action has a reaction even on this small scale: Clark rocking against Bruce invites a smile that makes Clark shudder that encourages Bruce to grope Clark, which makes Clark admit that he's never been with a guy, which then drives the story onwards.
Every action also has an emotional reaction. Clark's rocking makes Bruce happy in the effect he's having on Clark. Bruce's grope gets a double reaction, the admission of inexperience plus the physical encouragement of Clark spreading his legs for Bruce. I try very hard to follow up on both the emotional and the physical actions and reactions. Bruce could pull back when Clark admits it but still keep rocking against him so that Clark knows that he's not saying 'I don't want you' with the withdrawal.
In all of this, there's a key thing that I haven't mentioned but which I hope is clearly implied. Sex, like any other form of action, can advance or derail your plot. If you're writing a PWP where the sex is the point of the story, no problem. Have at it and enjoy! But if the sex occurs in the middle of a wider story, you really should consider whether it advances your plot or derails it.
A sex scene out of nowhere can throw your reader out of the story like nothing else. Sex never happens for no reason. There is always buildup to it, emotional development and the creation of the opportunity. The best sex scenes (IMO) are the ones that happen after the characters have developed a relationship, established that they're interested in each other and then worked their way around to the point that they're ready to go forward.
It's something that I plot into stories in the same way that I plot in fights and down time and necessary exposition. This is part of why I say that I write my sex scenes in the same way that I write my action scenes: every scene needs to contribute to the story, needs to have come from somewhere and lead to somewhere or it doesn't belong and needs to be removed.
There are times where detailed sex is exactly what you need and there are other times where a fade to black will work better. Each story and each writer handles the decision of how detailed to be differently.
Which brings me to my questions for you: How do you write romantic / sexy scenes and keep them from sounding completely ridiculous (as in two left hands, physically impossible poses, etc)? What sorts of tricks have you developed to make writing sex more believable, more comfortable or more enjoyable? Share so we can all put them into use!