The Art of Writing a Sex Scene, Part 2
Thanks again to elliotsmelliot and to everyone who responded to the first part of this essay. My apologies for the delay in posting the conclusion of it.
Warning: essay includes frank discussion of sex and porn and lots of naughty words. Look on it as NC-17-rated meta.
Disclaimer: This essay is entirely subjective. I’m not trying to tell anyone how they ought to write, I’m just offering my own opinions and my own experience.
Thanks to: toestastegood and gemjam for allowing me to use excerpts from their fics.
More Emo, Please
It’s hard to put into words how one weaves emotion into a sex scene. It’s one of those things that you just do without really being aware of how you do it. It’s like my grandmother said about kneading bread when I asked how to know when it’s done. “You just know,” she said.
I think we can all agree that the emotional content of a sex scene is very important to its success - it's perhaps even the most important element. A lot of the readers of Part 1 of this essay said that what will make a sex scene hot for them is emotional content - that and good characterization. It’s true that quickie hook-up fics can be hot and also that if well-written in other respects, PWPs or AUs where the characters are not completely IC can also be hot - but what will take sex writing to a whole ‘nother level and make it not only hot, but also memorable and affecting - the kind of writing that will wring a reader’s heart or take their breath away - is a well-crafted, well-written scene where the emotions of the characters (whether spoken or unspoken) are so present that they just get down deep inside and make you respond.
And, okay, I admit that doing that is not easy. I’m not sure I’m particularly good at it. I know that sometimes it doesn’t work for me. But then, sometimes it does.
I think the first step is to start out with a clear idea of the emotional story you want to tell in your scene. Whether it’s a story about love or lust or hate or any number of other possible emotions - or a twisty, tricksy combination of several emotions at once - it’s important that your reader understand where your characters are emotionally - or at least where your POV character is (and for the purpose of this essay I’m assuming one POV because, frankly, jumping from one POV to another makes me a little crazy). You will want to set the emotional tone from the very beginning and then guide your reader through the emotions of the scene, making sure they don’t take a wrong turn as they go.
It’s important to keep the emotional story focused throughout - not to be distracted by possible (and possibly tempting) tangents that you could wander off on. Sometimes a bit of backstory is necessary and sometimes it can be addressed in the course of a sex scene without taking the reader out of the action, but it’s good to keep a critical eye on this. If two characters are having sex and your POV character is ruminating about something about the relationship or her/his sexual history or her/his partner’s sexual history it can be distracting. Not that you can’t make it work - there are times when you can. It’s just a good idea to be disciplined when it comes to moving the action away from what is going on between the characters in your scene in the here and now.
Here’s an example from my own writing where I think I managed to have my POV character (Sayid) ponder his emotional reaction to his partner (Desmond) without it being too distracting. This paragraph is from Under the Blood Red Flag, and is situated right in the middle of Sayid giving Desmond a blow job. Fyi, the fic is a pirate AU, so the language is a bit, er, piratey.
What is it about this man? Sayid wondered. Handsome as the devil, but many men were handsome. There was something about him that Sayid couldn’t pinpoint, something that was like an itch under his skin, an intoxicant in his blood. Desmond drew his eye, made it impossible to think of aught else, inflamed his passions beyond hope of reason. But what truly unnerved Sayid was that kernel of something more than lust. Lust was familiar to him and easy enough to satisfy. This… whatever it was that Desmond inspired - this feeling that made him shiver and sigh at a simple gesture of affection, that made him want to be a better man than he was, made him want to consider Desmond’s needs and desires above his own - it was more than he had bargained for when he saw the man standing on the deck of the Kahana and determined to make every effort to convince him to save himself. It was more than he knew how to deal with, more than he wished for, but now, with Desmond on his knees before him, his eyes full of desire and worry, the tenderness that Sayid felt for him mixed with the lust until he could hardly tell the two apart.
Despite the fact that this passage is removed from what is physically taking place between my two characters, I tried to keep Sayid’s thoughts on Desmond in the here and now. He’s wondering about a specific emotion he’s experiencing at that very moment, something unfamiliar to him. When I wrote it I was re-writing the chapter entirely with the sole point of making the sex scene more emotional - the first version was too focused on the physical and lacked real insight into what was going on in my POV character’s head. Having Sayid think these kinds of thoughts during the course of the scene was one way I tried to fix that and get some emotional depth across.
But even in shorter, less detailed scenes, where you may not have the room to go to such length, you can still convey a lot of emotion. The above fic is long and consequently the sex scenes are also quite long. The following excerpt is from a shorter fic of mine, You Were As Flowers, and one in which the sex is a fairly brief, though important, part of the story. The characters are Sun and Sayid:
He leans up on a hand and looks down at her. His hair falls around his face, a dark curtain that shuts them off in their own little world where there is only each other. She holds his eyes even as he moves faster, harder. A sob is forced out of her and she realizes her eyes are wet. He makes a raw, whimpering sound, and she knows he feels it too, the pain and pleasure combined, the agony of connection after so much time alone. She shuts her eyes against it and lets her body take over.
I wanted to convey that both characters are in the same kind of pain, that they recognize it in each other and that it’s almost unbearable, which has been a theme throughout the fic. (Yeah, it’s not happy sex, it’s pretty much the opposite.) The line I underlined is where that information is conveyed. Because I’d been building toward this for the entire fic, it’s easy enough to convey it quite simply in the sex scene, with only a few words.
There are many ways to convey emotion in sex scenes - as there are in any other kind of scene. I think maybe it’s sometimes possible to trip oneself up by thinking of sex scenes as a ‘different’ kind of writing. It’s all just writing. We convey emotion through expressions and thoughts and touches and dialog in other kinds of scenes just as we do in sex scenes. Maybe the difference is that there’s often a lot going on in a sex scene - they tend to be a bit more intense than other types of scenes, but emotion is still conveyed in the same ways. Working it in around all the other elements can be tricky, but when you get it right everything just gels and you end up with a scene that’ll turn your readers on whilst simultaneously tugging at their emotions - a wonderful combination!
Logistics, or He Put What Where?
Sex scenes are action scenes - action scenes with lots of emotion and character and tricky phraseology and difficult word choices and the added burden/gift of the ever-elusive hotness factor, BUT… they are action scenes. (If you want to read an essay on writing sex scenes as action scenes by someone far smarter than I: The Formula for Writing Sex Scenes by cupidsbow.) And as such, it’s important that your action be clear, precise and logical. Like writing a fight scene, a car chase or a sea battle, in a sex scene it’s important that the reader be able to easily follow the action without having to pause and try to figure out what the hell is going on.
How many times have I been reading a sex scene and found myself wondering But are they standing up? A minute ago I thought they were lying down. Are they face to face or back to chest? How is it possible for Character A’s hand to be on Character B’s cock and his other hand on at his hip without Character A falling flat on his face? At this point I have been pushed completely out of the world of the fic by the writer’s faulty logistics and my next move is usually to hit the “Back” button.
Logistics is the foundation of any sex scene - you get that right and you build character, plot, emotion and hotness on top of it. Skimping or trying to take shortcuts is not good ideas. Even in a fade-to-black scene or a sex scene were the action is alluded to in non-explicit ways, you want your reader to be able to be able to understand what is taking place. A confused reader is not able to go with the flow of the fic. More importantly, a confused reader is an unhappy reader. We all work hard on our fic - we want the people who read it to enjoy it.
Do not assume that your reader will figure it out for themselves. (Please, promise me you will never do this!) Your job as the writer is to guide your reader through the scene, ensuring that they do not become lost, confused or annoyed, none of which are desirable results of reading a sex scene. No, you want to leave your readers in a happy, fuzzy-headed pile of goo. You want them squirming in their seat and trying to type incoherent, capslocked comments with numb fingers. You do not want them wondering what is really supposed to be going on in your fic and why you seem to be so shy of just coming out and saying it. You don’t want them trying to imagine if the position you seem to be obliquely hinting at in a vague and frustrating fashion is even physically possible or if it will result in aching backs and pulled groin muscles for all.
At times, the action you are imagining occurring in your sex scene may be confusing to you as well. If you don’t have a very clear picture of what your characters are doing at every moment - hand and body placement, what surface they’re on, who’s on top, how they move or switch positions - your reader will not be able to picture it either. Sometimes as you’re writing, you may have to get up out of your chair and block it out by actually adopting the positions you’re putting your characters into. I guarantee you will feel ridiculous doing this (and I speak from experience). Still, sometimes it has to be done.
Writing logistics for sex scenes is usually not the fun part. To me, it’s the drudgery of writing the scene. The fun part is the sights and sounds and smells and the dirty talk and finding ways to work in special bits of characterization and of course, the big payoff, when we get to make our characters happy by giving them a mind-blowing orgasm. Trying to figure out how far back Sawyer can reach if he’s on his hands and knees, and would it really be possible for him to work a finger up into X’s ass at the same time or is that just wishful thinking - well, the idea of it might be fun, but you need to be sure it’s actually physically possible (er, unless you’re writing some kind of magical sex, in which case anything goes), and unless you can test your ideas out on a happy accomplice, blocking it out is your best bet.
Back when I posted in my LJ asking what kinds of problems arose for people when writing sex scenes, a number of people mentioned feeling like their sex writing was ‘too mechanical’ or that it consisted of ‘stage directions’ or ‘feeling like the description was detached/clinical/robotic’.
The goal is to make the action of the scene very clear while at the same time not making it any of the above. You need your logistics, but you don’t want them to rule the scene. My own method for achieving this is by layering the scene through multiple edits/rewrites. I simply cannot get all the elements in on a first draft. I really need a minimum of two edits, and the second (or third or fourth) one is where I keep my scene from being too mechanical.
I think it helps to put yourself in the character’s place (and yes, this is one of the FUN parts!) and really try to focus on what their experience would be. They are having sex (yay!) with one of your other favorite characters (yay!) and you get to Mary Sue yourself right in there (YAY!). Now, I’m not encouraging the writing of Mary Sues, I’m just saying that thinking from your character’s POV in the most immediate way that you can will help you focus on things that will make your scene spark to life. What is your character feeling? What do they see when they look at their partner? What about their partner is driving them wild at that very second? What noises are they making? Are they saying anything? (Hopefully they are, because I happen to love sex talk. ;)) If you can convey the desire that your characters feel for each other, your sex scene will not be flat or mechanical or read like a series of stage directions.
The Devil’s in the Details
What to include? What to leave out? One person commented to my post, I always feel like I get too close to the story and lose sight of what's necessary to mention and what totally isn't.
I wonder if this isn’t a matter of style. I mean, depending on your writing style and your comfort with writing explicitly you’ll include more or less detail. Me, I’m a slut for the details. I want lots and lots, the more explicit the better. I love reading/writing super-explicit fic. I know not everyone shares that love, so I really do think that in many ways the level of detail is simply a personal choice.
But that’s not very helpful, is it?
When you write very detailed sex scenes this question doesn’t come up too often because the answer to What to include? is Everything! The more, the better! But if I try to pretend for a moment that I don’t write heavily detailed sex scenes I come up with the following as the minimum elements necessary to a sex scene:
1. Clear POV
2. Detailed enough logistics that your reader knows who is doing what to whom at each point in the scene.
3. Description of location with enough detail for the reader to create the atmosphere in their head.
4. Emotional context demonstrated through feelings/thoughts of POV character and actions of both.
5. And as for the sex: build up - climactic moment - closure.
I think the decision of what to leave in and what to leave out has to be made based on what you’re trying to accomplish in your scene. If you want your scene to be hot, details will help with that. If you don’t need it to be hot and are just using it as a part of the story, emphasizing character and emotion over physical detail will probably work - as long as you keep your logistics clear.
Of course, this is the sort of thing that a beta will help you with as well.
If you leave too much out you risk ending up with a scene that feels hurried. A hurried sex scene will telegraph to your readers that you are uncomfortable with what you are writing and you want to get it over with as quickly as possible. We’re obviously talking about a sex scene that’s part of a larger fic, because with PWPs or longer, porny fics, drawing it out and getting into detail is to be expected. But with fic in which the sex is a part of the larger plot you want your scene to fit seamlessly into the rest of the fic.
You want to be sure your sex scene accomplishes what you need it to - that it completely tells the story you need it to tell. Sure, maybe it’s there because getting your characters naked and sweaty and rubbing against each other is hot liek whoa, but you’ve also got goals in terms of plot and characterization to accomplish, and you probably want to reveal something about the characters’ relationship and/or how they interact and you won’t be able to do that if you hurry it up too much - or if you get bogged down in extraneous detail. The best bet is to simply pay careful attention to your characters and your story and if you do, the rhythm of the scene will naturally take over. If you pay attention to that rhythm, it will carry you through and help you decide how much detail to go into, what to leave out and what to include and when to wrap things up.
But He’d Never Do That!
There is nothing that will bump a reader out of a sex scene faster than OOC behavior. When a character does or says something that you just know they simply would never, ever do, it slams a wall down between the reader and the fic before you can say fasterhardermore. You know, our dearly beloved show isn’t above fucking with character in order to further a plot line or two, but we fic writers are better than that! We make it a point to keep characters true to themselves, even in the midst of hot ‘n heavy sexin’.
The most egregious examples (at least in slash fic) of OOC writing usually fall at either end of the emotional spectrum - characters declaring unending love to each other, often accompanied by tears, or characters behaving cruelly or aggressively with no justification. There are fics where the writer puts in a lot of work to make seemingly OOC behavior logical in the world of the particular fic, and if they have done that well, it can work effectively. But taken as a matter of faith, no. Basically, the options are either keep your characters IC or else be willing to put in a helluva lot of work to justify an OOC interpretation.
So, how to maintain character integrity in a sex scene? Firstly and obviously, you have to know your character. No, but I mean, you really have to know your character! I would bet that the better we know our characters, the easier it is for us to write believable, IC sex scenes involving them. For myself, writing a sex scene that involves any combination of Jack, Sawyer and Sayid is far, far easier than a sex scene involving anyone else, simply because I have wasted spent such a ridiculous significant amount of time obsessing thinking about and writing those characters. Writing a new character in a sexual situation is not all that different from writing a new character’s dialog or body language or innermost thoughts in non-sexual scenes - it’s just, in my experience, a little harder.
I’ve found it helpful, especially when writing new characters or new pairings, to write a bit of sex-focused character meta before getting into the fic. This can help me to clarify a characters’ motivations, desires, needs and fears and to think about what they might be hiding (because Lost characters are always hiding something) and what they’re willing to share. This can be as simple as word association or as involved as writing a multiple page essay, whatever would work best for you.
Exploring character through sex writing can be one of the best writing experience out there. The possibilities are nearly endless and the things you can reveal about your characters can go to a very deep level. I find that if you know the core of your character and keep that solid in your fic, then there’s a lot of leeway in where you can take them and still remain IC.
An excellent illustration of this is from toestastegood's fic Pick Me Back Up Again, a hot 'n sweet Desmond/Charlie fic in which Desmond adopts a dominant role. Personally, I have a hard time imagining Desmond as a dom, but Shona makes it plausible by giving the reader an adequate build-up in which we understand that this is something Charlie wants and that while Desmond has his doubts, his affection for Charlie makes him want to do this for him. Desmond is being, as Dan Savage would say, ‘good, giving and game’. And that seems like very plausible Desmond behavior. We also witness Charlie and Desmond discussing and negotiating what will happen, which injects a nice bit of realism into the fic.
What Shona does so well in this fic is keep Desmond in character in a situation in which he could seem totally OOC (she keeps Charlie IC too, but his characterization in this fic is not such a stretch). In the following brief excerpt I’ve underlined some of the places where she does this.
When he was close enough, kneeling by Desmond's feet, Desmond's hand moved to stroke through his hair, pushing the blond mess back from Charlie's face with the same thoughtful affection you'd give to any pet. "You do what I say tonight," Desmond said, "and only what I say. Right?"
Charlie nodded. "Right, Des. I got it."
"Sir," Desmond corrected, with a faint glint of amusement in his eyes. "Call me sir."
Charlie struggled not to raise an eyebrow and bit back any comments about Desmond's time in the army: now wasn't the time. He wasn't going to screw this up because he was hopelessly addicted to snarking. "Yes, sir," he said, looking up to meet Desmond's gaze. Desmond smirked at him and even rolled his eyes, and this was- Yeah. This was nice. This was exactly what he'd been wanting.
By including the amusement that Desmond would feel at himself for adopting this role, the writer manages to keep Desmond true to character (that self-deprecating eyeroll seems so very Desmond). If you look at how she does it, it’s very simple - just a few words, really, but it’s quite effective.
Turning Up the Heat
I am really not sure if this is something that could ever be explained in an essay. I’m not going to say you either know how or you don’t, because I definitely think it can be learned - by doing lots of reading, writing a lot and using a beta. But I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I know there are things that I tend to write a lot - things that I think are hot that a lot of other people seem to find hot too. I think there are certain words and phrases that, when used at a certain juncture of a story, heighten the heat level, but it’d be hard to parse them out and after all, that’s a terribly subjective thing. I happen to think that detailed descriptions of a guy coming all over himself or making a mess on the sheets are hot as hell, but there are probably people out there who just think it’s icky. (Poor, deluded souls, I pity them.) I think it’s fair to say the safe bet is to go with what you think is hot and then run it by your beta. If you both agree that it’s hot, then you’re home free.
If you are trying to write a sex scene with the goal of making it very hot, you do not want to be afraid of detail. Detail is your friend. There’s room for all level of detail in sex scenes, but if what you’re writing is explicit porn, well… you should be explicit! If you shy away from using certain words or describing certain acts or reactions or messy bodily functions - in fact, if you shy away from describing anything - frankly, you probably shouldn’t be attempting to write explicit porn.
Imho, the triumvirate of hot is strong characterization, believable emotional content and well-worded, detailed description. Nail those three and your scene will burn.
Orgasm 101
Writing orgasms is NOT easy! But it's fun, so that makes up for it, right? If you're writing smut, the orgasm is important. Most of the time it's the climax of the scene, so it needs to work. In my own writing, I tend to lay it on heavy, lots of overblown, unrealistic imagery and metaphors (or maybe similes, I can never remember which is which), run-on sentences, a regrettable overuse of adjectives, italics, dashes, ohs and unhs and wordsmushing, that kind of thing. Hell, most of the time my written orgasms go on longer than the real thing does! But that's okay, because I'm not going for real, I'm going for better than real, if such a thing is possible, which it likely isn't, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't try.
Many people prefer a more economical approach, which can certainly work, in the right context, if the economical description is a deliberate choice and is carefully done and not the result of discomfort or laziness on the part of the writer.
One of the hardest things about writing orgasms is finding new ways to describe them. I don't think any of the orgasms I've written are exactly alike, but I tend to use certain images over and over: the tidal wave, whirlwind, flight and/or falling, fire - to name a few. Certain words get repeated a lot. There are probably some words I use every single time. I don't really worry about that too much. Certain words just work in that context and certain words are nicely loaded and certain words hit my buttons, so why not make good use of them? That's what they're there for. Readers are unlikely to notice if you re-use words or even short phrases for sex/orgasms if in other respects your fics are sufficiently unique from each other. (The list of sex words that I mentioned back in the first part of this essay comes in very handy for writing orgasms.)
I find it a let-down when writers don't even try - when they’ve built the scene up and led you to expect that there will be a pay-off, and then you read something like, "and then he came and it was over". I mean, wtf? Writers who write smut should be willing to make more of an effort. Not that it has to be all flowery and over-the-top like my orgasm writing. Sometimes short and succinct works very well indeed, even if it's a style that I find well nigh impossible to master. When done well, I admire it in others.
It certainly is ever-challenging, to attempt to capture in words something so amorphous and fleeting. Something that is intensely physical but that can also be incredibly emotional, and even spiritual. And in fic one must keep it all in character and within the context and style of the fic and also possibly use the orgasm to build connection between your characters as well. Plus, if you're a woman writing from a man's POV, or vice versa, there's the whole thing about trying to imagine what it might be like - but then that's where a lot of the fun comes in too.
Here are a couple of links to shortish essays about writing orgasms, found via metafandom, 1001 ways to write an orgasm by lobelia321 and More about writing orgasms by schemingreader.
Spanking and Butt Plugs and Bondage, Oh My!
The fact is, everybody’s kinky in some way. You’d never know it to look at them. People keep that stuff concealed, compartmentalized, often repressed. But it’s there.
Same goes for our favorite fictional characters. If you get to know them well, it’s not hard to infer what kinks a specific character may have. And if you enjoy writing kinky fic, then it’s a helluva lot of fun to explore that.
Here’s Jack for instance, all large and in charge, classic type-A personality, workaholic, control freak. Just try to convince me that he wouldn’t like being tied up. Because you know he totally would! And you know it’d be hot too. ;) Having all that control stripped away… even better - having that control voluntarily relinquished - that’s potent stuff.
Now, I’m not saying that the character you have to use is exactly what we’re given in canon. I kinda doubt canon!Sawyer would put on lacy panties for Sayid under any circumstances, but I wrote him doing it anyway (in an AU, though). Your characters can do lots of interesting things that the canon versions might not - but then again, the thing about people is that you never know what kinks reside in their hearts. So they just might do that unlikely thing, given the right set of circumstances and the right partner. If you can take a character and extrapolate from him or her some aspect of character that is presented in canon that you can work with to form an unconventional sexual dynamic or desire, then I think your kinky scene is likely to work.
To me, the best kink fics are the ones that give you a set up that makes the kink plausible. If you can tap into something in the character’s psyche that could manifest in a kinky way, then you’ve got a good place to start. A classic Lost example is Sawyer, because he’s exhibited masochistic tendencies in canon - not sexual ones, but he has purposely let himself be hurt and has behaved in ways that make it inevitable that he will be hurt. As a writer, you can take that urge and play with the ways that it could manifest sexually.
On the other hand, in canon Sawyer has let himself be hurt as a way of achieving dominance. He was basically topping from the bottom, only, again, in a non-sexual way. So if you wanted to write Sawyer in a kinkily dominant role, you could make his canon characterization work for you that scenario too.
The following is an excerpt from a Sawyer/Sayid fic by gemjam, Who I Am. It’s a wonderfully kinky, fantastically filthy fic and it features an established D/s relationship, bondage, toys, orgasm denial and sensory deprivation. Yeah, it’s kinky, porny slash, so if you’re not into that you might want to skip ahead.
This excerpt takes place after a long build up, when Sawyer’s nearly at the breaking point.
“Just a little more,” Sayid told him. Sawyer shook his head. “Just a little,” Sayid said again. There was no give, not even a tiny glimmer, and Sawyer couldn’t imagine how he was going to hold off. Sayid moved the dildo into him harder but not faster. “Say my name again.”
Sawyer looked at him. He felt strangely inhibited by the request. “Sayid,” he tried. Sayid looked unmoved. Sawyer took a breath and tried to connect the word with the actions. “Sayid.” It didn’t feel quite right somehow. Sayid kept moving, kept staring, so Sawyer let the sensations take him over again, every one of them, until he was gasping and moaning and unable to stop from fucking himself on the glass.
“Sayid,” he groaned. It sounded much more erotic this time, even to his own ears. “Oh, fuck, Sayid,” he gritted out, arching into the thrust of the dildo. “Sayid.”
Sayid suddenly pulled the dildo out with little care and tossed it aside. “You never say my name during sex,” he stated, his hand pulling almost absently on his own dick. “I am not sure if you are aware of that.” He moved closer, adjusting Sawyer’s legs to be a little straighter. Sawyer hadn’t realised how stiff they were until they moved. “I sometimes wonder if you remember who I am,” Sayid stated.
Sawyer was surprised by the admission. And hurt. He didn’t even know what to say. With Sayid, he never went anywhere else, not even for a second. He’d never wanted to.
“Always,” was the only thing he could manage to vocalise.
What I like about this bit (besides teh hawt) is the emotion and the bit of character exploration in it. Sawyer’s reaction of surprise and hurt in the midst of the scene and his honest response to Sayid lifts the scene from being just well-written, kinky porn to being something more.
gemjam comes back to this exchange at the end of the fic, reinforcing the connection and trust between her characters, showing us something about Sawyer’s sexual history that we’d maybe never considered and demonstrating the difference between his life in the past and the time in which the fic takes place when he is with Sayid.
“It is because you could never remember their names, isn’t it?” Sayid said suddenly. Sawyer looked at him. Sayid rolled onto his side, gazing at Sawyer, waiting for a response.
“Who?” Sawyer asked.
“The people that you fucked,” Sayid replied. “That is why you don’t say names during sex. Was it hard to keep track?”
Sawyer smiled. He wanted to reach out, but his arm wouldn’t move. “I know your name,” he assured him. “I don’t forget it.” Sayid just looked at him, giving nothing away. “Sayid Hassan Jarrah,” Sawyer stated.
I excerpted these passages from this fic because I think they illustrate how, even in a very explicit, very kinky fic, working in emotions and character detail can turn a hot bit of smut into something really memorable.
Besides being hot, kinky fic is a great venue for playing with and exploring dynamics between characters and for delving deeply into what makes characters tick. If you like to write sex and you like to get your hands dirty with the messy side of characterization then writing kinky fic can be satisfying. Sure it’s not for everybody - and in the Lost fandom it’s apparently not something that has much appeal - but in most other fandoms that’s not the case. And anyway, if you like writing it enough, you’ll write it, regardless of how much it appeals to anyone other than yourself.
*
Aaaand… that’s all I’ve got. I hope this has been in some way helpful. I hope it’s been interesting. I want to reiterate that everything I’ve said here is my own take on the subject and my own very personal opinions and my own conclusions about what has worked best for me. Everyone is different - each of us writes differently and has different priorities in our writing and what works for me might not work for you. But if any of this helps you solve a problem in your writing or sheds insight on something you'd wondered about, then that will make me quite happy and satisfied.
* * *
This time I’m not posing any specific questions for discussion, instead hoping that you’ll just discuss whatever you want about the essay (this part or the previous one), or about your experience of writing sex scenes or about about why you prefer not to write sex scenes. Please feel free to share any sex writing tips and tricks you've found that work for you and if you want to discuss a topic not mentioned or go into more detail about one that was, please do. It's fair game to bring up anything at all relevant to the topic of writing sex. If you’ve got questions for other readers, ask them here, and if you’ve got answers, please respond.
Warning: essay includes frank discussion of sex and porn and lots of naughty words. Look on it as NC-17-rated meta.
Disclaimer: This essay is entirely subjective. I’m not trying to tell anyone how they ought to write, I’m just offering my own opinions and my own experience.
Thanks to: toestastegood and gemjam for allowing me to use excerpts from their fics.
More Emo, Please
It’s hard to put into words how one weaves emotion into a sex scene. It’s one of those things that you just do without really being aware of how you do it. It’s like my grandmother said about kneading bread when I asked how to know when it’s done. “You just know,” she said.
I think we can all agree that the emotional content of a sex scene is very important to its success - it's perhaps even the most important element. A lot of the readers of Part 1 of this essay said that what will make a sex scene hot for them is emotional content - that and good characterization. It’s true that quickie hook-up fics can be hot and also that if well-written in other respects, PWPs or AUs where the characters are not completely IC can also be hot - but what will take sex writing to a whole ‘nother level and make it not only hot, but also memorable and affecting - the kind of writing that will wring a reader’s heart or take their breath away - is a well-crafted, well-written scene where the emotions of the characters (whether spoken or unspoken) are so present that they just get down deep inside and make you respond.
And, okay, I admit that doing that is not easy. I’m not sure I’m particularly good at it. I know that sometimes it doesn’t work for me. But then, sometimes it does.
I think the first step is to start out with a clear idea of the emotional story you want to tell in your scene. Whether it’s a story about love or lust or hate or any number of other possible emotions - or a twisty, tricksy combination of several emotions at once - it’s important that your reader understand where your characters are emotionally - or at least where your POV character is (and for the purpose of this essay I’m assuming one POV because, frankly, jumping from one POV to another makes me a little crazy). You will want to set the emotional tone from the very beginning and then guide your reader through the emotions of the scene, making sure they don’t take a wrong turn as they go.
It’s important to keep the emotional story focused throughout - not to be distracted by possible (and possibly tempting) tangents that you could wander off on. Sometimes a bit of backstory is necessary and sometimes it can be addressed in the course of a sex scene without taking the reader out of the action, but it’s good to keep a critical eye on this. If two characters are having sex and your POV character is ruminating about something about the relationship or her/his sexual history or her/his partner’s sexual history it can be distracting. Not that you can’t make it work - there are times when you can. It’s just a good idea to be disciplined when it comes to moving the action away from what is going on between the characters in your scene in the here and now.
Here’s an example from my own writing where I think I managed to have my POV character (Sayid) ponder his emotional reaction to his partner (Desmond) without it being too distracting. This paragraph is from Under the Blood Red Flag, and is situated right in the middle of Sayid giving Desmond a blow job. Fyi, the fic is a pirate AU, so the language is a bit, er, piratey.
What is it about this man? Sayid wondered. Handsome as the devil, but many men were handsome. There was something about him that Sayid couldn’t pinpoint, something that was like an itch under his skin, an intoxicant in his blood. Desmond drew his eye, made it impossible to think of aught else, inflamed his passions beyond hope of reason. But what truly unnerved Sayid was that kernel of something more than lust. Lust was familiar to him and easy enough to satisfy. This… whatever it was that Desmond inspired - this feeling that made him shiver and sigh at a simple gesture of affection, that made him want to be a better man than he was, made him want to consider Desmond’s needs and desires above his own - it was more than he had bargained for when he saw the man standing on the deck of the Kahana and determined to make every effort to convince him to save himself. It was more than he knew how to deal with, more than he wished for, but now, with Desmond on his knees before him, his eyes full of desire and worry, the tenderness that Sayid felt for him mixed with the lust until he could hardly tell the two apart.
Despite the fact that this passage is removed from what is physically taking place between my two characters, I tried to keep Sayid’s thoughts on Desmond in the here and now. He’s wondering about a specific emotion he’s experiencing at that very moment, something unfamiliar to him. When I wrote it I was re-writing the chapter entirely with the sole point of making the sex scene more emotional - the first version was too focused on the physical and lacked real insight into what was going on in my POV character’s head. Having Sayid think these kinds of thoughts during the course of the scene was one way I tried to fix that and get some emotional depth across.
But even in shorter, less detailed scenes, where you may not have the room to go to such length, you can still convey a lot of emotion. The above fic is long and consequently the sex scenes are also quite long. The following excerpt is from a shorter fic of mine, You Were As Flowers, and one in which the sex is a fairly brief, though important, part of the story. The characters are Sun and Sayid:
He leans up on a hand and looks down at her. His hair falls around his face, a dark curtain that shuts them off in their own little world where there is only each other. She holds his eyes even as he moves faster, harder. A sob is forced out of her and she realizes her eyes are wet. He makes a raw, whimpering sound, and she knows he feels it too, the pain and pleasure combined, the agony of connection after so much time alone. She shuts her eyes against it and lets her body take over.
I wanted to convey that both characters are in the same kind of pain, that they recognize it in each other and that it’s almost unbearable, which has been a theme throughout the fic. (Yeah, it’s not happy sex, it’s pretty much the opposite.) The line I underlined is where that information is conveyed. Because I’d been building toward this for the entire fic, it’s easy enough to convey it quite simply in the sex scene, with only a few words.
There are many ways to convey emotion in sex scenes - as there are in any other kind of scene. I think maybe it’s sometimes possible to trip oneself up by thinking of sex scenes as a ‘different’ kind of writing. It’s all just writing. We convey emotion through expressions and thoughts and touches and dialog in other kinds of scenes just as we do in sex scenes. Maybe the difference is that there’s often a lot going on in a sex scene - they tend to be a bit more intense than other types of scenes, but emotion is still conveyed in the same ways. Working it in around all the other elements can be tricky, but when you get it right everything just gels and you end up with a scene that’ll turn your readers on whilst simultaneously tugging at their emotions - a wonderful combination!
Logistics, or He Put What Where?
Sex scenes are action scenes - action scenes with lots of emotion and character and tricky phraseology and difficult word choices and the added burden/gift of the ever-elusive hotness factor, BUT… they are action scenes. (If you want to read an essay on writing sex scenes as action scenes by someone far smarter than I: The Formula for Writing Sex Scenes by cupidsbow.) And as such, it’s important that your action be clear, precise and logical. Like writing a fight scene, a car chase or a sea battle, in a sex scene it’s important that the reader be able to easily follow the action without having to pause and try to figure out what the hell is going on.
How many times have I been reading a sex scene and found myself wondering But are they standing up? A minute ago I thought they were lying down. Are they face to face or back to chest? How is it possible for Character A’s hand to be on Character B’s cock and his other hand on at his hip without Character A falling flat on his face? At this point I have been pushed completely out of the world of the fic by the writer’s faulty logistics and my next move is usually to hit the “Back” button.
Logistics is the foundation of any sex scene - you get that right and you build character, plot, emotion and hotness on top of it. Skimping or trying to take shortcuts is not good ideas. Even in a fade-to-black scene or a sex scene were the action is alluded to in non-explicit ways, you want your reader to be able to be able to understand what is taking place. A confused reader is not able to go with the flow of the fic. More importantly, a confused reader is an unhappy reader. We all work hard on our fic - we want the people who read it to enjoy it.
Do not assume that your reader will figure it out for themselves. (Please, promise me you will never do this!) Your job as the writer is to guide your reader through the scene, ensuring that they do not become lost, confused or annoyed, none of which are desirable results of reading a sex scene. No, you want to leave your readers in a happy, fuzzy-headed pile of goo. You want them squirming in their seat and trying to type incoherent, capslocked comments with numb fingers. You do not want them wondering what is really supposed to be going on in your fic and why you seem to be so shy of just coming out and saying it. You don’t want them trying to imagine if the position you seem to be obliquely hinting at in a vague and frustrating fashion is even physically possible or if it will result in aching backs and pulled groin muscles for all.
At times, the action you are imagining occurring in your sex scene may be confusing to you as well. If you don’t have a very clear picture of what your characters are doing at every moment - hand and body placement, what surface they’re on, who’s on top, how they move or switch positions - your reader will not be able to picture it either. Sometimes as you’re writing, you may have to get up out of your chair and block it out by actually adopting the positions you’re putting your characters into. I guarantee you will feel ridiculous doing this (and I speak from experience). Still, sometimes it has to be done.
Writing logistics for sex scenes is usually not the fun part. To me, it’s the drudgery of writing the scene. The fun part is the sights and sounds and smells and the dirty talk and finding ways to work in special bits of characterization and of course, the big payoff, when we get to make our characters happy by giving them a mind-blowing orgasm. Trying to figure out how far back Sawyer can reach if he’s on his hands and knees, and would it really be possible for him to work a finger up into X’s ass at the same time or is that just wishful thinking - well, the idea of it might be fun, but you need to be sure it’s actually physically possible (er, unless you’re writing some kind of magical sex, in which case anything goes), and unless you can test your ideas out on a happy accomplice, blocking it out is your best bet.
Back when I posted in my LJ asking what kinds of problems arose for people when writing sex scenes, a number of people mentioned feeling like their sex writing was ‘too mechanical’ or that it consisted of ‘stage directions’ or ‘feeling like the description was detached/clinical/robotic’.
The goal is to make the action of the scene very clear while at the same time not making it any of the above. You need your logistics, but you don’t want them to rule the scene. My own method for achieving this is by layering the scene through multiple edits/rewrites. I simply cannot get all the elements in on a first draft. I really need a minimum of two edits, and the second (or third or fourth) one is where I keep my scene from being too mechanical.
I think it helps to put yourself in the character’s place (and yes, this is one of the FUN parts!) and really try to focus on what their experience would be. They are having sex (yay!) with one of your other favorite characters (yay!) and you get to Mary Sue yourself right in there (YAY!). Now, I’m not encouraging the writing of Mary Sues, I’m just saying that thinking from your character’s POV in the most immediate way that you can will help you focus on things that will make your scene spark to life. What is your character feeling? What do they see when they look at their partner? What about their partner is driving them wild at that very second? What noises are they making? Are they saying anything? (Hopefully they are, because I happen to love sex talk. ;)) If you can convey the desire that your characters feel for each other, your sex scene will not be flat or mechanical or read like a series of stage directions.
The Devil’s in the Details
What to include? What to leave out? One person commented to my post, I always feel like I get too close to the story and lose sight of what's necessary to mention and what totally isn't.
I wonder if this isn’t a matter of style. I mean, depending on your writing style and your comfort with writing explicitly you’ll include more or less detail. Me, I’m a slut for the details. I want lots and lots, the more explicit the better. I love reading/writing super-explicit fic. I know not everyone shares that love, so I really do think that in many ways the level of detail is simply a personal choice.
But that’s not very helpful, is it?
When you write very detailed sex scenes this question doesn’t come up too often because the answer to What to include? is Everything! The more, the better! But if I try to pretend for a moment that I don’t write heavily detailed sex scenes I come up with the following as the minimum elements necessary to a sex scene:
1. Clear POV
2. Detailed enough logistics that your reader knows who is doing what to whom at each point in the scene.
3. Description of location with enough detail for the reader to create the atmosphere in their head.
4. Emotional context demonstrated through feelings/thoughts of POV character and actions of both.
5. And as for the sex: build up - climactic moment - closure.
I think the decision of what to leave in and what to leave out has to be made based on what you’re trying to accomplish in your scene. If you want your scene to be hot, details will help with that. If you don’t need it to be hot and are just using it as a part of the story, emphasizing character and emotion over physical detail will probably work - as long as you keep your logistics clear.
Of course, this is the sort of thing that a beta will help you with as well.
If you leave too much out you risk ending up with a scene that feels hurried. A hurried sex scene will telegraph to your readers that you are uncomfortable with what you are writing and you want to get it over with as quickly as possible. We’re obviously talking about a sex scene that’s part of a larger fic, because with PWPs or longer, porny fics, drawing it out and getting into detail is to be expected. But with fic in which the sex is a part of the larger plot you want your scene to fit seamlessly into the rest of the fic.
You want to be sure your sex scene accomplishes what you need it to - that it completely tells the story you need it to tell. Sure, maybe it’s there because getting your characters naked and sweaty and rubbing against each other is hot liek whoa, but you’ve also got goals in terms of plot and characterization to accomplish, and you probably want to reveal something about the characters’ relationship and/or how they interact and you won’t be able to do that if you hurry it up too much - or if you get bogged down in extraneous detail. The best bet is to simply pay careful attention to your characters and your story and if you do, the rhythm of the scene will naturally take over. If you pay attention to that rhythm, it will carry you through and help you decide how much detail to go into, what to leave out and what to include and when to wrap things up.
But He’d Never Do That!
There is nothing that will bump a reader out of a sex scene faster than OOC behavior. When a character does or says something that you just know they simply would never, ever do, it slams a wall down between the reader and the fic before you can say fasterhardermore. You know, our dearly beloved show isn’t above fucking with character in order to further a plot line or two, but we fic writers are better than that! We make it a point to keep characters true to themselves, even in the midst of hot ‘n heavy sexin’.
The most egregious examples (at least in slash fic) of OOC writing usually fall at either end of the emotional spectrum - characters declaring unending love to each other, often accompanied by tears, or characters behaving cruelly or aggressively with no justification. There are fics where the writer puts in a lot of work to make seemingly OOC behavior logical in the world of the particular fic, and if they have done that well, it can work effectively. But taken as a matter of faith, no. Basically, the options are either keep your characters IC or else be willing to put in a helluva lot of work to justify an OOC interpretation.
So, how to maintain character integrity in a sex scene? Firstly and obviously, you have to know your character. No, but I mean, you really have to know your character! I would bet that the better we know our characters, the easier it is for us to write believable, IC sex scenes involving them. For myself, writing a sex scene that involves any combination of Jack, Sawyer and Sayid is far, far easier than a sex scene involving anyone else, simply because I have wasted spent such a ridiculous significant amount of time obsessing thinking about and writing those characters. Writing a new character in a sexual situation is not all that different from writing a new character’s dialog or body language or innermost thoughts in non-sexual scenes - it’s just, in my experience, a little harder.
I’ve found it helpful, especially when writing new characters or new pairings, to write a bit of sex-focused character meta before getting into the fic. This can help me to clarify a characters’ motivations, desires, needs and fears and to think about what they might be hiding (because Lost characters are always hiding something) and what they’re willing to share. This can be as simple as word association or as involved as writing a multiple page essay, whatever would work best for you.
Exploring character through sex writing can be one of the best writing experience out there. The possibilities are nearly endless and the things you can reveal about your characters can go to a very deep level. I find that if you know the core of your character and keep that solid in your fic, then there’s a lot of leeway in where you can take them and still remain IC.
An excellent illustration of this is from toestastegood's fic Pick Me Back Up Again, a hot 'n sweet Desmond/Charlie fic in which Desmond adopts a dominant role. Personally, I have a hard time imagining Desmond as a dom, but Shona makes it plausible by giving the reader an adequate build-up in which we understand that this is something Charlie wants and that while Desmond has his doubts, his affection for Charlie makes him want to do this for him. Desmond is being, as Dan Savage would say, ‘good, giving and game’. And that seems like very plausible Desmond behavior. We also witness Charlie and Desmond discussing and negotiating what will happen, which injects a nice bit of realism into the fic.
What Shona does so well in this fic is keep Desmond in character in a situation in which he could seem totally OOC (she keeps Charlie IC too, but his characterization in this fic is not such a stretch). In the following brief excerpt I’ve underlined some of the places where she does this.
When he was close enough, kneeling by Desmond's feet, Desmond's hand moved to stroke through his hair, pushing the blond mess back from Charlie's face with the same thoughtful affection you'd give to any pet. "You do what I say tonight," Desmond said, "and only what I say. Right?"
Charlie nodded. "Right, Des. I got it."
"Sir," Desmond corrected, with a faint glint of amusement in his eyes. "Call me sir."
Charlie struggled not to raise an eyebrow and bit back any comments about Desmond's time in the army: now wasn't the time. He wasn't going to screw this up because he was hopelessly addicted to snarking. "Yes, sir," he said, looking up to meet Desmond's gaze. Desmond smirked at him and even rolled his eyes, and this was- Yeah. This was nice. This was exactly what he'd been wanting.
By including the amusement that Desmond would feel at himself for adopting this role, the writer manages to keep Desmond true to character (that self-deprecating eyeroll seems so very Desmond). If you look at how she does it, it’s very simple - just a few words, really, but it’s quite effective.
Turning Up the Heat
I am really not sure if this is something that could ever be explained in an essay. I’m not going to say you either know how or you don’t, because I definitely think it can be learned - by doing lots of reading, writing a lot and using a beta. But I wouldn’t know how to explain it. I know there are things that I tend to write a lot - things that I think are hot that a lot of other people seem to find hot too. I think there are certain words and phrases that, when used at a certain juncture of a story, heighten the heat level, but it’d be hard to parse them out and after all, that’s a terribly subjective thing. I happen to think that detailed descriptions of a guy coming all over himself or making a mess on the sheets are hot as hell, but there are probably people out there who just think it’s icky. (Poor, deluded souls, I pity them.) I think it’s fair to say the safe bet is to go with what you think is hot and then run it by your beta. If you both agree that it’s hot, then you’re home free.
If you are trying to write a sex scene with the goal of making it very hot, you do not want to be afraid of detail. Detail is your friend. There’s room for all level of detail in sex scenes, but if what you’re writing is explicit porn, well… you should be explicit! If you shy away from using certain words or describing certain acts or reactions or messy bodily functions - in fact, if you shy away from describing anything - frankly, you probably shouldn’t be attempting to write explicit porn.
Imho, the triumvirate of hot is strong characterization, believable emotional content and well-worded, detailed description. Nail those three and your scene will burn.
Orgasm 101
Writing orgasms is NOT easy! But it's fun, so that makes up for it, right? If you're writing smut, the orgasm is important. Most of the time it's the climax of the scene, so it needs to work. In my own writing, I tend to lay it on heavy, lots of overblown, unrealistic imagery and metaphors (or maybe similes, I can never remember which is which), run-on sentences, a regrettable overuse of adjectives, italics, dashes, ohs and unhs and wordsmushing, that kind of thing. Hell, most of the time my written orgasms go on longer than the real thing does! But that's okay, because I'm not going for real, I'm going for better than real, if such a thing is possible, which it likely isn't, but that doesn't mean one shouldn't try.
Many people prefer a more economical approach, which can certainly work, in the right context, if the economical description is a deliberate choice and is carefully done and not the result of discomfort or laziness on the part of the writer.
One of the hardest things about writing orgasms is finding new ways to describe them. I don't think any of the orgasms I've written are exactly alike, but I tend to use certain images over and over: the tidal wave, whirlwind, flight and/or falling, fire - to name a few. Certain words get repeated a lot. There are probably some words I use every single time. I don't really worry about that too much. Certain words just work in that context and certain words are nicely loaded and certain words hit my buttons, so why not make good use of them? That's what they're there for. Readers are unlikely to notice if you re-use words or even short phrases for sex/orgasms if in other respects your fics are sufficiently unique from each other. (The list of sex words that I mentioned back in the first part of this essay comes in very handy for writing orgasms.)
I find it a let-down when writers don't even try - when they’ve built the scene up and led you to expect that there will be a pay-off, and then you read something like, "and then he came and it was over". I mean, wtf? Writers who write smut should be willing to make more of an effort. Not that it has to be all flowery and over-the-top like my orgasm writing. Sometimes short and succinct works very well indeed, even if it's a style that I find well nigh impossible to master. When done well, I admire it in others.
It certainly is ever-challenging, to attempt to capture in words something so amorphous and fleeting. Something that is intensely physical but that can also be incredibly emotional, and even spiritual. And in fic one must keep it all in character and within the context and style of the fic and also possibly use the orgasm to build connection between your characters as well. Plus, if you're a woman writing from a man's POV, or vice versa, there's the whole thing about trying to imagine what it might be like - but then that's where a lot of the fun comes in too.
Here are a couple of links to shortish essays about writing orgasms, found via metafandom, 1001 ways to write an orgasm by lobelia321 and More about writing orgasms by schemingreader.
Spanking and Butt Plugs and Bondage, Oh My!
The fact is, everybody’s kinky in some way. You’d never know it to look at them. People keep that stuff concealed, compartmentalized, often repressed. But it’s there.
Same goes for our favorite fictional characters. If you get to know them well, it’s not hard to infer what kinks a specific character may have. And if you enjoy writing kinky fic, then it’s a helluva lot of fun to explore that.
Here’s Jack for instance, all large and in charge, classic type-A personality, workaholic, control freak. Just try to convince me that he wouldn’t like being tied up. Because you know he totally would! And you know it’d be hot too. ;) Having all that control stripped away… even better - having that control voluntarily relinquished - that’s potent stuff.
Now, I’m not saying that the character you have to use is exactly what we’re given in canon. I kinda doubt canon!Sawyer would put on lacy panties for Sayid under any circumstances, but I wrote him doing it anyway (in an AU, though). Your characters can do lots of interesting things that the canon versions might not - but then again, the thing about people is that you never know what kinks reside in their hearts. So they just might do that unlikely thing, given the right set of circumstances and the right partner. If you can take a character and extrapolate from him or her some aspect of character that is presented in canon that you can work with to form an unconventional sexual dynamic or desire, then I think your kinky scene is likely to work.
To me, the best kink fics are the ones that give you a set up that makes the kink plausible. If you can tap into something in the character’s psyche that could manifest in a kinky way, then you’ve got a good place to start. A classic Lost example is Sawyer, because he’s exhibited masochistic tendencies in canon - not sexual ones, but he has purposely let himself be hurt and has behaved in ways that make it inevitable that he will be hurt. As a writer, you can take that urge and play with the ways that it could manifest sexually.
On the other hand, in canon Sawyer has let himself be hurt as a way of achieving dominance. He was basically topping from the bottom, only, again, in a non-sexual way. So if you wanted to write Sawyer in a kinkily dominant role, you could make his canon characterization work for you that scenario too.
The following is an excerpt from a Sawyer/Sayid fic by gemjam, Who I Am. It’s a wonderfully kinky, fantastically filthy fic and it features an established D/s relationship, bondage, toys, orgasm denial and sensory deprivation. Yeah, it’s kinky, porny slash, so if you’re not into that you might want to skip ahead.
This excerpt takes place after a long build up, when Sawyer’s nearly at the breaking point.
“Just a little more,” Sayid told him. Sawyer shook his head. “Just a little,” Sayid said again. There was no give, not even a tiny glimmer, and Sawyer couldn’t imagine how he was going to hold off. Sayid moved the dildo into him harder but not faster. “Say my name again.”
Sawyer looked at him. He felt strangely inhibited by the request. “Sayid,” he tried. Sayid looked unmoved. Sawyer took a breath and tried to connect the word with the actions. “Sayid.” It didn’t feel quite right somehow. Sayid kept moving, kept staring, so Sawyer let the sensations take him over again, every one of them, until he was gasping and moaning and unable to stop from fucking himself on the glass.
“Sayid,” he groaned. It sounded much more erotic this time, even to his own ears. “Oh, fuck, Sayid,” he gritted out, arching into the thrust of the dildo. “Sayid.”
Sayid suddenly pulled the dildo out with little care and tossed it aside. “You never say my name during sex,” he stated, his hand pulling almost absently on his own dick. “I am not sure if you are aware of that.” He moved closer, adjusting Sawyer’s legs to be a little straighter. Sawyer hadn’t realised how stiff they were until they moved. “I sometimes wonder if you remember who I am,” Sayid stated.
Sawyer was surprised by the admission. And hurt. He didn’t even know what to say. With Sayid, he never went anywhere else, not even for a second. He’d never wanted to.
“Always,” was the only thing he could manage to vocalise.
What I like about this bit (besides teh hawt) is the emotion and the bit of character exploration in it. Sawyer’s reaction of surprise and hurt in the midst of the scene and his honest response to Sayid lifts the scene from being just well-written, kinky porn to being something more.
gemjam comes back to this exchange at the end of the fic, reinforcing the connection and trust between her characters, showing us something about Sawyer’s sexual history that we’d maybe never considered and demonstrating the difference between his life in the past and the time in which the fic takes place when he is with Sayid.
“It is because you could never remember their names, isn’t it?” Sayid said suddenly. Sawyer looked at him. Sayid rolled onto his side, gazing at Sawyer, waiting for a response.
“Who?” Sawyer asked.
“The people that you fucked,” Sayid replied. “That is why you don’t say names during sex. Was it hard to keep track?”
Sawyer smiled. He wanted to reach out, but his arm wouldn’t move. “I know your name,” he assured him. “I don’t forget it.” Sayid just looked at him, giving nothing away. “Sayid Hassan Jarrah,” Sawyer stated.
I excerpted these passages from this fic because I think they illustrate how, even in a very explicit, very kinky fic, working in emotions and character detail can turn a hot bit of smut into something really memorable.
Besides being hot, kinky fic is a great venue for playing with and exploring dynamics between characters and for delving deeply into what makes characters tick. If you like to write sex and you like to get your hands dirty with the messy side of characterization then writing kinky fic can be satisfying. Sure it’s not for everybody - and in the Lost fandom it’s apparently not something that has much appeal - but in most other fandoms that’s not the case. And anyway, if you like writing it enough, you’ll write it, regardless of how much it appeals to anyone other than yourself.
*
Aaaand… that’s all I’ve got. I hope this has been in some way helpful. I hope it’s been interesting. I want to reiterate that everything I’ve said here is my own take on the subject and my own very personal opinions and my own conclusions about what has worked best for me. Everyone is different - each of us writes differently and has different priorities in our writing and what works for me might not work for you. But if any of this helps you solve a problem in your writing or sheds insight on something you'd wondered about, then that will make me quite happy and satisfied.
* * *
This time I’m not posing any specific questions for discussion, instead hoping that you’ll just discuss whatever you want about the essay (this part or the previous one), or about your experience of writing sex scenes or about about why you prefer not to write sex scenes. Please feel free to share any sex writing tips and tricks you've found that work for you and if you want to discuss a topic not mentioned or go into more detail about one that was, please do. It's fair game to bring up anything at all relevant to the topic of writing sex. If you’ve got questions for other readers, ask them here, and if you’ve got answers, please respond.