The Art of Writing a Sex Scene, Part 1
Thanks to elliotsmelliot for encouraging me to write this and post it here.
Warning: 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 based on my own experiences.
This essay is based on a post I made several months ago in which I asked my friends list what kinds of issues arose for them when writing sex scenes. I asked because I had noticed people posting about how they find writing sex scenes more difficult than other kinds of writing and I was curious about why that might be.
I don’t think I’m an authority on the subject and I don’t have any doubt that there are much better writers out there than I, who write hotter, deeper, more immediate, more emotional sex scenes than I do. I know there are, because I read some of those writers and I try my best to learn from them. The reason I decided to attempt an essay on this subject is because I’m comfortable writing explicit sex scenes, more comfortable than I am writing most other things. It is the area of my writing in which I first gained confidence. It was, in fact, the first thing I wrote when I began writing fanfic - an explicit sex scene between Jack and Sawyer. It wasn’t a very good sex scene - it was, in fact, all kinds of cliché - but it was very explicit. So I had no doubts from the get-go that I liked writing sex. That’s why I’m in this fandom game, to be honest - the porn drew me in. All the rest of it came later.
When I had doubts about every other aspect of my writing, I knew that I could put a decent sex scene together and make it hot. That seems to be backward from how a lot of other people’s fic-writing skills develop. From what I can tell, it’s more common to become confident in other areas first and to have lingering feelings of uncertainty about one’s ability to porn.
For me, writing sex is enjoyable. It’s hot. It’s fun. It makes me horny. It feeds me in some weird way I can’t quite define. I just love it.
But not always. Sometimes it’s work, especially when I’m on the third or fourth edit. And it’s rarely easy. But there is always an element of enjoyment there, and love for the characters and the desire to give them an experience that we know they’re never gonna get in canon.
If you don’t like writing sex, don’t write it. You can fade-to-black or stick with non-sexual romance or write gen. There’s no reason to tie yourself up into knots over trying to do something that doesn’t bring you joy, especially since ain’t none of us getting paid for this.
But if you like it and want to do it, but are hobbled by some pesky obstacle when you sit down to actually give it a go, then I hope the following might be of some help.
The Beta
Your best guarantee of writing a good sex scene (or anything else): find yourself a beta. What a beta will do for you specifically related to a sex scene is, first and foremost, keep you from embarrassing yourself. Yes, it is nerve-wracking to send an explicit fic off to a beta. It is more nerve-wracking to post an unbetaed explicit fic to the internet and sit there wondering if you really should have used the phrase “pulsing rosebud”.
Posting a betaed fic raises my confidence level and gives me peace of mind. A good beta will also help with things like word repetitions, weeding out squicky words and finding better ones, helping make your fic hotter, clarifying your logistics, keeping emotion and action consistent, etc.
Not too long ago themoononastick, who has betaed a lot of my fic, informed me that “warm, wet cavity” was a very unsexy way to describe a character’s mouth during the course of a blow job. Well, of course it is! I don’t know what I was thinking! I would have felt silly posting that and then reading it later and thinking “Ewww.” In fact, I feel silly telling you about it now, but I figure if I’m going to use examples of bad writing, I’ll use my own.
I changed “warm, wet cavity” to “wet warmth” and okay, it’s not very original, but at least it’s not likely to make anyone think of a trip to the dentist.
So if you’re struggling to write excellent sex scenes but don't use a beta, then I'm not sure what to say. It’s the single most important thing you can do to make your sex writing better.
The Research
No, I don’t mean trolling porn sites, though that has its place and can be quite instructive. I’m talking reading. If you don’t read other writers' smut you’re working in a vacuum. This can be a problem in the Lost fandom, which is small and not particularly porntastic, at least these days. Luckily, there are lots of fascinating fandoms out there with lots of excellent writers who write drop-dead gorgeous smut. I suggest you explore. Ask your fandom whore friends for recs for the hottest smut they’ve read.
When I read a fic that’s well-written and makes me squirm, I’m usually not able to read in a critical way at first. If the fic is one that I think I could learn something from I have to go back to it later and try to read it with a more critical eye. Sometimes that is very difficult! Sometimes I have to read it many times before I can achieve the requisite distance to allow me pick it apart! Oh, what onerous drudgery! Oh, how I suffer for my art! Re-reading excellent smut is such a burden. Woe.
I save those excellent, smutty fics to my delicious page and refer to them when I need a jolt of inspiration. I re-read a LOT. I cut and paste excerpts that strike me as particularly wonderful into a separate document that includes bits and pieces of a multitude of fics from a multitude of fandoms. I scroll through this when I get stuck. I do not copy the phrases, I use them to inspire my own.
I also look at the language other writers use in sex scenes. Are there particular words that strike me as brilliant or lovely or original? I keep an alphabetized list of sex words so that if I’m stuck in the middle of a scene, trying to describe the particular sensation a character has, say, in the moment before orgasm, I have a whole long list of words to pick and choose from. I find this extremely helpful in the effort to keep my sex writing varied.
The Why
Oh, how I wish I could recall where I first read this, but I can’t. It’s not original, anyway.
Before beginning to write a sex scene, ask why? Why this scene and not some other? What is it that makes this particular encounter between your characters noteworthy? Perhaps your characters are in a relationship and have had sex a hundred times before - still, there has to be something special about the encounter - something that makes it worth writing about. Sometimes the answer is quite obvious - it’s their first time - or their last time - it’s a reunion, they had a big fight and now they’re making up. Sometimes they are trying something new (whee!), sometimes their dynamic has shifted. Sometimes it’s something more subtle, something interior to the characters, maybe even unstated and only demonstrated through their behavior. At any rate, you should know why this scene at this time before you begin, even if that reason is never stated in your sex scene.
But I Can’t Write That!
Okay, this is coming from the girl who wrote rimming into her very first fic (twice!) but still, I’ve been embarrassed at stuff I’ve written. When something makes me feel embarrassed at the thought of posting it (which is more common for me than feeling embarrassed about writing something) it’s usually because it comes too close to the realm of private fantasy. Yes, the porn we write is born of fantasy, but it’s not the same as fantasy. I guess each writer makes their own choices about what they’re comfortable putting out there for others to see.
You can channel your embarrassment into your character. If it embarrasses you, maybe it embarrasses them. Maybe you can make it work for you in your fic.
I think writing something embarrassing can be liberating. If you’re not sure about posting it, put it aside for a while and let it sit, then come back to it with fresh eyes. If it still makes you uncomfortable, edit it into something you are comfortable with. You shouldn’t post something you’re just really not comfortable with, but there’s no harm in writing it. Write it, let it sit on your hard drive. No one has to know until you decide to let them in on it.
Still, a lot of stuff that feels embarrassing as you write is also damn hot, let’s not forget that. If you want to write explicit sex scenes, at some point you’re just going to have to go for it. Holding back doesn’t work. You’re gonna have to throw caution to the wind and make that leap!
I Can Porn You With My Brain (I Wish)
So you’re driving home from work and you get this idea for a fic. A very porny fic, with your two (or more!) very favorite characters. You imagine every nuance, every touch, every bit of dialog. It is perfect! It is the hottest thing ever! This fic is going to cause spontaneous panty combustion all over the world!
You get home, change into comfy clothes, open a beer and sit down at your computer to write your hot, porny fic and… nothing.
It was so easy to imagine and now it seems simply impossible to write. What happened?
What happened is you had a fantasy. Enjoyable, diverting, a lovely way to spend those moments when you’re stuck in traffic. Sadly, a fantasy doesn’t have all that much in common with sitting down to write a fic, although it can be the inspiration for a fic. It’s so easy to imagine, so difficult to achieve. If only we could hook up our computer to our brains and d/l our fic directly. Alas, not possible.
Writing a sex scene is work. It takes longer than you think it should and is more difficult than you expect it to be. It helps to remind yourself of this before you begin. That seamless fantasy will probably translate to the page in fits and starts, with awkward writing and clumsy grammar. You may spend disconcertingly long periods of time just staring at your screen or notebook, waiting for your brain and your fingers to connect and for the words you are searching for to appear on the monitor or the page. This is, of course, true for other kinds of writing as well. I think, however, that people somehow expect writing a sex scene to be easier because it’s easy to imagine. I mean, we all think about sex! How hard can it be to write it?
How I Write a Sex Scene
Sometimes a sex scene comes to me fully formed, and that’s a wonderful thing. I write it out and it gels perfectly the first time through and all I have to do is the bare minimum of tweaking.
But more often, it works like this: I write the first draft. This is to get the logistics down and the basic dialog. There are a lot of repeated words. It’s kind of flat and uninteresting, but at least I’ve determined who tops, what position, whose hands are where when and some of what is said.
I go through the scene again - usually the next day - I try to inject the hotness factor. How to know what is hot? Well, I try to consider all the senses for one thing, adding in how the smells and sounds, as well as the feel and sight, of his partner arouse the protagonist. Taste, too, don’t forget that one. All very good things to pay attention to.
I try to work on the dialog at this point too. It helps to say it out loud, of course. And then I work on ridding my scene of the “he said, he said” and of repetitions or clichés - though really, you can’t fully rid a sex scene of clichés, you’ll drive yourself nuts if you try. I repeat words a lot in my 1st draft, so I’ll try to weed a lot of those out and replace them with a lot of other, better words - I use my handy-dandy list of sex words for this. If I’ve got problem areas that I can’t deal with I highlight them to come back to later.
At this point, if I’m working on a long fic, I keep going. I don’t go over and over my sex scene worrying about how to get it perfect. I continue writing, or I go back to the beginning and start editing the non-sex parts of the fic or maybe I just stop altogether and go do something else. At any rate, I step away from the fic.
Next I go over the whole thing one more time from the beginning, fixing all the problem areas that I haven’t already, and polishing it up as best I can. Then I send the fic off to be betaed.
When it comes back I fix all the stuff my beta pointed out and then I edit it again on LJ in the preview mode. I do this with all my fic, because for some reason I seem to catch a lot of errors and see a lot of places to make improvements when I do that. I’m not quite sure why.
Anyway, then I post it.
So, you see, I can say that writing a sex scene is fairly straightforward for me, and yet, that’s a lot of work. I certainly don’t just sit down and dash off a smoking hot sex scene, or at least I very rarely do. Rather, it’s constructed piece by piece and then the pieces get rearranged a bunch, and trimmed and polished until I am very heartily sick of it and even something that seemed omgsohawt when I first wrote it only makes me want to roll my eyes by the time I’m done.
I realize lots of people wouldn’t enjoy writing in that way. I don’t think it’s the ‘right’ way, or the way anyone else ‘should’ write. It’s just the way I do. I couldn’t possibly write any other way.
I think the most important part of this process - and the part that I think would be helpful to anyone, regardless of how they write - is writing that first draft and just letting it be bad. Don't worry about getting everything perfect right from the start. Just get the basics of the scene written so that you can come back later and make it good.
Le Mot Juste (or Come vs. Cum)
Poor Flaubert, angsting for days over a single word. Jeez dude, lighten up!
A lot of people who responded to my post about the issues that come up when writing a sex scene had problems/questions about language and vocabulary. That’s understandable - for one thing, the range of words one can use to describe certain aspects of sex or anatomy is limited. And for another, a number of the words one might use in a sex scene seem loaded or make some people uncomfortable.
While it’s undeniable that there are endless possible ways to string words together to make a sex scene, it’s also true that the genre comes with a few built-in limitations. I mean, how many different words are there for cock? Maybe there are a lot, but we all probably have one or two we like, one or two we’re okay with and a bunch that we’d never use in a million years. Your list of acceptable words for the male member may be large or small (just please don’t tell me your list includes 'member'), but it is inevitably limited. You could get creative in your euphemisms for cock, but I really don’t recommend it unless you’re trying to write badfic.
The question of what words to use in a sex scene appears to be more problematic in het fic than slash fic. I can’t see how it would be possible to write explicit het fic without being just fine with “pussy” and “cunt”. I guess you could refer to “her heat” or whatever euphemisms het writers use (I’m sorry, I’m lame, I don’t even know what they are) but that seems rather weak to me. My own view (purely personal, I emphasize) is that one should just go for it. Call it what it is. Cunt, pussy, clit, lips, slit - use them all, use them with joyous abandon! Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself to distraction trying to avoid them and that’s no fun. Maybe some readers won’t like that. Too bad. If your fic is rated NC-17, finding words like that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any reader.
So, which words should you not use? It’s a matter of personal preference and there really isn’t a “right” or a “wrong”, though there does seem to be some widespread concurrence in fandom about certain words. I can’t tell you what words squick since I only know what squicks me and I may not be representative. Betas are helpful in this regard. If your beta is watching out for you, she will not let you post a fic without drawing a possibly squicky word or unsexy phrase to your attention.
In a recent sex scene I wrote (3.5 pages long) I used “cock” 12 times and “dick” 9 times. You’d think it would sound repetitive, but I don’t think it did. My point being that although you should certainly strive not to repeat most words and to find original ways to say things, you also need to trust that if your scene is hot enough and reads well enough, people are really not going to notice the occasional repetition.
However, obviously we all want to keep our sex language lively and fresh and again I think a couple of things that are helpful are seeing how others do it (i.e. reading others’ smut critically) and having your list of sex words handy as you edit. In my own experience, most of the time keeping it fresh isn’t achieved by a creative rush or inspiration from the muse. It’s achieved through editing, often repeatedly. Sad, but true.
What I will say - and this will come up again in Part 2 - is that what will make your sex writing pop and shine is blending the thoughts and emotions of your characters with the action and mechanics of sex. If you can convey the desire your characters feel for each other, as well as the thoughts that go through their heads and the feelings - emotional as well as physical - that they are experiencing during the scene, then you will draw the reader in to the point that they won’t notice if you use “cock” and “dick” 21 times in three and a half pages. That is where you will find your originality and that is how you will keep it interesting and keep each sex scene you write from being like every other sex scene you write.
And So He Kissed Him
There was a question also about when to use “he” and when to use the characters’ names, which is sort of a logistics question, but also a language one, so I’ll address it here. This is more of an issue for slash and femslash than het, where you have the difference in pronoun to keep things clear.
The simplest way to decide when you need to use a name as opposed to a pronoun is to read your scene aloud. It will become much clearer to you where your reader is likely to get lost if you actually hear how it reads. When in doubt, go with the name. Having a reader become confused about who is doing what in the midst of a scene will take them right out of it and after all your hard work to make the scene as good as it can be that is the last thing you want.
You will have to use names more often than normal - perhaps even more often than really sounds right to you. It’s more important that the reader not become confused than it is that you not repeat a name too often. As you read through your scene, use “he” (or “she”) whenever you can, but if there’s a chance of confusion use the name.
Sex in a Second Language
For writers for whom English is a second language all these issues become more difficult. I cannot conceive of writing a fic in another language, let alone trying to write a sex scene in another language and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it.
I really don’t have much additional advice beyond having a native English speaker for a beta and compiling a list of every possible sex word out there so that you will have an adequate vocabulary from which to pull. Maybe if readers of this essay have ideas for non-native English speakers they could leave them in comments.
Now or Then
Past tense or present tense? Again, it’s really a matter of personal preference.
I find that present tense has an immediacy to it that can bring the reader right into the scene and therefore can be very effective when writing porn. I like it for short fic and fic where the point really is for it to be as hot as possible. I find that I get tired of it in longer fic and so, even if my long fic contains smut (which it always does) I don’t use present tense.
There’s an excellent essay on this question here.
But really, it’s up to the individual writer. There’s no right or wrong.
* * *
On to Part 2 --->
Now, Let’s Talk Sex!!
1. What do you find most challenging about writing sex? What about it do you enjoy the most?
2. What is your writing process for a sex scene? Is it different from the way you write other kinds of fic?
3. Do you feel that a sex scene needs to develop character and/or plot? Is there a place for smut simply for smut’s sake?
4. Do you have any advice for non-native English speakers writing sex scenes in English?
5. People are often curious about what words/phrases squick readers. Keeping in mind that one fangirl’s squick is another girl’s kink, give us a personal squick or two.
6. What makes a sex scene hot? I don’t mean your bulletproof kinks, but rather what about the approach or the writing or the story itself will make a scene hot to you?
7. Oh, what the hell, let’s share! Bulletproof kinks? We’ve all got ‘em, those little things that are guaranteed to make go all capslocky in our feedback. What are yours? ;)
Warning: 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 based on my own experiences.
This essay is based on a post I made several months ago in which I asked my friends list what kinds of issues arose for them when writing sex scenes. I asked because I had noticed people posting about how they find writing sex scenes more difficult than other kinds of writing and I was curious about why that might be.
I don’t think I’m an authority on the subject and I don’t have any doubt that there are much better writers out there than I, who write hotter, deeper, more immediate, more emotional sex scenes than I do. I know there are, because I read some of those writers and I try my best to learn from them. The reason I decided to attempt an essay on this subject is because I’m comfortable writing explicit sex scenes, more comfortable than I am writing most other things. It is the area of my writing in which I first gained confidence. It was, in fact, the first thing I wrote when I began writing fanfic - an explicit sex scene between Jack and Sawyer. It wasn’t a very good sex scene - it was, in fact, all kinds of cliché - but it was very explicit. So I had no doubts from the get-go that I liked writing sex. That’s why I’m in this fandom game, to be honest - the porn drew me in. All the rest of it came later.
When I had doubts about every other aspect of my writing, I knew that I could put a decent sex scene together and make it hot. That seems to be backward from how a lot of other people’s fic-writing skills develop. From what I can tell, it’s more common to become confident in other areas first and to have lingering feelings of uncertainty about one’s ability to porn.
For me, writing sex is enjoyable. It’s hot. It’s fun. It makes me horny. It feeds me in some weird way I can’t quite define. I just love it.
But not always. Sometimes it’s work, especially when I’m on the third or fourth edit. And it’s rarely easy. But there is always an element of enjoyment there, and love for the characters and the desire to give them an experience that we know they’re never gonna get in canon.
If you don’t like writing sex, don’t write it. You can fade-to-black or stick with non-sexual romance or write gen. There’s no reason to tie yourself up into knots over trying to do something that doesn’t bring you joy, especially since ain’t none of us getting paid for this.
But if you like it and want to do it, but are hobbled by some pesky obstacle when you sit down to actually give it a go, then I hope the following might be of some help.
The Beta
Your best guarantee of writing a good sex scene (or anything else): find yourself a beta. What a beta will do for you specifically related to a sex scene is, first and foremost, keep you from embarrassing yourself. Yes, it is nerve-wracking to send an explicit fic off to a beta. It is more nerve-wracking to post an unbetaed explicit fic to the internet and sit there wondering if you really should have used the phrase “pulsing rosebud”.
Posting a betaed fic raises my confidence level and gives me peace of mind. A good beta will also help with things like word repetitions, weeding out squicky words and finding better ones, helping make your fic hotter, clarifying your logistics, keeping emotion and action consistent, etc.
Not too long ago themoononastick, who has betaed a lot of my fic, informed me that “warm, wet cavity” was a very unsexy way to describe a character’s mouth during the course of a blow job. Well, of course it is! I don’t know what I was thinking! I would have felt silly posting that and then reading it later and thinking “Ewww.” In fact, I feel silly telling you about it now, but I figure if I’m going to use examples of bad writing, I’ll use my own.
I changed “warm, wet cavity” to “wet warmth” and okay, it’s not very original, but at least it’s not likely to make anyone think of a trip to the dentist.
So if you’re struggling to write excellent sex scenes but don't use a beta, then I'm not sure what to say. It’s the single most important thing you can do to make your sex writing better.
The Research
No, I don’t mean trolling porn sites, though that has its place and can be quite instructive. I’m talking reading. If you don’t read other writers' smut you’re working in a vacuum. This can be a problem in the Lost fandom, which is small and not particularly porntastic, at least these days. Luckily, there are lots of fascinating fandoms out there with lots of excellent writers who write drop-dead gorgeous smut. I suggest you explore. Ask your fandom whore friends for recs for the hottest smut they’ve read.
When I read a fic that’s well-written and makes me squirm, I’m usually not able to read in a critical way at first. If the fic is one that I think I could learn something from I have to go back to it later and try to read it with a more critical eye. Sometimes that is very difficult! Sometimes I have to read it many times before I can achieve the requisite distance to allow me pick it apart! Oh, what onerous drudgery! Oh, how I suffer for my art! Re-reading excellent smut is such a burden. Woe.
I save those excellent, smutty fics to my delicious page and refer to them when I need a jolt of inspiration. I re-read a LOT. I cut and paste excerpts that strike me as particularly wonderful into a separate document that includes bits and pieces of a multitude of fics from a multitude of fandoms. I scroll through this when I get stuck. I do not copy the phrases, I use them to inspire my own.
I also look at the language other writers use in sex scenes. Are there particular words that strike me as brilliant or lovely or original? I keep an alphabetized list of sex words so that if I’m stuck in the middle of a scene, trying to describe the particular sensation a character has, say, in the moment before orgasm, I have a whole long list of words to pick and choose from. I find this extremely helpful in the effort to keep my sex writing varied.
The Why
Oh, how I wish I could recall where I first read this, but I can’t. It’s not original, anyway.
Before beginning to write a sex scene, ask why? Why this scene and not some other? What is it that makes this particular encounter between your characters noteworthy? Perhaps your characters are in a relationship and have had sex a hundred times before - still, there has to be something special about the encounter - something that makes it worth writing about. Sometimes the answer is quite obvious - it’s their first time - or their last time - it’s a reunion, they had a big fight and now they’re making up. Sometimes they are trying something new (whee!), sometimes their dynamic has shifted. Sometimes it’s something more subtle, something interior to the characters, maybe even unstated and only demonstrated through their behavior. At any rate, you should know why this scene at this time before you begin, even if that reason is never stated in your sex scene.
But I Can’t Write That!
Okay, this is coming from the girl who wrote rimming into her very first fic (twice!) but still, I’ve been embarrassed at stuff I’ve written. When something makes me feel embarrassed at the thought of posting it (which is more common for me than feeling embarrassed about writing something) it’s usually because it comes too close to the realm of private fantasy. Yes, the porn we write is born of fantasy, but it’s not the same as fantasy. I guess each writer makes their own choices about what they’re comfortable putting out there for others to see.
You can channel your embarrassment into your character. If it embarrasses you, maybe it embarrasses them. Maybe you can make it work for you in your fic.
I think writing something embarrassing can be liberating. If you’re not sure about posting it, put it aside for a while and let it sit, then come back to it with fresh eyes. If it still makes you uncomfortable, edit it into something you are comfortable with. You shouldn’t post something you’re just really not comfortable with, but there’s no harm in writing it. Write it, let it sit on your hard drive. No one has to know until you decide to let them in on it.
Still, a lot of stuff that feels embarrassing as you write is also damn hot, let’s not forget that. If you want to write explicit sex scenes, at some point you’re just going to have to go for it. Holding back doesn’t work. You’re gonna have to throw caution to the wind and make that leap!
I Can Porn You With My Brain (I Wish)
So you’re driving home from work and you get this idea for a fic. A very porny fic, with your two (or more!) very favorite characters. You imagine every nuance, every touch, every bit of dialog. It is perfect! It is the hottest thing ever! This fic is going to cause spontaneous panty combustion all over the world!
You get home, change into comfy clothes, open a beer and sit down at your computer to write your hot, porny fic and… nothing.
It was so easy to imagine and now it seems simply impossible to write. What happened?
What happened is you had a fantasy. Enjoyable, diverting, a lovely way to spend those moments when you’re stuck in traffic. Sadly, a fantasy doesn’t have all that much in common with sitting down to write a fic, although it can be the inspiration for a fic. It’s so easy to imagine, so difficult to achieve. If only we could hook up our computer to our brains and d/l our fic directly. Alas, not possible.
Writing a sex scene is work. It takes longer than you think it should and is more difficult than you expect it to be. It helps to remind yourself of this before you begin. That seamless fantasy will probably translate to the page in fits and starts, with awkward writing and clumsy grammar. You may spend disconcertingly long periods of time just staring at your screen or notebook, waiting for your brain and your fingers to connect and for the words you are searching for to appear on the monitor or the page. This is, of course, true for other kinds of writing as well. I think, however, that people somehow expect writing a sex scene to be easier because it’s easy to imagine. I mean, we all think about sex! How hard can it be to write it?
How I Write a Sex Scene
Sometimes a sex scene comes to me fully formed, and that’s a wonderful thing. I write it out and it gels perfectly the first time through and all I have to do is the bare minimum of tweaking.
But more often, it works like this: I write the first draft. This is to get the logistics down and the basic dialog. There are a lot of repeated words. It’s kind of flat and uninteresting, but at least I’ve determined who tops, what position, whose hands are where when and some of what is said.
I go through the scene again - usually the next day - I try to inject the hotness factor. How to know what is hot? Well, I try to consider all the senses for one thing, adding in how the smells and sounds, as well as the feel and sight, of his partner arouse the protagonist. Taste, too, don’t forget that one. All very good things to pay attention to.
I try to work on the dialog at this point too. It helps to say it out loud, of course. And then I work on ridding my scene of the “he said, he said” and of repetitions or clichés - though really, you can’t fully rid a sex scene of clichés, you’ll drive yourself nuts if you try. I repeat words a lot in my 1st draft, so I’ll try to weed a lot of those out and replace them with a lot of other, better words - I use my handy-dandy list of sex words for this. If I’ve got problem areas that I can’t deal with I highlight them to come back to later.
At this point, if I’m working on a long fic, I keep going. I don’t go over and over my sex scene worrying about how to get it perfect. I continue writing, or I go back to the beginning and start editing the non-sex parts of the fic or maybe I just stop altogether and go do something else. At any rate, I step away from the fic.
Next I go over the whole thing one more time from the beginning, fixing all the problem areas that I haven’t already, and polishing it up as best I can. Then I send the fic off to be betaed.
When it comes back I fix all the stuff my beta pointed out and then I edit it again on LJ in the preview mode. I do this with all my fic, because for some reason I seem to catch a lot of errors and see a lot of places to make improvements when I do that. I’m not quite sure why.
Anyway, then I post it.
So, you see, I can say that writing a sex scene is fairly straightforward for me, and yet, that’s a lot of work. I certainly don’t just sit down and dash off a smoking hot sex scene, or at least I very rarely do. Rather, it’s constructed piece by piece and then the pieces get rearranged a bunch, and trimmed and polished until I am very heartily sick of it and even something that seemed omgsohawt when I first wrote it only makes me want to roll my eyes by the time I’m done.
I realize lots of people wouldn’t enjoy writing in that way. I don’t think it’s the ‘right’ way, or the way anyone else ‘should’ write. It’s just the way I do. I couldn’t possibly write any other way.
I think the most important part of this process - and the part that I think would be helpful to anyone, regardless of how they write - is writing that first draft and just letting it be bad. Don't worry about getting everything perfect right from the start. Just get the basics of the scene written so that you can come back later and make it good.
Le Mot Juste (or Come vs. Cum)
Poor Flaubert, angsting for days over a single word. Jeez dude, lighten up!
A lot of people who responded to my post about the issues that come up when writing a sex scene had problems/questions about language and vocabulary. That’s understandable - for one thing, the range of words one can use to describe certain aspects of sex or anatomy is limited. And for another, a number of the words one might use in a sex scene seem loaded or make some people uncomfortable.
While it’s undeniable that there are endless possible ways to string words together to make a sex scene, it’s also true that the genre comes with a few built-in limitations. I mean, how many different words are there for cock? Maybe there are a lot, but we all probably have one or two we like, one or two we’re okay with and a bunch that we’d never use in a million years. Your list of acceptable words for the male member may be large or small (just please don’t tell me your list includes 'member'), but it is inevitably limited. You could get creative in your euphemisms for cock, but I really don’t recommend it unless you’re trying to write badfic.
The question of what words to use in a sex scene appears to be more problematic in het fic than slash fic. I can’t see how it would be possible to write explicit het fic without being just fine with “pussy” and “cunt”. I guess you could refer to “her heat” or whatever euphemisms het writers use (I’m sorry, I’m lame, I don’t even know what they are) but that seems rather weak to me. My own view (purely personal, I emphasize) is that one should just go for it. Call it what it is. Cunt, pussy, clit, lips, slit - use them all, use them with joyous abandon! Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself to distraction trying to avoid them and that’s no fun. Maybe some readers won’t like that. Too bad. If your fic is rated NC-17, finding words like that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any reader.
So, which words should you not use? It’s a matter of personal preference and there really isn’t a “right” or a “wrong”, though there does seem to be some widespread concurrence in fandom about certain words. I can’t tell you what words squick since I only know what squicks me and I may not be representative. Betas are helpful in this regard. If your beta is watching out for you, she will not let you post a fic without drawing a possibly squicky word or unsexy phrase to your attention.
In a recent sex scene I wrote (3.5 pages long) I used “cock” 12 times and “dick” 9 times. You’d think it would sound repetitive, but I don’t think it did. My point being that although you should certainly strive not to repeat most words and to find original ways to say things, you also need to trust that if your scene is hot enough and reads well enough, people are really not going to notice the occasional repetition.
However, obviously we all want to keep our sex language lively and fresh and again I think a couple of things that are helpful are seeing how others do it (i.e. reading others’ smut critically) and having your list of sex words handy as you edit. In my own experience, most of the time keeping it fresh isn’t achieved by a creative rush or inspiration from the muse. It’s achieved through editing, often repeatedly. Sad, but true.
What I will say - and this will come up again in Part 2 - is that what will make your sex writing pop and shine is blending the thoughts and emotions of your characters with the action and mechanics of sex. If you can convey the desire your characters feel for each other, as well as the thoughts that go through their heads and the feelings - emotional as well as physical - that they are experiencing during the scene, then you will draw the reader in to the point that they won’t notice if you use “cock” and “dick” 21 times in three and a half pages. That is where you will find your originality and that is how you will keep it interesting and keep each sex scene you write from being like every other sex scene you write.
And So He Kissed Him
There was a question also about when to use “he” and when to use the characters’ names, which is sort of a logistics question, but also a language one, so I’ll address it here. This is more of an issue for slash and femslash than het, where you have the difference in pronoun to keep things clear.
The simplest way to decide when you need to use a name as opposed to a pronoun is to read your scene aloud. It will become much clearer to you where your reader is likely to get lost if you actually hear how it reads. When in doubt, go with the name. Having a reader become confused about who is doing what in the midst of a scene will take them right out of it and after all your hard work to make the scene as good as it can be that is the last thing you want.
You will have to use names more often than normal - perhaps even more often than really sounds right to you. It’s more important that the reader not become confused than it is that you not repeat a name too often. As you read through your scene, use “he” (or “she”) whenever you can, but if there’s a chance of confusion use the name.
Sex in a Second Language
For writers for whom English is a second language all these issues become more difficult. I cannot conceive of writing a fic in another language, let alone trying to write a sex scene in another language and I have nothing but admiration for those who do it.
I really don’t have much additional advice beyond having a native English speaker for a beta and compiling a list of every possible sex word out there so that you will have an adequate vocabulary from which to pull. Maybe if readers of this essay have ideas for non-native English speakers they could leave them in comments.
Now or Then
Past tense or present tense? Again, it’s really a matter of personal preference.
I find that present tense has an immediacy to it that can bring the reader right into the scene and therefore can be very effective when writing porn. I like it for short fic and fic where the point really is for it to be as hot as possible. I find that I get tired of it in longer fic and so, even if my long fic contains smut (which it always does) I don’t use present tense.
There’s an excellent essay on this question here.
But really, it’s up to the individual writer. There’s no right or wrong.
* * *
On to Part 2 --->
Now, Let’s Talk Sex!!
1. What do you find most challenging about writing sex? What about it do you enjoy the most?
2. What is your writing process for a sex scene? Is it different from the way you write other kinds of fic?
3. Do you feel that a sex scene needs to develop character and/or plot? Is there a place for smut simply for smut’s sake?
4. Do you have any advice for non-native English speakers writing sex scenes in English?
5. People are often curious about what words/phrases squick readers. Keeping in mind that one fangirl’s squick is another girl’s kink, give us a personal squick or two.
6. What makes a sex scene hot? I don’t mean your bulletproof kinks, but rather what about the approach or the writing or the story itself will make a scene hot to you?
7. Oh, what the hell, let’s share! Bulletproof kinks? We’ve all got ‘em, those little things that are guaranteed to make go all capslocky in our feedback. What are yours? ;)