How to Write Sex Scenes

It seems like the hardest fiction writing task you can tackle: writing realistic sex scenes for your story. Whether your tale is a romance, hard-boiled detective novel, or just needs sex in it to move the story forward, there are some great techniques you can use to create appropriate sex scenes and to write them in a seamless, realistic manner.

1. First, does it move the plot forward? This is not Hollywood; gratuitous sex scenes, even in romance novels, are likely to get the reader to skip forward or editors to reject your story. If something critical in the story will unfold during or because of the sex scene, you need it; if not, just leave it out, problem solved.

2. Write it in the same tone as your novel. Hardboiled stays hardboiled; sweet and pure stays - well, sweet, at least. Keep in mind, also, the conventions of your genre, and stick with them.

3. Write it with your character's voice. This is probably the most important rule for writing sex. Has your heroine ever seen a penis, human or animal, and would she know what it's supposed to be used for, or the proper name for it? Is your hero a jaded lech who is falling in love for the first time? Is your hero having homosexual sex for the first time, after acknowledging that he is gay? Keep all these things in mind, and let your character tell you what to say.

4. Don't stress over the "right" words to use. Penis or c***? (sorry, this is a PG-13 rated site). It doesn't matter. All the words describing sexual parts, in my opinion, are kind of ugly, whether they are clinical or explicit. I've been told that's my personal hangup - so be it.

But the specific terms you use for slot A/tab B are not important. The activity of sex is not the critical part of your story. Rather, the ramifications of the sex are the important part. In other words, the characters and their motivations and goals should be your focus, not all that stuff that makes you cringe and hope your grandmother skips this part of the book.

The right word is: the one that your character would realistically use when referring to or thinking about a part. If she's only 15, it might be accurate for her to say "thingy" but not "phallus." (Unless she's a pretentious 15-year-old, like I was.) A newlywed wouldn't necessarily think of the parts, but only her partner, his face, the way he touches her. A man receiving oral sex from a prostitute might think and say some very dirty things - or he might be embarrassed and not want to think about the actions at all. It all comes out of the character. That's who to listen to.

5. Focus on realistic action. You're probably not writing the Kama Sutra, and you don't need to get into wheelbarrow style, or who's upright and who's not, or all the different ways your characters copulate. Sex is, for most people in most situations, a fairly straightforward action done in just a few ways to achieve maximum pleasure for one or both partners. Stick with that.

If you get into the wild things, make sure they are appropriate to the character. I remember throwing a romance novel across the room once when the untouched, convent-bred heroine received oral sex from the hero while she was standing, only minutes after her first kiss. The terrible part: this was a renowned, million-selling author. Gag.

6. As in any story task, use the things you've experienced to create this scene. If you're a virgin never-touched, this could be a problem; there are things in sex, good or bad, that you cannot describe and must instead experience. Fortunately, most writers are somewhat personally adventurous, and rarely have this problem.

Virgins: stay away from sex scenes if possible. Everyone else: use the situation in your life most analogous to the scene you're working on. Of course you've never had sex on a battlefield with IED's going off all around you. But you've had sex with a person for the first time. And you've probably had sex that got interrupted a lot. If you were naughty, you may even have had sex outside, or in places where you might be easily discovered. Use the feelings inherent in these situations to color your battlefield-sex scene, along with the sweetness inherent in the notion that this might be the last time as well as the first.

7. If all else fails, research. Sure, you can do it by reading porn, or checking out some of the great books on this subject like The Joy of Writing Sex (Elizabeth Benedict) or How to Write a Dirty Story (Susie Bright). But I've always thought experience was the best teacher.

You know exactly what I mean. Go! Work!