{"id":2855,"date":"2017-11-11T18:13:30","date_gmt":"2017-11-11T23:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=2855"},"modified":"2020-01-18T09:40:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:40:34","slug":"even-good-authors-can-write-bad-sex-scenes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/even-good-authors-can-write-bad-sex-scenes\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Having Bad Sex–In Your Fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t realize there was so much bad sex out there until I started book reviewing in the mid-1990s for the Detroit Free Press<\/em> where my portfolio included literary, commercial and genre fiction.\u00a0 Though there\u2019s an annual prize given in England to bad sex writing\u2014The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award\u2014I hadn\u2019t previously paid much attention to the problem. But as the books arrived at my door by the boxload, I began to realize that a lot of writers, even good ones, were sexually inadequate. On the page, that is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Time after time I\u2019d find myself reading an involving story of one kind or another and suddenly there would be a sex scene that made me wince because it was clumsy, improbable, or even grotesque. I was surprised and disappointed that writers I admired and enjoyed seemed to fall apart when it came to writing sex scenes. Whether it was lack of practice in this particular aspect of their craft, or embarrassment, or even being too turned on to have enough objectivity, I couldn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n

But I did start to notice two major trends in bad sex writing and I still see these problems cropping up: problems with timing, and depersonalization.<\/p>\n

Many authors don\u2019t seem to understand that timing is just as important in fictional sex as in real sex. If a sex scene is introduced, where does it fit in the arc of the story? Does it move the plot along, or does it slow it down? Does it add depth to the characters and story or is it distracting? Not enough authors ask themselves when\u2019s the best place for a sex scene or even if it\u2019s organic to the work.<\/p>\n

I goofed in an early version of my novel The German Money<\/em> by putting a sex scene early in chapter one. I thought it illuminated the inner state of my narrator, but a writer friend thankfully pointed out that it would distract readers from the character\u2019s dark musings about his very dysfunctional family. As soon as she said it, I knew she was right, so I moved the scene several chapters along and used it as a short flashback.\u00a0 It worked.<\/p>\n

A more serious problem than timing and appropriateness in sex scenes is that two people who’ve been fully individualized characters before the scene fade away and become little more than a jumble of primary or secondary sex characteristics. We end up reading about parts having sex, rather than people. Some writers seem so determined to be un-puritanical that they forget they\u2019re writing about human beings who have feelings aside from lust or passion. Sex means something more than just itself, or at least it can be something more than just itself. And if it\u2019s casual or \u201cmeaningless\u201d sex, then that should be clear in the scene, however it\u2019s narrated.<\/p>\n

As my first editor at St. Martin’s Press said: “Sex reveals who people are in unique ways–it’s crucial for authors to get it right.”<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in genres from mystery to memoir.\u00a0 This blog is adapted from his guide to the writing life, Writer’s Block is Bunk<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn\u2019t realize there was so much bad sex out there until I started book reviewing in the mid-1990s for the Detroit Free Press where my portfolio included literary, commercial and genre fiction.\u00a0 Though there\u2019s an annual prize given in England to bad sex writing\u2014The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award\u2014I hadn\u2019t previously paid … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[298,497,204,269,920,203,921,626,528,922,336,787,380,495,919,132],"class_list":["post-2855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-for-writers","tag-advice-for-writers","tag-authors","tag-bad-erotica","tag-bad-sex-scenes","tag-erotic-writing","tag-erotica","tag-good-sex-scenes","tag-novelists","tag-sex","tag-the-german-money","tag-tips-for-writers","tag-writers-block-is-bunk","tag-writers","tag-writing","tag-writing-sex-scenes","tag-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2855"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2871,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2855\/revisions\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}