Anyone who has read The Noble Pirates knows that I tend to prefer to write “fade to black” sex scenes. That said, as a reader, I have rarely come across a (clearly consensual) sex scene I didn’t enjoy reading. No, really. Call me horny, but sex scenes, both closed door and explicit, often tell me something about the characters and their relationships. Sure, occasionally I’ll come across one (particularly in the realm of epic fantasy) that seems gratuitous, but this tends to be the exception and not the rule. And yeah, I often find myself snickering over word choices and, sometimes, the logistics of the entire thing (he put what where? She had her what where??), but I also truly and utterly FEEL for the authors as I read them.
And I can tell you why: HOLY SH*TBALLS writing sex scenes is HARD. (Pun intended).
Some background: As the daughter of Syrian immigrants, I did not get the mom/daughter bonding moment where she explained the birds and the bees. Nope. Not even close. The way I learned about sex was from my girlfriends, media, and an ENORMOUS tome about the anatomical technicalities of male/female intercourse that my mother handed me when I was twelve or thirteen… then promptly walked out of the room.
Just for context, this book was definitely from the 70s, and there was a reverse negative image of two people having sex on the cover, making the whole proposition look like a grisly murder scene from a cheap horror flick. (Which, undoubtedly, my mother intended).
ANYWAY. The point is, I feel like writing sex scenes is that much harder for someone like me, who grew up believing sex was pretty much just to create babies. (Any other reason to have it was absolutely scandalous and not discussed openly—let alone WRITTEN ABOUT for fun). OH, and also, as in Manzakar‘s Anzori society, sex is ONLY between a man and woman.
I have a couple few “mildly detailed, open door” sex scenes in Manzakar. I can’t tell you how stressed out it makes me, imagining my 70-something uncles reading these scenes. Or MY MOM reading these scenes. And half of them are gay scenes, for goodness sake.
(Although my mom only reads self-help books and biographies of the royal family, so I think I’m safe on that front.)
Let me describe the kind of agony I went through while writing them. First draft: Stream of consciousness, letting every animalistic thought punch through. Stepped away, came back an hour later and nearly choked on my saliva. HOLY GOD, DELETE DELETE DELETE DELETE. Wait, maybe not that part. That part’s hot. FINE, I’ll save it to a secret file on my desktop.
Next: I can’t say c*ck. No way. It’s just… No. I need something else. *Thoughts of velvet-wrapped steel float through my head.* UGH. Can’t I just say PENIS? I stare at the word for several seconds, letting it blur before me. Heavens to Betsy, that word is incredibly unsexy. (As is the phrase “heavens to Betsy.”) Who came up with that? PEEEENUS. NOPE. DELETE DELETE DELETE.
What about “stiff rod”? EW. I’m gonna go with… “Member.” Member is… Friendly? No. Uh… A part of the whole. YES. Does the committee agree? Eh.
What about… “Erection”? That sounds… stiff? Not overly threatening? Who wants anything threatening coming at them? Yeah?
Then, of course, there’s the whole “thrusting” thing. *Looks up synonyms for thrust*: Shove. (Ouch. Not sexy.) Plunge. (Again, ouch.) Prod. (Excuse me?) Poke. (EWWW.) How about something a bit less aggressive… Wiggled? (EWWWWWWUH.) Maneuvered? Dafuk kind of story is this? He maneuvered his erection…???
DELETE DELETE DELETE.
Have mercy, gentle readers. We authors truly have no idea what we’re doing.