So, you’re a writer who wants more sex…
No, wait, that wasn’t where I intended to go with this post. Let’s start over.
So, you’re writing your novel and a couple of your characters — who, after all, are human with all the usual human needs and desires — are about to take their relationship “to the next level.” Things are heating up. They want more than a lingering kiss.
No. No. No.
What I’m talking about is when your characters are about to have sex. Right there on your page.
For this discussion, let’s assume that you are not writing for the porn or erotic markets or, for that matter, the Christian market. Instead, you’re aiming at mainstream readers in the adult trade market (for those who don’t know, in publishing “adult trade” does not refer to dirty books).
The way I see it (and you may very well see if differently), there are two ways to handle this, short of turning it pornographically clinical:
- Use the “fade to black” technique found in most of the pre-1960s Hollywood movies. As the couple falls into each other’s arms, you simply end the scene. If you handled the build-up well, every reader will know what’s going on between the end of that scene and the beginning of the next one. And, of course, you can always launch the following scene with a reminder (John lightly kissed the sleeping Mary on the forehead before slipping out of bed…)
- Tell the readers what happens in forthright but not overly detailed terms. In my new novel Once a Knight, I chose this approach for the two sex scenes. Perhaps not a literary masterpiece, here’s an excerpt showing how I handled the first encounter (after they get past the initial, somewhat frantic, kissing and disrobing):
I slid up between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around my waist and used them to pull me closer until I entered her and she groaned and muttered some more things in French. For the next half-eternity, we moved as one, sweating and panting in spite of the cool night, rolling this way and that, laughing and saying each other’s name over and over because it was the one thing we both knew the other would understand.
I generally don’t get quite that explicit in my books and short stories, but this one seemed to call for it. The story takes place during World War I and, with death and danger everywhere and no certainly either main character would survive, I thought it was important for them to display strong passions in the midst of the turmoil of war. I felt like I would have been cheating the story, and the reader, if I had chosen to fade to black. Besides, the young lady is French and the hero had been a Texas Ranger (no, not the ball team) and was now a pursuit pilot.
Some writers seem determined to find a middle ground and use a string of euphemisms to describe sexual encounters. Most of the time, I think the story and the reader is better served by the fade-to-black approach if the writer doesn’t want to provide the specifics. If you choose the second approach above, you can decide how much detail is important to the story and character development and where to draw the curtain — perhaps being clear and straightforward up to a point short of actual sexual contact…and then ending the scene.
Whatever you do, don’t cheat your reader or the emotional impact of the story.
I’m sure other writers have other opinions on how to handle such sweaty encounters. What’s yours?
Once a Knight is available now in the Amazon Kindle Store and will be available soon in trade paperback and as an ePub (on Apple’s iBookstore, B&N’s eBookstore, Kobo Books, and other eBook retailers). If you’d like to pre-order an autographed print edition (available for shipping within two weeks), send me an email at
WShiel(at)SlipdownMountain(dot)com (the price will be $15 including shipping and, if you’re in Michigan, sales tax).
There are only two sex scenes, but many realistic air combat sequences!
I also posted the first two chapters on my Cessna Warbirds blog:
Well put: if it adds to story and character development…
I want to liken this to Twain’s remark about adjectives – ‘If you can omit it, omit it.’ But as in your example it can serve the story well. Ayn Rand did this remarkably well in Atlas Shrugged (in my humble opinion).
I take much the same view of violence in writing — a little goes a long way. However, some books require much more violence than others. Once a Knight is a novel about war, so violence is unavoidable. My other historical novel, Devil in the North Woods, is set in the midst of the largest wildfire in modern Michigan history and a degree of death and gore was also unavoidable.
I prefer the fade to black. Writing for YA, I didn’t want details – and I didn’t want to write goofy metaphors. I either ended the scene, or in a couple instances I briefly described feelings during the moment before picking back up in detail after the scene ended.
And that’s where knowing your audience comes into the equation. You cannot possibly write a book for everybody and expect it to be successful, because somebody’s always going to want more — or less — or certain aspects and content. So you have to target what you write, and how you write it, to your audience and what your book’s story truly requires.
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