Writing the Sex Scene—Not

Whenever we cross paths—shoveling our cars out of a snowbank; picking up a few last-minutes items from the supermarket down the street; clearing away winter's debris in anticipation of the tiny green shoots of spring—my neighbors A and AM always ask me how my novel is coming. AM, a schoolteacher by day, has aspirations of becoming a writer, too, she's told me, although I think that like me, she's in the early stages of the process. A year or two ago, during one of our infrequent talks, she recommended I check out the classes at Grub Street, a well-regarded writing school downtown. Last fall, I finally got around to following up on her suggestion. Unfortunately, though, the class I chose, one which I thought would focus on writing genre fiction, ended up not being the best fit for me; the teacher turned out to be a horror writer who seemed more interested in having us read literary fiction which happened to draw upon popular culture than any popular genre writing itself (with the notable exceptions of a bit of Sci Fi, one superhero comic book, and some James Bond film excerpts). After a few weeks of trying to push the teacher to teach something closer to what I was interested in without much success, I just chalked it up to a bad fit, and finished out the semester.

Next time I ran into A, I mentioned my less-than-happy experience, and ended up a day or two later with a copy of the latest Iowa Summer Writing Festival catalog slipped inside my mailbox, one originally addressed to AM. Not really the place to find a class for a genre romance writer, I guessed, though I thumbed through the pages, just in case. Yes, on the whole the classes seemed far more geared to the M.F.A. crowd than toward genre writers, although some special topic classes gestured toward the not-quite-literary: writing for young adults, writing about food, writing critical reviews. A two-week novel writing class, a class in which students would workshop each other's already written first drafts, caught my eye, but when I read the lines "Our emphasis will be on the literary novel" and "we will look to other literary novels as models for our own," I knew once again I was barking up the wrong tree.

I ran into A again only a week later, and thought for a moment about ducking away before she saw me, bummed out at not being able to reward her and AM's thoughtfulness with the news that it had been worthwhile. But I sucked up my embarrassment and thanked her for her efforts, even while I explained that I wouldn't be booking a plane flight to Iowa any time soon. Undaunted, she replied, "AM subscribes to Poets & Writers. Lord knows that magazine is filled with enough ads for classes. I'll bring over a copy." Another day later, and another delivery arrived in the mailbox: the Jan/Feb edition of P&W. Lots of ads, yes, just as A had described. But for workshops like Iowa's, and for M.F.A. programs from coast to coast. All geared to literary, not genre, writers.

I'm not someone who believes that there's a clear line in the sand between the literary and the popular, though, and wondered if the articles in P&W might be worth perusing, even for a writer focusing on writing genre romance. I was encouraged when, flipping through the Table of Contents, I came across an article with the title "Writing the Sex Scene." I've been struggling with just such a scene in my WIP, and flipped to the article in question, eager to learn what advice the author, poet and novelist Beth Ann Fennelly, had to offer.

Turns out, not very much. As the writers at Salon magazine discovered when they attempted to start a "Good Sex Award" for fiction, literary fiction writers don't often write about sex. Laura Miller, a judge in the 2011 contest, noted that unearthing potential nominees for the award "proved more labor intensive than we'd imagined, not because it's difficult to find good sex scenes in fiction but because its difficult to find any sex scenes in fiction" (P&W 24). Even when literary writers do write such scenes, they're in danger of being laughed at for it; the British journal Literary Review had been handing out the "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" since 1993*. Devised to single out "the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it," the award seems to delight in skewering authors who, when writing about things other than sex, craft sentences many a literary afficionado has found worthy of the highest praise. Past winners of the award have included many celebrated literary authors, suggesting to Fennelly that "it begins to seem as if there are two options for a novelist—write badly about passionate sex, or write well by skipping over the sex" (24).

Or, perhaps, literary folks might want to take a look at how romance writers do it? Unlike their more literary counterparts, romance writers on the whole are not shy about including descriptions of sex in their novels. "Nothing throbbing, nothing turgid" serves as the tagline of Fennelly's article, hinting at the long history of high culture's denigration of genre romance for its embarrassingly "purple prose." While the genre still includes its fair share of overwrought or ungainly language in both sex and non-sex scenes, today's genre romance authors, in contrast to their literary colleagues, can and do write with insight, clarity, and humor about this most human of physical acts. And sometimes even in prose of remarkable beauty.

Three of the nominees for 2013's "Bad Sex in Fiction" Award

Although bad writing, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. While some of the excerpts from the nominees for the 2013 Bad Sex in Fiction award** were pretty painful to read, others struck me as merely straightforwardly descriptive, rather than badly written. Could the Bad Sex award be as much about discouraging any literary writing about sex as it is about discouraging the "badly written," or the "redundant"? At least in effect, if not in intention?

And just what's at stake when our purportedly "best" writers are uninterested in, afraid to, or simply refuse to, take on the challenge of writing about sex?

"The most difficult scene to write in a story or novel is the one in which your characters get it on. At least, that's way my fiction-writing friends have always said," Fennelly notes in the opening of her article (23). Would Fennelly's friends feel the same way, I wonder, if a few romance writers were part of their crowd?


If you were a judge in a "Best Sex in Romance" contest, to what author, and/or to what book, would you give the award? And why?



Thanks, A & AM. You may not have helped my fiction-writing, but you've given me great food for blogging thought!


* I was hoping to include a picture of the actual award, described in this BBC article as "a semi-abstract statue representing sex in the 1950s, by interior designer and socialite Nicky Haslam," but a Google image search came up with nothing. Even more strange, the web site of the Literary Review includes no mention of the award. 

** Interestingly, two of the nominees for the Bad Sex 2013 award were also finalists on the Bi Writers Association "Bisexual Book Awards" list. Significant, do you think?

Real Sex in Erotic Romance: A Guest Post by Cara McKenna

Please join me in welcoming RNFF's first romance author guest blogger: Cara McKenna, a smart woman who writes smart erotic romance

I do my best to write realistic sex in an escapist genre.

The sex in Romancelandia is pretty glorious, I have to say. Typically everyone gets an orgasm or three, heretofore virgins respond ardently, the requisite oversized romance-wangs are easily accommodated sans lube even in moments of the most spontaneous (and vigorous) boning, and the resulting fluids are mysterious absorbed into the ether, allowing everyone to fall into a clean and blissful post-coitus sleep. It's a fairly rare denizen of Romancelandia who shuffles lock-thighed to the bathroom to tidy up, lest she drip the spoils of her conquest on the bedroom carpet.

This is all awesome. It's fiction, after all, so why not make sex as perfect as possible? It'd save us all a lot of time, not needing to launder our long-suffering sex towels, or explain to our swarthy new lovers how exactly they might succeed in making us come.

Weirdly, perhaps, I love the more unglamorous, not-so-dignified, and sometimes inconvenient aspects of sex, so I put them on the page. My characters own lube. My heroines' clitorises are stimulated during intercourse. Lacy thongs are generally absent. Pubic hair is generally present. Foreskins occasionally make an appearance. Bladders must be emptied and bad breath mitigated before morning action can break out. Even carefully-planned three-ways get awkward and sometimes implode. Jaws grow weary during epic blow jobs and gag reflexes are triggered. Petite heroines get punched in their cervixes by overly-endowed heroes. Intercourse precedes oral on occasion, and so the taste of latex and condom lube is endured. There's lots of rug burn and slapping skin, and yes, those post-coital shuffles to the bathroom happen, or else nearby articles of jettisoned clothing become the casualties of clean-up.

When I was new to writing romance and got to the point where I noticed myself slipping these details in, I wondered if I'd gross my readers out, wither their excitement with all those granny panties and the rubbery aftertaste and the surprise of bottoming-out. But the delightful thing is, I've been told again and again by readers that they love those moments, the real stuff. It seems to strengthen their connection to the characters, seeing them living the less-glamorous realities.

I don't believe it's my duty to present realistic sex or anything like that. I do get clucky mother-hen fretful when imagining the younger generations (girls and boys alike) cobbling their sexual educations together exclusively through the lessons imparted by commercial pornography—coming away from those viewings expecting that hairless junk and hands-free female orgasms and insta-anal are exclusively what actual sex looks like, in the wild. That those things are expected, or required. I'm distressed, yes, but not so much that my tendency to write what I see as realistic sex crosses over into personal-mission territory. I write imperfect, messy, sometimes awkward sex because I think it's actually pretty fucking sexy.

I love the intimacy of a hero asking a heroine, "What do you need?" Or if you like it a bit rougher, the thrill of a pushy hero demanding this information. Or the confidence of a heroine coming out and naming those things without a prompt. What does she need to reach orgasm, and can he make that happen for her? Clitoral stimulation, a certain speed or position, to feel or to be treated a certain way, to be relaxed, to be ever so slightly frightened. I love a guy who knows that his possession of a hard cock is only going to take him so far, and who cares enough to ask for instructions, and is man enough to take them (and a sturdy enough flower that if the heroine needs to do these things for herself, his petals will not drop off in a fit of sad-penis feels). That man isn't threatened by the knowledge that his wang is not a magic meat wand whose mere attendance in the festivities is sufficient to get a woman off. I love that man!

We all have idiosyncracies in bed—the highly personal particulars we need to have done or imagine or to hear or to say, to get there—and so should fictional characters. There are greedy areas of the body that require spoiling, and sometimes cagey ones that prefer to be left alone. The hero may need to be told about his cock, or a heroine to hear her lover's moans to get over the edge. Some might require perfect silence and concentration. Then there are the things we need to feel—pretty, big, overpowered, strong, dirty, safe, coerced, used, worshipped, angry, exposed, cherished, known. Needs that may reflect our out-of-bed personas, or confuse them, or outright contradict them. The things we crave the most but may also be the most afraid to come out and name.

So much of arousal and sex is wrapped up in power—the having of it, the taking of it, the surrendering of it. Conflict doesn't exit stage-right the second genitals get hauled out. Sex ushers in an entirely new landscape to navigate, hopefully one that enriches (or further complicates) every other dynamic the characters have been struggling with, before they dropped their pants. I think perhaps that's why I get a touch bored when romance sex is too perfect. It can buff the sharp edges right off a story, when actually it's barbs you need, to keep your attention snagged and your nerves fraying. Your readerly chair should be just slightly too hard, to keep you awake and just a little worried about the characters.

And I think showing imperfect, realistic sex can be powerful and effective for another reason. When a reader detects aspects of their own sexual reality in a work of fiction, it becomes easier to connect with the characters, and to imprint on them for a few hundred pages. The intimacy becomes something that one is not simply reading about, but recognizing. It brings the characters alive in a way that no artful purple description of the most crashy-wave Calgon-take-me-away orgasm ever could. Plus, as I wrote someplace, in some book or other, who masturbates over the memory of an orgasm? Very few of us. No matter how amazing the release might've been, it's the build-up we crave and revisit. The tension. And there's no tension to perfection. Perfect is pleasant. But awkward is hot.

Now do excuse me—I've got a scene to write where the hero bravely tries to fuck his way through a charley horse without the heroine noticing. And it's going to be sweet.

Photo credits:
Lube lineup: Wikipedia
Sad penis: Someecards

Cara McKenna writes smart erotica—sexy stories with depth. A little dark, a little funny, always emotional. She also writes red-hot romance under the name Meg Maguire. She loves writing sexy, character-driven stories about strong-willed men and women who keep each other on their toes, and bring each other to their knees. Cara's latest book is Unbound.

Laughing with the Conventions: Eloisa James' YOUR WICKED WAYS

All genres have their own conventions, patterns of form, style, and content that differentiate one genre from another. A tragedy must end badly to be a tragedy; a metaphysical poem must include a metaphysical conceit or pun; a melodrama must include an out-an-out evil villain. Romance novels, of course, are no exception. Plots that focus on courtship, a tone of hope rather than despair, a story that concludes happily—all must be present in order for a romance to make sense as romance.

In addition to genre-defining conventions, many literary genres also develop historically-specific conventions, conventions that change over time. Such conventions flourish for a short while, then give way to new patterns, different types of events, characters, or settings as history moves on. For example, in the opening chapter of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels, Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan describe the conventions of romances published in the 1970s, then note how books published since the late 1980s feature quite different patterns: romances that were once solely written from the heroine's point of view shifting to include both heroine's and hero's viewpoints; the gradual disappearance of the rapist hero; the rise of romances that mention birth control. Though more recent romances still feature courtship, a hopeful tone, and happy endings, they've left behind many other non-genre-defining patterns, conventions that would feel dated to today's readers.
 

Snoopy plays with genre conventions, not entirely successfully...

Conventions are often ripe for poking fun at, not only by writers who have little respect for a genre, but also by its most innovative practitioners. A romance writer tired of, or ideologically opposed to, a certain convention might call readers' attention to its more absurd aspects, not only making readers laugh at it, but pointing to the ideology behind said convention, an ideology readers might prefer to do without. And if other romance writers follow said innovator's lead, one convention may disappear, and be replaced by a new one.
 
One such romance convention that I've been thinking about lately is "sex will always be fantabulously out-of-this-world—once I find my True Love." I don't know about you, but my first experience of sexual intercourse was not all that great. Neither was my second, or my third. In fact, it took a good long while for me and my partner at the time to figure the whole sex thing out, inexperienced practitioners that we were. Scientists and sociologists who have studied first heterosexual intercourse confirm that such a pattern is far more common than the one depicted in most romances. These studies consistently find that women find less pleasure in first intercourse than do their male partners; one 2010 study found that 52% of women experienced pain, only 34% reported physical satisfaction, and a mere 11% reported experiencing orgasm during their first intercourse. I haven't seen studies that look at experiences beyond the loss of virginity, but I'd guess that the satisfaction rate doesn't shoot up overnight from 34% to 100%, but instead only gradually increases over time, as young women gain knowledge both of their own bodies and of the act of sex itself.

Though the fantasy of ideal sex with one's beloved might be appealing for sexually experienced readers, younger readers who have yet to cross the virginity barrier might find themselves unpleasantly surprised by their initial sexual intercourse if romance novels have served as their primary source of sexual information. Perhaps this is why I so enjoy romance novels that poke fun at the convention of a heroine's virginity giving immediate way to earthshattering, blind-blowing intercourse once she's found her One True Love. One of my favorites is Eloisa' James Regency-set comedy Your Wicked Ways (2004). Not only does James make us laugh at the romance convention that as long as you're in love, the sex will always great, she does it with wit, charm, and a warmhearted sympathy for both her less than rakishly-experienced hero and her sexually self-doubting heroine.

Helene, Countess Godwin, and her husband Rees Holland have been separated for nearly a decade, Rees having thrown his wife of only a few weeks out of the house after she dumped a chamber pot over him. Serving as supporting role characters in the previous three books in James' Duchess quartet (Duchess in Love, Fool for Love, and A Wild Pursuit), Helene and Rees provide the comic counterpoint of the amorously disillusioned as their friends fall in love around them. 

Yet Rees and Helene's relationship began as a love-match, Your Wicked Way reveals: the seventeen-year-old Helene and a not much older Rees fell in love over the piano. Both musicians, they would often steal away from a ball or party to discuss each others compositions, and to exchange a few heated kisses. Despite having the approval of Helene's parents, the two chose to elope to Gretna Green, high on the romance of their own newfound amour.

Yet when sex is introduced into the equation, la vie en rose of young love all too rapidly gives way to the snarkiness of wounded feelings. The insults that flew fast and furious during previous books, and continue in this one, have an added poignancy now, as readers gradually come to see how both Rees and Helene are attempting to protect their own vulnerabilities in the face of their own mistakes, particularly their laughably disastrous wedding night, and the increasingly hurtful sexual encounters that follow it.

After living a life of spotless respectability for nearly ten years,  Helene decides she wants a baby, even if Rees won't give her a divorce and allow her to remarry. As she begins her search for a potential lover/father, Rees, advised of Helene's plans by her friend, pragmatically offers his own services. After all, it wouldn't be fair to his brother for a child not of their blood to inherit Rees's earldom, would it? Besides, he doesn't want Helene's feelings to be hurt when no eligible man expresses an interest in his scrawny, belligerent wife.

Rees has only two conditions: Helen must  move back into Godwin House, and she must help him complete his current opera, a project that has come to a standstill in the wake of the marriage of Rees's best friend, Darby, and Rees's longing for the "same kind of fire that burned" between Darby and his bride. Add Rees's brother, a minister, as well as Rees's current (and quite bored) mistress, both of whom also currently reside at Godwin House, and the double entendres, sarcastic quips, and hilariously surprising conversations bubble forth like the frothiest of champagnes:

    "If it is quite all right with you, I would like to borrow him once a day.... From what I remember, I only need around five minutes of Rees's time," [Helene] told Miss McKenna.
     "Sometimes Rees is good for seven minutes," Miss McKenna said with just a hint of laughter in her voice. "I would give him the benefit of the doubt."
     "Seven minutes!" Helene exclaimed. "How nice to know that one's husband has matured a whole two minutes in the past nine years."
     "I like a man to have ambition, don't you?" Miss McKenna said, taking a sip of wine. (169-70).

As they work together on the opera, Rees and Helene gradually remember why it was they came to care for one another. And with the maturity of an additional ten years, and a little soul searching, they each find the courage to reveal their vulnerabilities to one another, rather than hiding them behind the protective armor of insult and slight.

And as they grow closer emotionally, Helene and Rees also grow more sexually compatible. Not simply because love must lead to great sex, but rather because each works to discover what it is that the other needs in order to take pleasure from each other's bodies, and from their own.

Many romance novels construct sex as an act that people in love must already know how to perform; in contrast, Helene and Rees show that in order to perform sex with any degree of success, one must diligently study one's role, paying careful attention to the cues of the person with whom one takes the the sexual stage.

What other romance novels can you think of that open with a bad sexual relationship between the hero and heroine, a relationship that gradually transforms over the course of the novel? Or that discuss the difficulties adding sex to a relationship can raise?

Eloisa James, Your Wicked Ways. Book for in the Duchesses quartet. Avon, 2004.











Photo/Illustration credits:
• Snoopy playing with conventions: Snoopy's Guide to the Writing Life
• Romance novels: Shannon Simbulan, Flickr
• 1-star lover: Spreadshirt
• Doing it fast: Michael Crawford, Condenast store

Next time on RNFF:

Heterosexuality and feminism, strange and uncomfortable bedfellows?