How Intentional Are Your Sex Scenes?

[PennyThompson]

Someone should have fucked Foucault.

Plot bunny alert: Someone travels back in time and takes Immanuel Kant's virginity while he's in the midst of writing Critique of Pure Reason, drastically altering the course of the European Enlightenment

 

[metropolinational]

Plot bunny alert: Someone travels back and time and takes Immanuel Kant's virginity while he's in the midst of writing Critique of Pure Reason, drastically altering the course of the European Enlightenment

Ah yes. The 12 monkeys, 10,000 monkeys crossover.

 

[YmaOHyd]

Plot bunny alert: Someone travels back and time and takes Immanuel Kant's virginity while he's in the midst of writing Critique of Pure Reason, drastically altering the course of the European Enlightenment

"To be or not to be" becomes "to do or to be done", in which Hamlet weighs the pain and suffering inherent in bottoming against the emotional labor of topping.

 

[Actingup]

For the record I was pushing for more (and earlier) sex

You try and treat women with respect and then they behave like 17-year old guys on a first date….

 

[TheWritingGroup]

You try and treat women with respect and then they behave like 17-year old guys on a first date….

Timidly refuse to even sit too close to their date for fear of scaring them away?

--Annie

 

[AG31]

two three-comes

Is this a pun or a typo?

 

[old_prof]

Is this a pun or a typo?

typo. But I saw it immediately after I posted and decided to leave it.

 

[Duleigh]

Before I started writing erotica, I hadn't really considered the narrative impact of position and actions as anything more than "this seems sexy, let's do that." Now that I'm actually writing it, though, I'm putting a lot of consideration into whether or not to have oral, what kind of foreplay, who's doing what, what position, what are the other body parts doing, all (okay, most) with an eye on narrative impact, what it reveals about a character, things of that nature.

I'm curious how much thought goes into deciding how the arc of the sex will play out in any given story. How much of it for you is steamy id "this is sexy" vs. big-brain ego "narratively, this is the ideal position and chain of events to showcase the relationship and character dynamic."

Where do you fall on the spectrum? What are the main considerations that go into a sex scene for you?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone's asked more or less this same exactly question, but I couldn't easily find a thread on this specific topic, so... Here it is.

I am all over the spectrum. It all depends on the type of story I'm writing. If it's a quick stroker I describe everything down to the drops of sweat and dialogue will merely be grunts and groans. If it's a romance it's more emotional and I'll describe the participant's feelings as much as the action. If it's action there will be fewer sex scenes and they will not be very important to the plot of the story. If it's a romantasy (which I love writing) the sex act is more implied because I'm aiming at a wider audience with my swords, sorcery, and lovers.

 

[Actingup]

Timidly refuse to even sit too close to their date for fear of scaring them away?

--Annie

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[Areala-chan]

*User experience may vary. Terms and conditions apply.

All sales final. No refunds or exchanges.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Limited to product in stock. No substitutions.

All sales final. No refunds or exchanges.

 

[MillieDynamite]

And we don't have it, you don't need it!

Limited to product in stock. No substitutions.

 

[Actingup]

Limited to product in stock. No substitutions.

This story is getting grimmer and grimmer as we go.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

I've absolutely no idea what the OP is asking, though I've read it twice.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Sigh, why doesn't that surprise me?

I've absolutely no idea what the OP is asking, though I've read it twice.

 

[Belegon]

Sometimes cowgirl is just cowgirl.
Sometimes, like in the story I wrote today, it's a statement.

I get this. Certain elements of the sex can reveal character and or progression in a relationship.

 

[Belegon]

I think that I have really become more of a romance writer who sometimes (okay, often) uses sex as a way to reveal character than I am a sex writer anymore. I feel like I can pound out a sex scene pretty easily but the harder part of writing (and thus, for me at least the more interesting part) is getting to the place where the sex scene fits in the rest of the story. When I first started, admittedly a long time ago, I sometimes rushed my way to the sex, because that was the part that was interesting to me. Of course, many of my early stories also were at least loosely based on actual occurrences in my life, and the more I wrote the less that was true. My first two stories on this site are actually very close to actual events in my personal history. The names are changed, and some relevant details switched or omitted, but a large portion of those two stories is actual recall of real events.

 

[BellaBestia]

I must be doing it wrong lol
I start with the sex scene, as a mental image or snapshot in my pre- plotting stage. Then like a cinematographer I pull the camera back a bit to see who they are, where they are and then pull back a bit more to figure out how they got there, the whole time I’m gently asking them questions to get an understanding for their Why they are there or how they got there. Pull back a bit more and see other people in the same place or the other room or the other building and try to see how they fit into the story of the original 2. By then I have a bare bones story and can either scribble down an outline or start writing right away while I’m “hot”.
*Shrug* works for me anyway

 

[Statius]

I must be doing it wrong lol
I start with the sex scene, as a mental image or snapshot in my pre- plotting stage. Then like a cinematographer I pull the camera back a bit to see who they are, where they are and then pull back a bit more to figure out how they got there, the whole time I’m gently asking them questions to get an understanding for their Why they are there or how they got there. Pull back a bit more and see other people in the same place or the other room or the other building and try to see how they fit into the story of the original 2. By then I have a bare bones story and can either scribble down an outline or start writing right away while I’m “hot”.
*Shrug* works for me anyway

I've written one 15 part elf/orc story that way, and at least one other with that very method. It worked well I thought and was actually a fun way to develop the story.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I must be doing it wrong lol
I start with the sex scene, as a mental image or snapshot in my pre- plotting stage. Then like a cinematographer I pull the camera back a bit to see who they are, where they are and then pull back a bit more to figure out how they got there, the whole time I’m gently asking them questions to get an understanding for their Why they are there or how they got there. Pull back a bit more and see other people in the same place or the other room or the other building and try to see how they fit into the story of the original 2. By then I have a bare bones story and can either scribble down an outline or start writing right away while I’m “hot”.
*Shrug* works for me anyway

No real wrong way to write. If it works for you, that's really all that matters. I've used a similar approach for a few non-Lit stories. Some of them literally started out as a single line, joke, or pun, and then used that germ to develop fully fleshed out stories from that, not unlike how a grain of sand is the start of a pearl, and from there you build upon it layer by layer until you have the final product.

Granted, most of them weren't that good, so the pearl analogy only works for the building aspect, not the final product

 

[CalBishForNow]

I couldn't resist answering this thread with a joke when it was new, but since it's still going a month later, I might as well answer in earnest...

I can think of one MMMF scene in my ongoing series about a hotwife/swinger where positions corresponded to characters. The fuckboy got doggy style, the silver fox got cowgirl, and the husband got missionary.

I've written several Group Sex stories, and more that could have been GS if another category hadn’t made more sense, and I have to think about position for that just to get the right bits lined up.

When it's a couple's first time together, I have to be intentional about it because it's hard to imagine the details not mattering.

Even when it's just two people in an established couple going at it, I almost always have something interesting to say about their dirty talk, or one character's internal monologue, or both.

If none of that was relevant, I'd probably fade to black as the sex starts, but my plots rarely lead to scenes where none of that is relevant anyway.

 

[lovecraft68]

I feel what leads up to the sex says more about the sex itself if that makes sense. Set up the characters, the premise, the conflict, the 'why' set the scene that leads directly into it and then I go from there.

I can't see doing "Okay, they start like this, then he, then she, then they, and it ends like..."

I often think of Aerosmith's Walk This Way "It started with a kiss...like this" then it goes into the riff. One person makes the opening move and everything from there is heat of the moment seat of my pants action and where and how it goes is fine with me.

The only time I'm more deliberate is if the sex itself has to be a certain style due to the story. My last piece was BDSM/Femdom with the emphasis on humiliation and punishment and that one needed to be plotted out a bit more. I still did the 'turn it loose' approach but prior I envisioned the things I wanted her to do and they had to be in order. More than once in the scene I stopped and said, no, this has to happen after this not before and backtrack.

That's why the former is a lot more fun and the norm for me.

 

[Djmac1031]

Where do you fall on the spectrum? What are the main considerations that go into a sex scene for you?

For me, a big factor is what category I'm writing for. Since I write a lot of EV, for instance, my sex scenes have to play to that audience. Which means you set things up differently than say, just an erotic couples sex scene, because now we may be involving voyeurs or public nudity or visual teasing, etc.

If you're writing BDSM, obviously that factors into how you outline a sex scene.

I wrote a scene where a guy hate fucks a She-Demon and that obviously affected what they did and how he behaved during. As opposed to the scene I wrote for an older guy finally making love to the young woman he's been slowly falling for over the course of several weeks.

Then there's the characters. Is one a virgin? Or are they both experienced? Is one shy, reserved? Outgoing? Bawdy?

Are they in love? Friends to lovers? Casual acquaintances? Total strangers?

All of that factors in as well.

 

[SimonDoom]

I must be doing it wrong lol
I start with the sex scene, as a mental image or snapshot in my pre- plotting stage. Then like a cinematographer I pull the camera back a bit to see who they are, where they are and then pull back a bit more to figure out how they got there, the whole time I’m gently asking them questions to get an understanding for their Why they are there or how they got there. Pull back a bit more and see other people in the same place or the other room or the other building and try to see how they fit into the story of the original 2. By then I have a bare bones story and can either scribble down an outline or start writing right away while I’m “hot”.
*Shrug* works for me anyway

If it works for you, you're not doing it wrong.

This is one particular question to which there is no one right answer.

 

[JohnEngelman]

I am most comfortable writing stories that could have been made for prime time television movies during the 1950's. They have romance, some violence, and no sex, no nudity, and no obscene words. If any sex occurs in one of my stories, I deal with negative aspects of non marital sexuality, and male predation.