Stacia Kane

So it’s my birthday today. I’m about to post today’s sex writing guest post, but I want to open a separate thread to ask everyone to give me a birthday present.

Delurk. Say hi. You can do it anonymously, in case you’re, say, a superspy whose real identity can never be known. But really. I see how many hits this blog gets, and I want to know who you are. Why don’t you comment usually? Don’t be shy! Come on! All I want for my birthday (I am thirty-five, btw, geez) is for you to say hello.

Please?

Okay, a couple of things first. Today my older daughter Princess is seven. Which means I’m posting this and will be away pretty much all day, so if you ask a question in comments please be patient.

Also, Monday is my birthday (groan). I will be posting Emily Veinglory’s guest post then, on how submissive men can be sexy too and some ways to bring that dynamic into the relationship. It’s such a good post it actually made me consider writing a less dominant man, honestly.

Now. Several people pointed out to me on Wednesday that the Sharon Kay Penman scene didn’t do it for them. Several more mentioned that if they knew the characters better, it probably would have.

Which is exactly the point that I’ve made here, a few times (and I’m not being bitchy; I was really pleased to see those comments because A. It proved me right, and I do so love to be right; B. It shows y’all are really paying attention; and C. It shows you guys are really absorbing and feel comfortable speaking up—you’re really getting your own ideas on what works and what doesn’t, and what you would do differently, and why something does or does not work for you. Which is AWESOME.)

Remember the “bold statement” in the “Chemistry” post of July 18th? There were two of them, actually; the first was “A sex scene is the culmination of everything the hero/heroine have done, said, and been through together from the moment they meet (or the moment the reader meets them)”.

The second was “Your Hero/heroine should react to and interact with each other. If they don’t do that, nobody’s going to be interested in seeing them have sex.”

This is where erotic romance has a bit of an advantage, simply because it is so graphic, and the more graphic a scene is, the easier it is to turn someone on with it.

But every sex scene is hotter if the reader is involved, and I chose those two exaples to illustrate that point. You can—and should—involve them with evocative language, with rhythm, with imagery (we’re doing that next week), with a little dialogue, with emotion, sensation, and thought; there are lots of ways to do it and lots of little tricks you should be using. But the number one most important point is to emotionally involve the reader before the sex occurs.

Now, I appreciate this is my blog, and my work, and I’m obviously not posting it for critique—what would be the point? Blood Will Tell was published over a year ago; Eighth Wand ten months ago. It’s not like I’m going to go back and edit them at this point, not when they’ve each already sold several thousand copies in ebook format. BUT. I expect that each and every one of you noticed something missing in the scenes I’ve quoted (perhaps not as much with the Eighth Wand scene, as it was a dialogue-heavy scene and I gave you some background first.) But certainly Monday’s BWT scene—especially as it too was a very emotional scene, actually—suffered for lack of your personal emotional involvement with the characters.

Remember what we said the other day, about the difference between pornography and erotica/erotic romance? The difference is emotion. A sex scene without emotion, no matter how well written, is just a cheap thrill. You must involve the reader first. You must make them anticipate.

Now, again, we’re starting to really reach a point where the topics are so intertwined it’s hard to separate them. I don’t want to go too much into foreplay, because we’re doing foreplay in depth week after next. We’ve already discussed chemistry and emotion, but we still need to view everything through those lenses. And it’s hard to talk about imagery and allusion here when we’ll be doing them next week, along with actual mechanics—what goes where when, how to avoid making it sound like somebody has three hands, that sort of thing.

So honestly? I think I’m going to cut this one short. I feel kind of guilty about that, because I try to give you 1500 words and this is just over half that. But it’s two am here (I was baking and decorating a birthday cake, plus I’m an insomniac), and I have to be up at like eight in the morning for the birthday stuff. So I hope you guys can forgive me.

Also, I’m opening up to questions. I won’t be able to answer them until later, but I’m five hours ahead of the East Coast (US) anyway, so what the heck. Ask anything you like, and I’ll answer it as soon as I can.

Here’s a thought/suggestion as well. Think about what you think is your weakest point as far as writing sex goes. Leave it in comments, so if I haven’t covered it or touched on it and don’t have it in my loose plan for the rest, I’ll know to fit it in.

Okay?

***Did you enjoy this series/find it helpful? You can now purchase it in print ($4.99 at Createspace) or ebook ($2.99 in numerous formats)! And if you feel moved to leave a review or something that’s great too, though of course not remotely necessary.***

BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET

Not very. Really. Obviously I think the more graphic the better, but…

As we saw in the last post, the key to a hot sex scene isn’t so much what the characters are doing. It’s what they’re feeling.

I’m going to share with you a scene from a book I didn’t write. This is from Sharon Kay Penman’s second medieval mystery (and a fantastic book—I’ve blogged before about how much I love her work and how I think the hero of the mysteries, Justin de Quincy, is hot as hell. Funnily enough, this book is the first of the Justin books I read, and it’s this scene which took him from attractive and appealing to totally, completely HOT for me. This is from Cruel As the Grave, used with permission:

The lovemaking that followed was unlike anything Justin had experienced before. There was more than lust in their eager, out-of-control coupling. He’d brought anger into the bed, too, a stifled rage that found expression now in the urgency of his demands. He was not gentle, not tender, afire with his need for release, for redemption, for oblivion. Claudine was soon caught up in his incendiary passion, burning with the same frenzied fever, and for a brief time, there were no secrets between them, no betrayals, nothing but sweat and scratches and muffled cries and pleasure so intense it was almost akin to pain.

When it was over, Justin was exhausted, drenched in perspiration, and shaken, both by the reckless abandon of their lovemaking and that it had happened at all.

See? Now look at that scene again. There is not one graphic word or line in it; no erections, no cocks, no pussies or “entrances” or “tunnels” or anything of the sort. There’s not even an “he entered her” or “he shoved himself inside her”. The most graphic words in it, in fact, are “lovemaking” and “coupling”.

But it’s still hot. It’s still a satisfying scene. I would have liked it to be more graphic, sure, because of my freakishly obsessive love for Justin. But this was fine with me, especially as Cruel as the Grave is not a romance; it’s a mystery. While the Justin/Claudine relationship is an important subplot, I don’t expect the same level of explicitness from other genres; while I expect the sex scene in a romance or erotic romance and, to a lesser degree, urban fantasy, to be arousing, I don’t expect the same from other genres (although obviously I’m happiest if they are.)

When this scene is done, even though it’s only one paragraph plus a few sentences long, we feel like we have read an entire sex scene. By amping up the language as she goes (see how the first few sentences are matter-of-fact statements, and as the scene goes on we see more commas, more words upon words, until finally we have the last phrase of the actual scene, with no commas at all, so the sentence is read in one breathless gulp) Penman makes us see the scene. We see candlelight flickering off those bodies; we hear the sounds they make; we see the sheets crumple and twist beneath them. And most importantly, we see the depth of Justin’s feelings, which you guys don’t know about, because you haven’t read the book (which is why you need to go buy it right now; well, first buy the first book The Queen’s Man, then this one. Buy them together so you can go right from one to the other). But I bet all of you can give an educated guess as to why Justin is so angry in this scene, and what went wrong between him and Claudine.

Now, again, if I’ve done my job, the frenzied lust in this scene and the frenzied lust in Monday’s Blood Will Tell scene are on a par with each other—by which I mean you felt it in both scenes. But my scene is extremely graphic, and this one isn’t, and that’s why I chose both of these as examples.

How graphic the language is, is entirely up to you. Obviously I am a fan of the graphic scene, because I have a dirty mind. You may not like it or be comfortable with it, and in those cases, this is perhaps the type of scene you could be going for (and, again, FOREPLAY. Very important. You can get away with only a few lines of actual sex if you’ve done a good job with foreplay. But I’m getting ahead of myself now.)

I got a question that made me realize I’d forgotten something important when we discussed language, so this seems like a good place to fit it in. The question related to finding appropriate language for the audience and scene, and the use of graphic terms in romantic scenes.

Here’s what I do. The more romantic the scene, the more euphemistic the language. I don’t mean I start pulling out the purple prose, just that words like “cunt”, which I’m perfectly comfortable tossing around in other scenes, do not feel to me as if they belong in a very romantic scene—a “consummation” scene, as opposed to a sex scene. In my romances there is almost always a “we love each other” sex scene, when all questions have been answered and our characters have admitted their feelings and, naturally, the intensity of their feelings makes them want to physically express them. So they do.

I never use “cunt” in those scenes. In fact, I rarely use any graphic language at all (cock is still in there, of course, because as we all know, cock is always appropriate and is always welcome, like French fries or a cold drink. Cock is the anti-drug. I could come up with these all day, people, seriously.) But beyond that, those scenes are heavily emotional. They should still be arousing, but think about it. When you had sex with your partner, or your past partner, or whatever, for the first time when you knew you were really in love, were you competing in the Kama Sutra Olympics or were you really, deeply, feeling instead of acting? (If you care to answer that anonymously [or as yourself, of course], btw, I’d be very interested in the replies, to see if I’m right about that or not.)

That doesn’t mean those scenes can’t be wild, if that’s the sort of couple you’re writing. It just means that those scenes must above all focus on sex as the culmination of and expression of love. It can still be arousing, it can still be hot, it can be however you want it to be—but I personally believe graphic language of the highest level doesn’t belong in those scenes, because it spoils the mood.

You do not need graphic language or description to write a hot sex scene. What you do need is evocative language and a strong grasp of your characters and what emotions the scene is supposed to convey.

Every word you use in a sex scene must add to the mood, remember? Don’t pass up the chance to use it as effectively as possible, and don’t feel you have to go beyond your comfort zone to turn people on. That Cruel as the Grave scene made my heart pound, I can promise you. You can have the same effect on your readers simply by writing about passion and emotion; you don’t need to write about physical actions if you don’t want.

But you have to give them something.

So, here’s an assignment. Remember the scenes you wrote on Monday, with just pure physical emotion? Pull that out again (heh heh, see, I plan ahead!) Does it really need the physical stuff?

Find a book with a not-so-graphic scene that turns you on or you particularly like. What about it gets you? Is that something you feel you can bring in to your work?

Write a very graphic scene, with dialogue, graphic language, whatever you like. Now try rewriting it using the cleanest—but still evocative—language you can. Does the scene still work?

***Did you enjoy this series/find it helpful? You can now purchase it in print ($4.99 at Createspace) or ebook ($2.99 in numerous formats)! And if you feel moved to leave a review or something that’s great too, though of course not remotely necessary.***

BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET

Q. What is a sex scene about?

A. A sex scene is about sex.

Except it isn’t.

Or rather, it is about the physical act of sex only at its most basic level. Sex is the action, but just as our action scenes are about more than that (danger, adventure, knowledge gained, change, whatever) so are our sex scenes.

A sex scene is about what your characters are feeling, thinking, and learning about themselves and each other.

And this is the key to writing a hot sex scene. Let’s take a look at this scene from Blood Will Tell with all of the physical sensation, thinking, and emotion removed—as well as all the foreplay, because foreplay is hugely important and will be covered extensively later. In other words, it is straight sex, just physical action:

Without preamble he slammed into her hilt-deep. Cecelia’s back arched and she cried out. Her voice mingled with his as he too yelled.
Gripping her hips hard, he pulled back, then thrust again, and again.
He reached down between her legs, finding her clit and rubbing it. He pinched it lightly, tugging on it, then letting go and grazing it in a circular motion with his palm. Her cries grew louder. So did his.
His free hand braced the top of her ass, and he shifted so he could slip his thumb into the puckered entrance and fuck her with it that way, continuing his assault on her clit.
She came. “Julian!”
He smacked her ass. His handprint showed red on one soft, round cheek as blood rushed to the surface.
“Cecelia,” he groaned, “Fuck…Cecelia…I could fuck you a million times and it wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough.”
She didn’t reply.
He pulled out and flipped her around, propping her up on the counter. Her legs closed around his waist. Glasses and jars flew to the floor as he swept them away with his free hand.
Her arms were back, bracing herself on the counter, her legs open.
He changed his pace, rolling his hips with every thrust. He leaned forward to kiss her, raising one hand to squeeze her breast and tug at her nipple.
Her head fell back, exposing her throat. He pulled her closer, tangling his fingers into her hair to yank her head to the side.
He came. His cock jerked deep inside her. He felt her burst apart around him, her fluids joining his. Her fingernails dug into his back, breaking the skin.
He fisted his hand in her hair and lowered his face to her throat, his fangs tearing through her skin. It sent him back into a second orgasm.

Now let’s see the same scene as it was published:

Without preamble he slammed into her hilt-deep. The beast within him, the vampire who craved her blood, roared with delight as Cecelia’s back arched and she cried out. Her voice mingled with his as he too yelled, a wordless cry of triumph.
Gripping her hips so hard his fingers hurt, he pulled back, then thrust again, and again, watching himself slide into and out of her, watching her skin grip his. The scent of her arousal hung heavy in the air like some exotic, expensive perfume, driving his sexual fury even higher.
A glance in the bathroom mirror showed him Cecelia’s face transported by pleasure, her eyes closed, her mouth open as she cried out again and again in time with his thrusts. The folds and fissures of her cunt massaged him, provided delicious friction against him as he ruthlessly stretched them, bruised them, forced them—and her—to comply to his demands.
He reached down between her legs, finding her hard little clit and rubbing it, feeling it stiffen further. He pinched it lightly, tugging on it, then letting go and grazing it in a circular motion with his palm. Her cries grew louder. So did his.
His free hand braced the top of her ass, and he shifted so he could slip his thumb into the puckered entrance and fuck her with it that way, filling her cunt with his cock and her ass with his thumb, continuing his assault on her clit with fingers soaking from her juices.
Her cunt swelled and tightened around him as she came, shaking, screaming, a flood of hot liquid pouring from her to drench his cock. “Julian!”
He almost fell apart, but stopped himself just in time, holding himself back. Instead he smacked her ass, hard enough to feel the vibrations deep inside her. His handprint showed red on one soft, round cheek as blood rushed to the surface. It took every ounce of strength he had not to turn completely feral at the sight.
“Cecelia,” he groaned, “Fuck…Cecelia…I could fuck you a million times and it wouldn’t be enough. It’s never enough.”
She didn’t reply, but her cunt still spasming around him told him everything.
He pulled out and flipped her around, propping her up on the counter. Her legs closed around his waist, pulling him close so he could sink back into her. Glasses and jars flew to the floor as he swept them away with his free hand, heedless of the sound they made hitting the tiles. He let her slide a little farther back, resting her more securely on the cold tile so he could thrust into her with more force.
The fever raging in his body still gripped him, gripped them both. Her arms were back, bracing herself on the counter, her legs open so he could watch their bodies joining. Her pussy gleamed, her dewy lips plump and pink above his thrusting cock, so engorged it looked almost purple. Filled with blood. He groaned and closed his eyes, then squeezed her waist, pressing her closer to him, urging her to put her arms around his neck and hold on.
This she did, her breasts bobbing against his chest with every movement.
He changed his pace, feeling himself getting ready to come apart, rolling his hips with every thrust. Heat poured into his pelvis, building to an unbearable level. Every muscle in his body vibrated and tightened as he leaned forward to kiss her, raising one hand to squeeze her breast and tug at her nipple. Her mouth tasted sweet, and he savored it, savored the connection with the last bit of sanity he had left.
Her head fell back, exposing her throat. The beast in him roared, shook, all but flew from his body in eager, blinding need.
He pulled her closer, tangling his fingers into her hair to yank her head to the side, keeping her gaze from him or the mirror.
He came. His body vibrated, trembling with a force like he’d never before experienced. His cock jerked deep inside her, sending waves of unbelievable pleasure through him. He felt her burst apart around him, her fluids joining his. Her fingernails dug into his back, breaking the skin, sending exquisite pain shooting through his body. His hoarse, low shout turned into something even deeper, something that rumbled in his throat as his vision went red.
Now. Now! NOW! He fisted his hand in her hair and lowered his face to her throat, his fangs tearing through her skin, slipping into her mind with ease and tasting her passion and pleasure along with her blood. It was enough to send him back into a second orgasm, something he’d only experienced once or twice in his life.
He spun on a thread, barely attached to his body, riding huge endless waves of pure pleasure, sending webs out through her to share it with him.

Now, if I’ve done my job properly, the second example should be MUCH more stimulating, erotically and otherwise. In the first all we get are bodies; in the second we have the addition of emotion, feeling, thought, sensation, personality… in other words, the first shows us nothing (or very little) about the characters, while the second gives us at least some insight into them. (Again, the majority of this takes place during foreplay.) The first is just bodies; the second is people. The first is telling; the second shows. If we can’t feel what your characters feel, we’re not feeling anything at all.

This is the difference between amateurish porn and erotica or erotic romance; porn is about bodies, erotica is about people. Telling isn’t sexy; it’s pornography, and it’s not what we’re doing.

We’ll be covering this in greater depth with more examples throughout; this is simply the first shot across the bow, as it were.

Today’s exercise: Read a couple of published sex scenes you find particularly arousing. How much of those scenes is pure physical description? How much is emotion, feeling, thinking? Which do you think is more important, what ratio is the most satisfying to you?

Now read one of your own scenes. Have you used emotion, sensation, and thought as effectively as you might, or do you think you can improve? Remember, every scene is different; some will call for more emotion/sensation/thought, some less, but it must be there if the scene is going to work.

Write a sex scene with no physical description at all. Just your character’s thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Now add the physical stuff in, bit by bit, until you’ve reached the “ratio” that pleases you the most (this will probably be different with every scene, btw.) How does that feel to you? Do you feel more or less confident about that scene than about the others you’ve written?

***Did you enjoy this series/find it helpful? You can now purchase it in print ($4.99 at Createspace) or ebook ($2.99 in numerous formats)! And if you feel moved to leave a review or something that’s great too, though of course not remotely necessary.***

BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET

Is up at Five Scribes, and this one is an absolute hoot. Some really amusing questions in there (the interviewer, KL, is highly disturbed in a good way), so go check it out.

I wasn’t sure if the topic of dialogue really fits in character or relationship/story—and we’ll be discussing it a lot more in Foreplay. But hey, we’re merging the subjects a little bit anyway as we go, so why not, right?

Okay. I hate talky sex scenes.

I really dislike them. As Miranda said on Sex and the City, sex is the one place where you don’t have to talk. It just feels weird to have characters carrying on a conversation during sex (most of the time; yes, I can think of situations when the ability to carry on a normal-sounding conversation while otherwise engaged would come in handy, or whatever, but in general). I think there are far better things for mouths to be doing, and frankly, I just find it a little dull. Unsexy. Shut up and do it already.

That doesn’t mean the act has to take place in hallowed silence. It’s fine if your characters want to say each others’s names, or the ever-popular “Yes! Yes!” or “Ohgodpleasedon’tstop” (which is totally sexy, IMO) or, if we’re having one of those lovey-dovey moments, the “I love you”s and whatever. It’s all fine. Sometimes it can work very well. There’s also the ever-popular patented Alpha Male “Come for me,” in which the heroine invariably does (any of you ladies out there want to say if that works in real life? Cuz I’ve never tried it, but I have my doubts.)

But I cannot count the number of sex scenes I’ve read where the characters are having long conversations about how they feel, what they’re doing, how much they like it, what they’re going to do next, blah blah blah blah, and it is so uninteresting I want to fall asleep. Who does that? I have never been with a man who insists on constantly talking during sex (aside from the general babble, which I do like—you know, “words falling out of his mouth”, but none of them detailed–I used this in Personal Demons, for example, because Greyson is such a talker most of the time anyway it made sense) and I don’t think I would want to be. Doesn’t he have more important things to focus on?

The trick is, keep it simple. Remember, these people are having sex. Supposedly really good, hot sex. How long a speech do you think you can make in the middle of the sort of sweaty, rampant, mind-blowing multiple-orgasm-playground sex our characters tend to have?

I know we play with the bounds of physical reality a bit. (How many grown men—above the age of, say, thirty—do you know who can go four or five times in one night, one right after another, without the aid of modern medicine? Yeah, I thought so.) So I guess it’s not totally out of the question to believe people are capable of long eloquent speeches while performing semi-acrobatic sexual acts. But seriously, let’s try and keep this to a decent level.

Because dialogue interrupts the sex scene, nine times out of ten. Or rather, too much dialogue does. Anything over a sentence or two is too much.

But what are your characters saying?

Here’s what I think is the biggest issue, the most common pitfall in writing dialogue during sex: Writers forget characterization, and write what they think is sexy or romantic.

And it might be, sure. But when you’ve set up a strong, silent hero who doesn’t talk about his feelings, it’s simply not appropriate or believable to have him suddenly giving long, flowery speeches of love. And to be perfectly honest, while I’ve heard some lovey-dovey speeches in my time, and even made a few (please control your shock, I know), it’s not usually been during actual sex. Why? Because that’s just too much. Speech first, then sex. Or sex first, then speech. But—and here’s today’s little theme—in sex, our bodies talk much more eloquently than anything we can say.

Nor is it appropriate to go in the other direction, and make him a Pottymouth McGee. This is, I think, another common error: Thinking that “hot” dialogue will make the scene itself hotter. But it won’t. Because honestly? Perhaps it’s unenlightened of me or something, and I’m sure it’s kind of amusing coming from me, Miss Dirty Language, but it feels disrespectful somehow to me. I don’t mean in every situation; such language can be useful in dialogue at certain points in a story. I’ve written it before. And I’ve written a few scenes along the line of “Does that feel good? Tell me,” etc. But I believe when we’re talking about “normal” men and women, getting naked together for the first time, it’s rude and vulgar for a character to force dirty talk on another character. There’s a difference between “I’m going to fuck you now, Heroine,” (hot) and “Here I am, fucking you. Feel me fucking you? Yes, you feel it. Because my big cock blah blah blah” and you just want to smack him and tell him to give it a rest.

In fact, in looking back on my collected works (ooh, I can’t decide if that sounds pretentious or impressive) I’ve found only one sex scene with extensive dialogue, and it isn’t technically a sex scene. It’s Eighth Wand’s mutual masturbation scene, and even it stays, um, within my dialogue comfort zone, let’s say. Here Royd and Prudence, brought together by magic and knowing that no matter how deeply and quickly they’ve fallen for each other a future is impossible, give each other something to remember later (edited for brevity):

“When I do this,” he said into her neck, “when I do this at home, uishta, do you know what I’ll be thinking of?”
She shook her head, still unable to stop watching. He ran his palm over the head, then swirled it back down, his fist tightening.
“I’ll think of this. This, now. You watching me.”
Now she understood why he wanted this. Not just because he wanted to see her open herself in such an intimate fashion. But because he would be alone again, alone and thinking of her.
“I’ll think of your body,” he continued. “How it feels to be buried inside you. How you look at me, the sound of your voice. The scent of your skin. The taste of you.”
Again she reached for him. This time he let go of himself and took her hand, guiding it to her pussy.
She bit her lip. “Royd, I—”
“Show me. Give me something more to picture in my mind, something to imagine you doing. Let me pretend we’re doing it at the same time. Please…”
She hesitated, aware that beyond everything else they’d done together, this was totally uncharted territory.
Aware it was something she could give him that would be his alone.
Her thighs parted. […]
“You have no idea how beautiful you look,” he whispered. “How beautiful you are, to me.”
The words made her bold. She rolled over him to his other side, suddenly determined that if he wanted a memory, if he wanted to picture her pleasuring herself, she would give him something to picture.
Her head rested on the pillows. She spread her legs wider, aware that this was turning her on in more ways than one. The blackness in his eyes was almost frightening, the naked desire on his face intoxicating.
His hand moved faster as she started moving faster too, dipping her fingertips into her cunt and bringing them back out coated with her juices. Every bit of skin between her legs was over-sensitized and needy, and everywhere she touched brought a different sensation, a different shock of pleasure. She slid her fingertip around her entrance, then just inside, then around again, spreading her legs as wide as they would go. She slid her left hand down too, to hold her lips apart.
“Yes, Prudence,” Royd gasped. “Show me everything.”
Without planning to, she started talking. “I wish this was your hand,” she whispered. “Your fingers slipping into me. It’s so hot in there, Royd, so hot and so wet. Can you see how wet I am?”
“Yes,” he groaned. “Yes.”
“That’s because of you. Because I’m thinking of you, thinking about your tongue and your fingers and your cock…I want you so bad.”

Now I’m rather proud of that particular bit of dirty talk, because, just as it was for Prudence, it wasn’t planned for me either. But I think the most important thing about this scene—aside from the fact that along with being (hopefully) pretty hot, it strikes me as rather sad—is that the dialogue spurs the action. Royd’s verbal, vocal approval makes Prudence bold. When she finally begins to speak, it’s from a place she’s never touched within herself (and I don’t mean physically.)

In other words, this isn’t dialogue for dialogue’s sake; it’s dialogue that expands character and relationship, and moves the scene itself forward. It seems to me—it’s the “make it hot hot hotter” thing again—some writers forget that dialogue doesn’t simply exist to heat things up. It has to be in character. It has to be the impetus for the movements; either the mouth or the body must talk. Because Pru and Royd aren’t technically touching each other or having sex here, I felt free to let them say a lot more. Quite simply, they had no other way to communicate. But in an effective sex scene—one involving actual intercourse—there should be lots of other ways.

Also, you may notice the dialogue tags here stray from my semi-loose “always use ‘said’” edict. I think you do have a bit more play in this in a sex scene. Don’t go overboard; but “said” can be a little matter-of-fact for a sex scene.

Like I said, dialogue is an important part of foreplay, and we’ll be getting much more deeply into all the fun that can be had with talking before. We may even have a chance to get into talk after, too. But remember, what your characters say and how they say it has to serve their characters, not just the scene. In fact, I believe it should serve their characters more than the scene.

You don’t need dialogue to make a sex scene hot, but you do need the characters to be true to themselves. Talky sex is telling, not showing, the majority of the time.

If they’re not, the reader will see it, and it will pull them out of the scene. Sex isn’t the time to get fancy with dialogue.

If your characters have that much to say to each other, write a dialogue scene, not a sex scene. The point of a sex scene is to let their bodies do the talking.

Some exercises to try:

Reread one of your sex scenes. Remove all the dialogue and read it again. Does it flow better, or does it really need the dialogue? Add the dialogue back in, one line at a time.
If your scene has no dialogue, add some in. How does that change the scene?

Find some published sex scenes you really like. How much dialogue is in there? How do you think that dialogue adds to the heat of the scene? Would it be hotter without it, or would it not flow as well? Remember, this is all about rhythm.

Write a scene where the characters constantly talk about what they’re doing. How does that work for you?

Remember, this is all my opinion. The exercises are designed (and I use that word loosely, lol) to make you think about how you use these elements and whether or not you agree.

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BE A SEX-WRITING STRUMPET