This is great, Lev, and so pertinent. When I was writing my now-defunct novels the sex scenes were the hardest to try to get right, for many of the reasons you outline here. I'd read porn and sex scenes in famous novels and none of them seemed exactly right. Some of them were downright ludicrous. I don't remember ever reading a scene that felt right and kept the rhythm going.
Because I'm always looking for something to blame for not finishing my novels, I look back now and want to blame those infernal sex scenes. I thought if I'm writing an adult book I can't leave out that act that's the adultest of all. Can I? So those scenes were always awkward and self-conscious and, worst of all, because I was so bad at writing them, they changed the tone and took the reader out of the story, where I'd been working like mad to keep them entertained. if not mesmerized.
If anyone is writing fiction that puts two people in bed together, this is essential reading. Sharing, of course.
I like what you said here. I can’t recall ever reading a sex scene I thought was really right. I don’t mind when it’s prurient only-- I’m not made of stone-- but then there’s a sense that an opportunity to do something literary or artistic was squandered. This whole piece is food for thought. Can it be done right? I wouldn’t have thought so, but now I’m thinking differently about it.
An aside-- it would be an interesting conversation, to ask writers to post about how they think their sex scenes fell short. Maybe I’ll post something like that.
I was surprised at how interesting this was. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a sex scene, but if I do I’ll be using this as reference to try to get it right.
When my mother died three years ago, I told myself I was going to try to write sex into my stories. It hasn't really come up (pardon the pun) in my stories, but I did try it in a book I was working on last year. No throbbing members or quivering vaginas, I think the secret to a good sex scene is atmosphere and character--butterfly kisses on the clitoris just don't do it--and the way through it is through the eyes of the woman, by getting into her needs and desires, her wildly wanton ways. Sex is more than in-out, in-out, repeat if necessary, but it doesn't have to go on for more than a paragraph or two because then it distracts from the story.
Agreed. Check out Kanon's Alibi. He has some gorgeous short scenes. But then the whole book, set in Venice in 1945, is splendid. I've read it three times.
I read around one hundred books a year, ninety percent fiction and poetry, from all over the world. Many countries and the world's most astonishing writers, from Sophocles to today's wonders such as the genrebenders Vi Khi Nao and Hyesoon Kim to our own John Edgar Wideman, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexi.
I would say that most of the writing I read , from most countries, has either bad, crummy, half-assed sex (no pun intended because it might give people ideas about new positions or a new tv soap ASS THE WORLD TURNS). I do find that the Latin American writers have novels and stories where the sex is joyous, especially in. the works of Jorge Amado of Brazil, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and others ( Pablo Neruda along with Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine, the two greatest poets of the twentieth century, are, coincidentally the byfar finest radical political artistic poets ever, along with their ebuillience in writing about love, sex, and sensuality.
When I was in high school, i read many books and eagerly turned many pages looking for juicy sex scenes.. I think I was going through the wrong books- an awful scene in James Farrell's powerhouse trilogy Stud's Lonigan between Studs and his girlfriend Catherine; an equally horrible scene in Hubert Selby's Last Exiit to Brooklyn, a semiplethora of stories by Ivan Gold and other urban writers about overly promsicuous girls add nauseum. One of the few more honest scenes was in the only book I like from a writer I overly detest, Phillip Roth which is the scene in Goodbye Collumbus where the protagonist and his girlfriend Brenda have a fight about her diaphragm. But for sheer brutality and misogyny I cant recall any writing that matches the repulsive piece "The Time Of Her Life" by Norman Mailer in "Advertisements For Myself". Mailer had a vast vast writing talent but his deeper misogyny ruined him.
It's a longer conversation but I would like to leave you two considerations when discussing "bad sex".The first is my observation a few years ago, that most men from most countries cant write a ful, intricate. complex character of a woman. I could then and now think of three or four possible exceptions. Thomas Hardy wrote well about women in his four main novels, Jude The Obscure, Tess of The D'Urbervlles, Return of the Natve and Far From The Madding Crowd, which is one the most underrate love stories in many ways including overcoming class divisions, of all time.
In his main novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne created one of the great heroines of literature in Hester Prynne. What is also amazing about The Scarlet Letter which hundreds of US teachers every year to many studentss, is that peope generally see as a typically stereo of New England dark and dank and tragic with an adulterous woman who screws her preacher and spawns a very strange if not daughter of the devil child in the almost Satanic Pearl , who by the way at the end of the book has moved to England, married successfully and has lovely children while her mom is not only finally unshunned by her neighbors but becomes a community leader! I have worked with scores off colleague teachers and interns and very few have ntohing close to what I am offering.
There is also a Somali write Nurredin Farrar, author of over ten novels where the woman characters are fufll human
My sidebyside comment to the above is that good sex in literature advanced tremendouslly with the rise of the woman's movement. More on this tomorrow or this weekend.
Funny anecdote: my husband is my first reader and he's without pity, lol! In one of my PI books (not yet published) my male protagonist falls head over heels for a cool female vet and they tumble into bed. It was my first attempt at a sex scene and I was a bit timid. I coily "closed the door" on the action. My husband returned the MS to me with this written across the page in fat black sharpie: "What??? No throbbing member???" I cried with laughter... but he was right, if you do it, do it right. I rewrote the thing (and no, I did not insert body parts!) with a mix of awkwardness and tenderness, as people who discover each other tend to be. It passed the hubby test. It can be uncomfortable to share this kind of thing with your loved ones, but it's worth it.
I agree totally. Recently I read a collection of stories set in India and each one was nearly ruined by an unnecessary sex scene. I can only conclude that the editor must have told the writer to add one in each story. Otherwise a terrific collection of stories. The only book in which I think the three sex scenes had a real purpose is in The Last White Man. A wonderful book on all levels.
My beta reader is my spouse who is an author in a different field and terrific copy editor too. And full of plot twists for my mysteries.
It very much can be done well. Example: the sex in Mary Gordon's novel Spending. Or the sex in Joseph Kanon's novel Alibi.
This is great, Lev, and so pertinent. When I was writing my now-defunct novels the sex scenes were the hardest to try to get right, for many of the reasons you outline here. I'd read porn and sex scenes in famous novels and none of them seemed exactly right. Some of them were downright ludicrous. I don't remember ever reading a scene that felt right and kept the rhythm going.
Because I'm always looking for something to blame for not finishing my novels, I look back now and want to blame those infernal sex scenes. I thought if I'm writing an adult book I can't leave out that act that's the adultest of all. Can I? So those scenes were always awkward and self-conscious and, worst of all, because I was so bad at writing them, they changed the tone and took the reader out of the story, where I'd been working like mad to keep them entertained. if not mesmerized.
If anyone is writing fiction that puts two people in bed together, this is essential reading. Sharing, of course.
Thanks!
I like what you said here. I can’t recall ever reading a sex scene I thought was really right. I don’t mind when it’s prurient only-- I’m not made of stone-- but then there’s a sense that an opportunity to do something literary or artistic was squandered. This whole piece is food for thought. Can it be done right? I wouldn’t have thought so, but now I’m thinking differently about it.
An aside-- it would be an interesting conversation, to ask writers to post about how they think their sex scenes fell short. Maybe I’ll post something like that.
I was surprised at how interesting this was. I don’t know if I’ll ever write a sex scene, but if I do I’ll be using this as reference to try to get it right.
Thanks. I was hesitant back in the day, but my editor at St. Martin's encouraged me to try.
And, way too often, it seems like the plot is just an excuse to get from sex scene to sex scene.
When my mother died three years ago, I told myself I was going to try to write sex into my stories. It hasn't really come up (pardon the pun) in my stories, but I did try it in a book I was working on last year. No throbbing members or quivering vaginas, I think the secret to a good sex scene is atmosphere and character--butterfly kisses on the clitoris just don't do it--and the way through it is through the eyes of the woman, by getting into her needs and desires, her wildly wanton ways. Sex is more than in-out, in-out, repeat if necessary, but it doesn't have to go on for more than a paragraph or two because then it distracts from the story.
Agreed. Check out Kanon's Alibi. He has some gorgeous short scenes. But then the whole book, set in Venice in 1945, is splendid. I've read it three times.
I will!
I read around one hundred books a year, ninety percent fiction and poetry, from all over the world. Many countries and the world's most astonishing writers, from Sophocles to today's wonders such as the genrebenders Vi Khi Nao and Hyesoon Kim to our own John Edgar Wideman, Louise Erdrich, and Sherman Alexi.
I would say that most of the writing I read , from most countries, has either bad, crummy, half-assed sex (no pun intended because it might give people ideas about new positions or a new tv soap ASS THE WORLD TURNS). I do find that the Latin American writers have novels and stories where the sex is joyous, especially in. the works of Jorge Amado of Brazil, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and others ( Pablo Neruda along with Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine, the two greatest poets of the twentieth century, are, coincidentally the byfar finest radical political artistic poets ever, along with their ebuillience in writing about love, sex, and sensuality.
When I was in high school, i read many books and eagerly turned many pages looking for juicy sex scenes.. I think I was going through the wrong books- an awful scene in James Farrell's powerhouse trilogy Stud's Lonigan between Studs and his girlfriend Catherine; an equally horrible scene in Hubert Selby's Last Exiit to Brooklyn, a semiplethora of stories by Ivan Gold and other urban writers about overly promsicuous girls add nauseum. One of the few more honest scenes was in the only book I like from a writer I overly detest, Phillip Roth which is the scene in Goodbye Collumbus where the protagonist and his girlfriend Brenda have a fight about her diaphragm. But for sheer brutality and misogyny I cant recall any writing that matches the repulsive piece "The Time Of Her Life" by Norman Mailer in "Advertisements For Myself". Mailer had a vast vast writing talent but his deeper misogyny ruined him.
It's a longer conversation but I would like to leave you two considerations when discussing "bad sex".The first is my observation a few years ago, that most men from most countries cant write a ful, intricate. complex character of a woman. I could then and now think of three or four possible exceptions. Thomas Hardy wrote well about women in his four main novels, Jude The Obscure, Tess of The D'Urbervlles, Return of the Natve and Far From The Madding Crowd, which is one the most underrate love stories in many ways including overcoming class divisions, of all time.
In his main novel, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne created one of the great heroines of literature in Hester Prynne. What is also amazing about The Scarlet Letter which hundreds of US teachers every year to many studentss, is that peope generally see as a typically stereo of New England dark and dank and tragic with an adulterous woman who screws her preacher and spawns a very strange if not daughter of the devil child in the almost Satanic Pearl , who by the way at the end of the book has moved to England, married successfully and has lovely children while her mom is not only finally unshunned by her neighbors but becomes a community leader! I have worked with scores off colleague teachers and interns and very few have ntohing close to what I am offering.
There is also a Somali write Nurredin Farrar, author of over ten novels where the woman characters are fufll human
My sidebyside comment to the above is that good sex in literature advanced tremendouslly with the rise of the woman's movement. More on this tomorrow or this weekend.
Funny anecdote: my husband is my first reader and he's without pity, lol! In one of my PI books (not yet published) my male protagonist falls head over heels for a cool female vet and they tumble into bed. It was my first attempt at a sex scene and I was a bit timid. I coily "closed the door" on the action. My husband returned the MS to me with this written across the page in fat black sharpie: "What??? No throbbing member???" I cried with laughter... but he was right, if you do it, do it right. I rewrote the thing (and no, I did not insert body parts!) with a mix of awkwardness and tenderness, as people who discover each other tend to be. It passed the hubby test. It can be uncomfortable to share this kind of thing with your loved ones, but it's worth it.
I agree totally. Recently I read a collection of stories set in India and each one was nearly ruined by an unnecessary sex scene. I can only conclude that the editor must have told the writer to add one in each story. Otherwise a terrific collection of stories. The only book in which I think the three sex scenes had a real purpose is in The Last White Man. A wonderful book on all levels.