The Ins and Outs of Writing About Sex

Friday night was a reunion of sorts for me. The annual meeting for the Associated Writing Programs was in Boston this weekend, and a good friend of mine was coming out for it. Also the MFA program I graduated from over a decade ago had an alumni event as part of the festivities. The alumni event was great, because I got to see my poetry professor and other students I'd gone through the program with. I was pretty serious about writing poetry for years, and I started my historical novel, No Other Love, only a few years out of grad school. But for various reasons I didn't keep at it until I met my husband. At that point I really didn't want to write melancholy poems, which had always been my forte. Not only was I too happy to write that kind of stuff, I wanted to lose myself in another world, preferably one with hot men, great sex, and happy endings.

I don't mean this to sound anti-poetry, because poetry can do what no other kind of writing can. I was just ready for a change. But few people from my writing program know what I've been up to, and I wondered what they'd think, particularly my poetry professor. But everyone was exited to hear what I've been doing, and not only did my professor seem excited for me, he completely understood my reasons for switching to romances. 

So that happened. But I also had an interesting talk with my friend, who was going to be on a panel about how to write sex scenes in literary fiction. Not theoretically, but how to describe the actual act. She wanted to talk about what made a good sex scene, and I told her what a good friend of mine, a fellow romance writer, once told me. Which is that a sex scene should move the story forward. It's like the way musical numbers function in modern musicals. The singing and dancing can't just be a cute, fun interlude, it should push the story forward and reveal things about the characters. The funny thing is this is true whether it's a romance novel or literary fiction. The sex scenes in a literary novel will be far different from what you find in a romance novel, but the general rules apply. Of course, when you get down to the nitty gritty description, we go in very different directions. For instance, my friend decided, after reading her favorite sex scenes, that the best ones were all about the build-up, and the actual intercourse was best left told in as little detail as possible. I agree wholeheartedly that the build-up is the best part, but when it comes to romance novels, I have no problem reading (or writing) about the beginning, the middle, or the end.