Bad Sex Award Contenders 2018

Yuzu slept deeply through it all without making a sound, her breathing even.

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Uhh.....

cmhbob said:

Uhh.....

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I caught that one, too. I kinda hope some of these weren't actually intended to be titillating.

Argh! Who was that author whose agent called up kindly to say "Look, I'm sorry, but I just thought you should hear it from me first. I'm afraid you've won the Bad Sex Award."

"Oh. Okay." crestfallen silence - and then "But how did they know?"

The problem with me attempting to laugh at these is they inevitably provoke some measure of body horror/gag reflex when I read them.

Like, how did any author think that would be sexy?

(Oh, right; by being aroused, which often interferes with the brain making good decisions. Kudos to erotica writers who manage that trick regularly; you do not get enough credit for how hard {hur, hur} that is.)

Thinking of buying an enamelled pepper mill. For...research.

She's "mewling." I'm "puking." Only one of us is quoting Shakespeare in correct context. Hint: It's me!

Maryn said:

And this is so affirming and validating for anyone who's tried their hand at erotic fiction and been embarrassed or unhappy with the results, too.

Maryn, who counts herself in that group

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I can't say I would ever come up with such bizarre passages, but regardless, lack of skill in writing erotica is the reason sex scenes fade to black in my writing.

OMG! I feel dirty and baseless for even peeking.

Oh my....

Suddenly my have a go at erotica draft doesn't feel quite as bad now.

I guess I'm reading bad erotica. All these (well, except the first one for sure) look pretty par for the course.

Which is why the erotica I write gets dragged to the recycle bin and the bin emptied before anyone can read it.

The James Frey one is the worse!

cmhbob said:

Uhh.....

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YES! I had the same "wait...hold up" reaction to that one.

*shudder*

I always try to remind myself not to read these...and then every time, I take 'just a peek'.

Julien Gough managed to be nominated for both the Bad Sex in Fiction awards and the Financial Times Best Children's Fiction of 2018 list. Thankfully, for different books!

Cobalt Jade said:

The James Frey one is the worse!

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Totes agree, the rest at least have some comedy value, Frey's is just cringey. Though Murakami's entry has an, um, large volume of issues as well.

I tried to read all these out loud to my husband over coffee this morning, but he rebelled after Julian Gough.

I’m not sure if reading these makes me feel better or worse about the sex scenes in my WIP. Better, because by comparison mine are wholesome, almost quaint; worse, because there is now a small but adamant voice in my head telling me that sex should never be described in words, ever, for any reason.

Holy Shittake! I finally looked. It was a good laugh.

It's also possible that some of these aren't that bad in context. The Cornwall and Trevelyan book (the one with the "vaginal ratchet") is actually a satire.

autumnleaf said:

It's also possible that some of these aren't that bad in context. The Cornwall and Trevelyan book (the one with the "vaginal ratchet") is actually a satire.

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And I think Murukami's rapey one was supposed to be a surreal dream sequence? (I haven't read the book; that's just some hearsay.)

That's always the delicately-ignored issue when this award comes out; a lot of sex scenes, even very good ones, are awkward as hell if read out of context. Surprise-porn when you're not in the mood is not welcome to most people, including people who enjoy it when they are in the right frame of mind.

The author has presumably warmed the reader up a little before the characters get busy, so it's not really fair to read these excerpts cold. Of course, the humour of the award mainly comes from how spectacularly cringey those scenes are out-of-context, so maybe even though it's not fair, it is fair, given what the bad sex award really is -- an exercise in ridicule.

What makes this quote especially delectable is that not only is it an unfortunate agglomeration from different universes (Fixing Stuff, meet F***ing Stuff), but 'ratchet' is misspelled 'rachet.' What, is the person in question's vagina able to ratchet with cachet?

I'm a newbie to AW, and I hope I don't get off on the wrong foot here by noting that the boundary between egregiously bad sex writing and pretty damn good writing seems pretty porous to me. Some of the quotes in The Guardian article are truly execrable. Others are on the side of "Damn, you almost had it there, but you just didn't get it quite right." The point being, there are some good concepts and good writing in those passages. It's not all "vagina-rachet" awful.

I've just completed a novel that I've stopped calling 'erotic' and replaced with 'bawdy' because I didn't want it dumped in the same drawer as Fifty Shades or viewed as being predominantly about describing sex or turning on (or trying to turn on) the reader. Which makes me hyper-acutely aware of how easy it is to write badly about sex.