So you are here - what is your biggest challenge writing sex?

InkFinger

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You are dropping in on the Erotica discussion forum, so either you hope to eavesdrop on juicy tales or you want to learn something from your peers that will make your work better. What's your biggest challenge? Are you just uncomfortable writing sex? Are you embarrassed to share your work? Are you worried that you'll expose your ignorance? Or maybe you'll make everyone think you're some kind of pervert. Writing sex is hard. Writing good sex is harder.

For me, I don't have a problem with the words, or the visuals, and I don't care what people think of me - so long as I am protected by a pen name and my boss doesn't find out, but what I really have a problem with is voice. I'm worried that everyone I write is the same, like a giant cosplay masturbation scene with a mirror.

How about you? What do you want to work on?
 

Fallen

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With me it's writing outside of my own dark erotic romance comfort zones. I mean, I've written most dark content: hardcore BDSM, including chemical-play, knife-play etc, but there's more lighter romance ones, lol, that makes me squirm. There's one or two that I haven't written in all the years I've been writing. I think I'm just weird when it comes to writing sex.
 

Maryn

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I'm comfortable writing graphic sex, but I have two greatest challenges. One is plotting, which has been a weakness in every genre I've tried. The other is that I fear I'm just Mary Sue-ing the fuck out of everything and that it shows, even though I take pains to make the female lead unlike myself.

Maryn-Sue, haha
 

InkFinger

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Nothing weird about that. The closer things get to real, the harder they are to write. Storytelling is truth telling. You should try something short right in the middle of what makes you squirm, even if no one but you ever sees it.
 

Maryn

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At the moment, poor Mary Sue is getting ready to file for divorce. That no-good Andrew!
 

InkFinger

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We have votes for:
  • Variety of Voices
  • Variety of Styles
  • And writing straight sex


Anyone else?
 

SAWeiner

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I don't write erotica per se, but of course, I have sex scenes in my writings. So yes, on one hand, I don't want to sound too crude or sleazy. On the other hand, I don't want to sound like a technical manual. However, I think I have struck the right balance and my sex scenes are better than some other segments of my works.
 
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anaemic_mind

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I am new to writing and so much of my fear about it is just down to feeling nervous about sharing anything I write full stop, let alone having sex scenes in the mix too. That said, I've found writing sex surprisingly easy and even admitting to friends and family that my writing does feature sex wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Whether it's any good is a whole other ball game and I've yet to share anything, with anyone aside from the passage I've just posted in the SYW board just now.

The main thing I want is to not end up on that list of bad sex scenes. More specifically I would like to be able to write from a POV that is different to my own. I am female and straight and every sex scene I've written so far has been from a straight female POV. But I have a LOT of male characters in my current series both straight and gay as well as a couple of bi/gay women and would like to write some scenes from their POV, but don't really know where to start.
 

Chris P

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I don't write erotica per se, but of course, I have sex scenes in my writings. So yes, on one hand, I don't want to sound too crude or sleazy. On the other hand, I don't want to sound like a technical manual. However, I think I have struck the right balance and my sex scenes are better than some other segments of my works.

This is almost exactly me. Most of my attempts don't really fit the rest of the story, either in level of detail or the voice of the narrator. The scenes come off as more juvenile than the rest of the book, or read like a medical text. There's one time I think I've done it well, but the book has other problems keeping me from shopping it around. I try to learn from those who've done it well, and A Sport and A Pastime by James Salter comes to mind.