Sex scenes in fiction

Good authors too, who once knew better words

Now he only uses four-letter words when writing prose.

anything goes

cole goalkeeper

“Dude, that sex scene you’re planning for your suspenseful adventure thriller. The one where Mike, your hero, makes his move on that beautiful Japanese lotus flower, Kitty, and takes her to his hotel room and . . . ..”

“You mean the one in chapter four, right after she…”

“Yeah, that’s it; the steamy hot scene where you go to town, stun your readers, and really show your mettle as a writer.”

“What’s up with that?”

“Do yourself a big favor and leave him out.”

“Why?”

“It’s not necessary. It doesn’t advance the plot or enhance the story.”

“But it’s the best…”

“Trust me. Just leave it out and forget it.”

I think that is good advice, but often rejected by so many fiction writers. Even well-known, highly valued and respected authors have fallen for the sex scene trap. In my opinion, unless you’re writing in the erotic and romantic genres, intimate sex scenes are best left out. Poorly written, as they often are, vivid sex scenes can kill an excellent novel.

In erotic works, highly descriptive sex scenes are de rigueur; the reader awaits. That’s what gender is about. Writers of romantic novels don’t usually go that far, they are more restrained, they sail as close to the wind as good taste allows. But in both cases, the love scenes must be well written and most of the time they are not. Writing believable and exciting sex scenes is a specialized skill few writers have. But, unfortunately, the temptations to delve into that quagmire, the graveyard of so much good writing, are many and, for some authors, irresistible.

For so long it was impossible. In Britain, the Obscene Publications Act saw to it that it and other countries, such as the US, had similarly draconian laws. But, in London in November 1960, a jury at the Old Bailey found in favor of Penguin Books, the defendant in the Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial, and the floodgates were opened. The writers pushed the envelope against the stronghold of the Puritans and “decency upholders” and ultimately prevailed. Now they could write whatever they wanted, and publishers could publish it and buyers could buy and read it. So it was. And so it is. Anything goes.

But are we really better off? Despite the strict censorship that restricted them, writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Somerset Maugham, and so many others produced beautiful books. Would their works have been enhanced with explicit sex scenes? Would The Great Gatsby be a better novel if Fitzgerald had included a hot scene with Jay Gatsby fucking Daisy Buchanan? Would A Farewell to Arms be a better play if Hemingway had added an intimate scene with Frederic Henry making love to Catherine Barkley? It takes much more than the freedom to write pages full of “Fuck you, you son of a bitch” or depictions of sexual intimacy that would embarrass the mamasan of a Mumbai brothel to produce an outstanding novel.

But sex sells, I hear you say. Surely yes. And isn’t having sex what people do? Yes, there is no doubt about it. And I think it’s fair to say that there’s nothing wrong with your protagonist kissing a beautiful woman if the story is enhanced by it. Some suspense thrillers have intense sexual passion at their core. It was this that fueled such classics as James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. But knowing how much to describe and how much to leave to the reader’s imagination is where the difficulty lies.

That consummate writer and cool guy, Elmore Leonard handled sex deftly in his novels, never intruding too much and just as often leaving it out. And, given the zeitgeist of his time, Ian Fleming handled it well too. We know that James Bond made out with Vesper Lynd, Tatiana Romanova, Kissy Suzuki, Tiffany Case, Pussy Galore and others, but it happened in the reader’s imagination. Only once, if I remember correctly, did Fleming take us into the bedroom. He went with Vesper Lynd, but he did it rightly so; he advanced the story as Vesper was a KGB agent, a double agent.

Sex, the most intimate of human acts, often takes place in the privacy of a bedroom without witnesses. Writers need to show their respect and keep it that way. But if an author feels driven, it will be much easier for him to handle if he is writing in the first person because the narrator is also an actor in the scenes. However, writing in the third person is problematic. Following the lovers through the bedroom door, the narrator intrudes, becoming a voyeur, a voyeur who watches the action in bed and takes notes. I think it’s best to bring the lovers to the bedroom door, have them kiss and hug, and then walk away and leave it all up to the reader.

So do I practice what I preach? Of course. I will go this far and no further, mainly out of respect for the reader. Watching a movie is a passive activity. Reading a novel is an active activity. The reader’s imagination is involved, and I think he should be encouraged to use it to make the reading experience more enjoyable. If the writer does it for him by describing a love scene in detail, the reader may not like the way it unfolds. Allowing the reader to imagine the scene however he or she wants is a much smarter move.

Here is my opinion on it. In an age of total license, with no hand to stop him, a writer becomes his own censor. He has to judge how far to go. As long as it’s not gratuitous, an appropriate and well-written love scene can enhance a story. An inappropriate, highly descriptive one will do the opposite. But why take risks? If it is not essential to the story line, a writer should err on the side of caution and omit it. The last thing a writer wants is to make a fool of himself and become a Bad Sex Award nominee.

Once a year, the British magazine Literary Review presents its annual Bad Sex in Fiction award. And some of the prose that wins this dubious honor is hilarious. Ben Okri was the 2014 winner. Okri won the Booker Prize in 1991 and has received, among other awards, the Commonwealth Writers Award, the Aga Khan Award for Fiction; I’m sure he’s proud. But he didn’t have the guts to take his medicine and attend the Literary Review ceremony and accept his Bad Sex award. Instead, the insufferable diva issued a brief and less than exultant statement: “A writer writes what he writes, and that’s it.” But here for your edification and enjoyment is the winning piece from him:

“When his hand brushed her nipple, it flipped a switch and she was turned on. He touched her belly and his hand seemed to burn through her. He washed her body with indirect touches and bittersweet sensations flooded her brain. She became aware of places in it that could only have been hidden there by a god with a sense of humor.

Drifting on warm currents, no longer of this world, she realized that he was slipping inside her. He loved her gently and hard, caressing her neck, praising her face with his hands, until she broke and began a low rhythmic beat. groan… The universe was in her and with every movement of hers it unfolded for her. Somewhere in the night, a stray rocket exploded.”

Isn’t that something? It took a bit of effort to create that hilarious nonsense. I’m glad I didn’t write it.

None other than a writer like Norman Mailer won his Bad Sex Award in 2007 for a goofy sex scene in his novel: The Castle in the Forest. And John Updike, poor thing, received a Bad Sex Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. It is without a doubt the most feared and undesirable award in English literature and any writer worth their salt should avoid it like a poisoned chalice.