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The Hardest Scene in Fiction: The Sex Scene
The rules on writing sex are changing.
If you told me a year ago that I would be an expert on sex scenes in 2021, I would have quit my job before they fired me.
Sex scenes are notoriously difficult to pull off. You can’t get away with much telling. You have to consider the setting. Character feelings. How to show those feelings through action.
Sex scenes are very difficult to write because everything else is stripped away and all you’ve got to work with are the characters and the emotions. There’s nowhere to hide. But that’s also what makes them so powerful. (Nash 2011)
They’re also personal. Horror writers sometimes write about their greatest fears to make the story terrifying. The best scenes are written when the writer is channeling their own emotions. And sex scenes? Well.
Well-written sex scenes are where fiction shimmers. They are a world of opportunity for story-building and if you write adult fiction, you should have this skill in your utility belt. Game of Thrones is often credited with creating “sexposition,” but writers have tapped into this narrative device for centuries. The word was coined because of Game of Thrones, but the concept has been around.
