I personally find things like this better when left to the imagination. If you know both characters well enough by that point, it's almost better to gloss over it kind of. As much as I love them I always found the romance scenes to be padding/fanservice, yes even in James Bond. Like, if I'm watching a spartan go through his daily struggles, I want to see him tackle armies of dudes and fight heroic battles. Even if there's a love interest I don't *need* ten to fifteen minutes of knocking up lol Same way with certain kinds of horror, the scariest shit is the shit you DON'T see. Once you see it you know what to expect. Granted I think there's a time and a place for them, just like anything else, but sometimes I think they're literally just there for fanservice.
What I tend to enjoy is keeping them partially in there, but focus on the thematic elements and what it means to the plot through imagery, rather than the motions. And make them very short. Most effective sex scenes are best described by a couple short lines that actually have little to do with the sex. Any fully described sex scene either gets gratuitous, or simply boring, because the motions are just more expectation than anything else. Full of cliche and honestly not that interesting. If it's erotica, this is your more climactic moments, but with ordinary fiction it needs to perform a secondary function. Use of objects or adverse expressions can make them especially poignant scenes. Just like terror or another very physical sort of writing, you want to have the readers blood moving before it gets there. Signal the scene more than enact it, and leave it heavy in thematic develop versus the actual choreography. The most effective usually happen by simply letting the reader get that last glimpse as the door closes or the curtain shuts. As with character description, which I love the rule of allowing only three immediate descriptive focuses per character, only point out the items or elements mosy driving for the theme or plot to give the scene purpose. The reader does as much work as the writer in their minds with the bits you give them. They will play it out on their own. So I guess I fall mostly on the leave it out, but inference and assumptions can be powerful aspects in writing. It's still there for me, and we get the bodies moving towards the goal, but don't waste too much space on it. Keep on the stories track and veer as little as possible by giving these scenes plot and thematic purpose.
I just feel like there are better ways to resolve romantic tension in some cases. Sometimes it can even be better to have the characters just...talk. If I ever do bother with a sex scene I will likely go with your route. For one particular story of mine it might be fun to have the narrator just as annoyed that there's a sex scene as the reader might be. But that kind of thing only works because of the tone of that story. I wouldn't dare try it with a more serious story.
Do I leave them out? Absolutely not. But I'm writing erotic romance so it would definitely be a horrible idea to not have explicit sex. Regardless of all that I get annoyed with sex scenes in non romance genres. They do feel like fan-service/fluff, I agree. Sort of pointless when it's not the reason I'm reading the book and I will gloss over them if they don't interest me. The Dresden Files is an action based urban fantasy that does fade to black and that feels very appropriate to me. Even some romances I've read I felt like the sex was unnecessary because the plot didn't build up sexual tension and so the sex scenes felt unnecessary. The book and romance would have been just as good without it.
Agreed, there is a time and place for everything. However in MOST cases I've felt it wasn't the time or the place. Even the titular James Bond, it gets to a point where my brain goes 'the fuck are you doin, you're on an assignment!' And yes I get that those scenes are trademarks of spy movies, that's part of the charm. But sometimes they run a little long and are put in a weird 'place' in the movie. A lot of good can come from a good sex scene, but most of the ones I seen in movies are very bad. I think the keyword is moderation, just like anything else. Show just enough to satisfy any curiosity, then ace out and fade to black.
I mostly agree. If I've done my job building up romantic/sexual tension between the characters, to the point where they are ready and willing in a scene, then I generally don't feel it serves my story to include more than an implication. As you say, showing the act rarely equals or exceeds the reader's imagination. However, unwanted or unsatisfying sex scenes are a different kettle of fish. For instance, the consummation of an arranged marriage. I'm much more likely to show something like that, as it's a significant source of suffering/conflict for one or both characters.
If I can integrate the sex scene into the running story I'm quite willing to do it, yeah. Unfortunately, I have about 900 pages saying I can't. The problem with sex is that everything stops when it goes on. To run with your Spartan reference, once he gets into a fight the story keeps going, because it happens organically. And even though that fight has as much, if not more, penetration, the sex scene is going to be a distraction.
If the scene develops the characters in some way—either individually or as a couple—yes. By all means, write it. Sex is a very important part of people's lives, and the way sexual partners interact is often very indicative of what they are like as people and the quality of their relationship. Just an example. If you're writing a story about a person who experienced sexual trauma that affects how they view sex, and your story is about how they finally overcome that trauma because their new partner treats them with care and concern during sex, you're going to want to depict that scene. (Unless you plan to shut the door and have them come out smiling later on—which just seems naff and prudish, given the subject matter.) If you write the scene well, your character, instead of being tense and scared while having sex, will find themselves relaxing and finally letting go of fear because the person they're with truly loves them. That's an important thing for the reader to experience. So would the opposite be, if the character, despite being with somebody who truly loves them, finds they still can't bring themselves to enjoy sex, or even allow sex. Again, the reader should be there for that, I reckon. If the sex is routine or meaningless, like maybe James Bond, feel free to leave it out, or just mention it was had. Just like anything else, aim to depict only what's important to the story. But don't shy away from depicting what's important to the story, either. I mean, I'm not a fan of violence in stories. In fact, violence can be just as gratuitous as sex, in terms of depicting it. I'm quite happy if characters aren't taking chunks out of each other. But I would never tell another writer to just say, 'they had a fight and the protagonist won' simply because I don't want to WATCH the fight. Having fighters interact in real-time can be part of the story, part of how the characters develop. Missing out that reader 'experience' would adversely affect the reader's understanding of the characters and the story. Insisting on 'no violence, please' is silly. Automatically reducing sex to 'always shut the door' is just as silly.
It doesn't bother me in the least to read other authors who like to write it in, bordering on erotica although that's a genre that is not my cup of tea (nothing against those that love it). I don't personally like to write it in, not because I am uncomfortable with it, but because I would rather wordsmith it than just have penis and vaginas pounding and queefing for no reason. She slid silently under the blankets with him, pressing a finger over his protesting lips. "We women of my woodland race, wild and free, are free to choose mates of our own desire and I know the cost of human love." He ceased his feeble attempt at resistance, giving into the inevitable. The crickets began a melody, joined somewhere deeper in the cypress grove by a wayward nightingale. Two spirits joined and in the darkness a spark was lit.
Well, it's obvious that the two had sex—unless the reader is naieve and wondering why they've starting a fire—but this doesn't tell us anything about the nature of the encounter itself. Which is fine, if that's all you want the reader to take away. If the dynamics between the two is important to the story, however, this approach doesn't tell us much. Was one partner more knowledgeable than the other? Were there any surprises? Were they deadly serious with each other during the encounter, or did they find things to laugh about? How did they feel afterwards ...about the act, and about each other? Satisfied? Regretful? Worried? Bored? This depiction avoidance approach certainly won't offer a contrast to any OTHER sexual encounter either of them might have during the course of the book. If these elements are important to the story, a bit more depiction might not go amiss. If, however, the poetically vague approach is consistent with the way the rest of the story is presented, it will work fine. But I know I would be annoyed to read a detailed, gory depiction of some swordfight, and then be given this vague depiction for a sexual encounter. The two would clash, and the sexual stuff WOULD come across as a bit deliberately prim.
I've always been a fan of funny sex scenes. Like in American Beauty when Annette Benning is porking the real estate guy and he screams out, "How's it feel to be fucked by the king?" Or pretty much any sex scene in a Tom Robbins novel, where the characters are either needlessly debasing themselves or focusing on random anatomical details that would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. There's something enormously funny about people getting naked and degrading themselves (less so when they do it to others), especially sense the erotic elements will stand on their own, even if only written on a latent level. And you can learn a lot about a character--in fiction and in real life--by how they like to get down.
i will smut it up all day in fic but it never goes farther than kissing on the page. I close the door. Will i do that forever? no idea. I just haven't written a story where the details of the sex they have is important enough to put on the page yet.
Huh. I guess I'm deliberately prim. I think it's my Western mindset/upbringing, where entrails are more couth than the dreaded nipple or phallus.
