Some are squeamish about gore and violence and would skip a fight scene, just to see who survived and pick up the story from there. Some people blush when coming across a sex scene. Some don't want to picture the characters they've grown to know and love getting all hot and sweaty, doing the nasty. "Glad they got Mr. Right at the end. But I don't need to know the ins-and-outs." When reading a book, in any given genre, which would contain these scenes, which would you be more likely to skip?
If I skim a fight scene, it's not because of violence or gore. It's because the scene has been gelded and written as "accurate but dry instructions for how to fight". The same is true of larger battle scenes. I need visceral writing, not some museum curator pointing at the different parts of the battle with a stick. Same here. If there is to be sex, ffs, I don't need a scene of "Tab A goes into Slot B". I know perfectly well how genitals work. I need passion and emotion and investment. I don't need instructions. I am most likely to skip the fight scene, but only for the above reasons. If it's written with investment and balls, I'm good.
Sex scene for sure. I love me a good fight scene. Make it visceral, make it brutal. I'm kinda weird because while I love reading about blood spraying as limbs are hacked off, if I go to watch it in a movie or TV show I'm grossed and I have to look away till it's over. But sex scenes, yeah I don't like those. Well-written or not, doesn't matter, I will most likely be skipping till the plot picks back up. And if the plot centers on that kind of stuff I wouldn't have picked it up in the first place.
The sex scene. And any romantic bits, if I feel like they aren't necessary to the plot. Honestly... they bore me.
That's an interesting point. Granted, I thought of this after posting too. How it is different in a visual media? I come from a bit of a film background, so when I see core on TV or film, I appreciate the special effects. I imagine a group of SFX Artists laughing and encouraging each other going "Oh my god. Then make his head explode right. and then his eye shoots past the camera! yeah!" But love scenes make me super awkward on TV/Film. especially if someone is naked. I think "poor actor. did they really want/need to do that? Were they pressured into this in some way? is it a producer saying 'Need more boobs!' Is it just a Pervy director adding the scene to give pervy people something to watch?" (NOT SHAMING) To me, that blurs the line. Real actor's bodies doing character things. mostly it never adds to plot asides from putting flesh on the screen. I worry it is at the expense of some actor's intermate privacy. Never see real violence on film, but you do see real naked bodies. on film/TV there is hardly any inner monolog/thoughts, which is where I would argue would be the most important bit. Conflicted emotions. Quandaries over it being right or wrong, and wonder why it feels so right. Sudden realizations that it is more than sex, but love, and having to keep those thoughts to one's self for fear of rejection, not wanting the moment to end. Etc... Without narration or a dialog scene of the MC sharing the dirty details with a confidant after the fact. I would say that's where most sex scenes fall flat on TV/Film.
Fight scenes I'm good with if they stay in the 'present' of the novel. I want the sense of time during a fight to be as close to the real timing as possible. E.g. I wouldn't even notice what the arm of my opponent is doing, only that it's suddenly choking me. Long descriptions take me out of the present, slow pacing, and remove me from the action, so I skip them. Reading sex scenes or not is dependent on my mood and the genre. If I pick an erotica novel as entertainment, of course I'll read the sex. If I come across a sex scene in another genre, my reaction is likely to be more dodgy. I wouldn't read sex in e.g. historical romance. No Sir, I didn't sign up for that.
If I'm going to skip a scene, it's not because of the content of the scene, but because of the quality of the writing. If I start running into boring writing, I put the book down and go read something else.
Wow This is simply enlightening. I gonna add it to my progress of the day note. It will certainly come in handy if/when I need to write a sex scene.
Depends on the level of violence. I don't really like gore, and the more realistic it is, the less interested I am. Have sat through Kill Bill, though, so there's that. I'll pretty much always skip a sex scene. This is going to sound weird, but I dislike them because, besides prude reasons, they're intellectually sterile. Sex is sex, there's no progress. As opposed to physics or oceanography, where new discoveries can be made -- even if the "discovery" is just me finding something out I didn't know before. In other words, neither sex nor violence are terribly interesting to me. Well, in fiction, anyway.
i dont skip scenes... i like the gore/violent AND the sex scenes. if the scenes are REALLY good, i'll reread them. i dont think i'd skip any of it if i'm really enjoying it. if im not enjoying the book, i just skip the whole book. (actually... there are some gore/violence that make me cringe. anything relating to eyeballs and "ostrich knee" make me want barf, haha! i'm pretty cool with everything else)
I think for me it's because my imagination isn't particularly visual. I think in impressions more than pictures, or words. Just some kind of vague in-between. So literary gore still gives me a 'Ewwww! This is so awful! I love it!' feel, whereas TV/movie gore makes me feel sick. My brain doesn't take it that far! For sex scenes, I don't really want visual or wordy ones lol. I just don't want them at all. Period. Though I have read some that are very vague on specifics, and well-- read them. So there is that too.
It's true, though! The badly written fight or battle is usually just And here is where I explain my superior academic knowledge of this particular subject and also my complete and utter real-world remove since I have never so much as had an actual physical altercation with one of my equally pasty siblings. That's boring and smug to read, but that's all. But the badly written sex scene always comes across as And here is the scene where I prove to all my friends that I am NOT a virgin. And that - that's a peek into someone's sad little world that I didn't ask for and don't want.
A beta reader on Day of the Eagle objected to the fact that my air battles weren't perfectly choreographed with every bullet strike and bank laid out... my response was 'you've never been in a fight have you?'
Also in regard of sex scenes - people who use weird metaphors to dance around mentioning rude words "she took his hard throbbing broomhandle and guided it into her blooming flower" ... just say cock for god sake... if you're too shy to mention a penis by name, just do your love scenes by implication
There was a scene I remember in one of James Herbert's novels, where the infected woman bites the guy's dick off. It went something like "she started greedily sucking at his bleeding root"...
I follow Beverly Jenkins, an elder stateswoman of the Romance genre on Twitter, and a little while ago she responded to a newer author lamenting how hard it was to come up with euphemisms for the male anatomy. Her advice? "Just say a dick is a dick and move on". In reference to the question, I'm 100% more likely to skip fight scenes than sex scenes. I enjoy reading high heat level Romance books, so sex scenes are part of the appeal for me. I honestly don't read many books that even have fight scenes in them, I'm more of a contemporary slice of life kind of gal.
Gratuitous violence. Porno sex. I couldn't finish Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis even though two thirds of the novel was funny. And there was an old horror novel I really liked from the 80s where a dog is killed through a series of systematic procedures from a mentally slow person. I skipped that part. To me the tone and details for the scene really will be the deciding factor on why I skip. Too realistic and purposely grim and I'm not interested. What is the writer trying to get me to feel with these scenes? Sickened? Jolly by the abuse? Turned on by a sex scene that's trying too hard to turn me on in a book that tricked me with it's light tone? When I'm conscious that the writer is up to something I'm wary. And I don't like violent tone shifts in novels. It would be like going to a rom com and suddenly it turns into a porno or a sick horror movie. What the heck's the point? I've never finished a Chuck Palahnuik but at least his smug bastard tone warns you he's up for anything.
I read everything except . . . I couldn't read House of Leaves when it hit those lists of people's names. I would read a 100 or so and then realize it wasn't going to end anytime soon. And then it was like, "Eh, I get it," and I moved on. I read all of the things written backwards and in code, but those lists were just too much. To make it worse, they were written upside down. (That's the start of it over on the right. It goes on for pages.)
Detailed sex scenes are a skip for me. I don't like knowing details of the intimate moments of my friends with their partners and the same goes for strangers or even the lovely protagonist i've been following in a story. Porn is a skip for me. I do appreciate the writer suggesting at some romantic moments happening, obviously. I just don't like it when the writer tries to turn me on; the only person that gets to do that is my partner. The same goes for people being tortured. The idea makes me cringe, so when a writer goes into detail, i sometimes skip a little.
I will read either, even the more mundane, just to say I read the 'whole' thing. Though graphic or attempted sex can be a slog, if it is just going on way too long, or doesn't fit the genre. Fight scenes be they one-on-one or grand scale wars, can also slog on if there isn't much investment in the characters thoughts and emotions towards it. Only following every visceral moment to try and shock/horrify the reader with all the gruesome details. Sure metaphors can ruin a good bedroom romp, but so can using some of the more vulgar terminologies (at least for me). Though I've had my fill of the 50 Shades and the ilk that has followed in it's wake that makes the exercise about as appealing as being skinned alive by a drum sander. So there really isn't much I will skip regarding either topic, though sometimes I wished I had. Some portray them well, and others, well at least they tried to cobble it together into a somewhat coherent mess.
I wouldn't skip any scene, and would only toss the book if a writer didn't appeal to me in the first place.