Sunday, February 23, 2014

Sex scenes are hard

And I don't mean in the nudge-nudge, wink-wink, innuendo laden way either. Although that is part of the point of sex scenes, I guess.

Sex scenes are hard to write. Really hard. There's a reason why a lot of writers just draw a veil over sex scenes and skip to the post-coital bliss; getting a sex scene to feel right is difficult. Getting a sex scene to feel erotic, as in erotic fiction, is even more difficult - you're trying to get a very specific reaction out of the reader.

And those sex scenes get even harder when they're not 'normal' sex, too - when you're trying to encapsulate thoughts and feelings and, well, urges about someone's fetishes. You've got to imagine yourself in a situation that many of us may have never even been in, or indeed, could never be in.

All this leads me here, to a sentence from a plot summary I wrote, probably about four years ago:

"At hotel, they check in and have rampant sex, all that pent-up tension."

Sounds simple, right? Two consenting adults getting it on. But for some reason (and if I'm being honest, it probably has very little to do with the sex) this scene has blocked me for months. Tonight, I finally finished it. And now, I hope, I can get back to writing the rest of the book. Let's hope.

PS: The book in question isn't the sequel to Practice to Deceive. That's on hold for now. In my foolish wisdom, I told myself last year that I could just 'finish off' The Babysitter. So that's what I've been trying to do. For about nine months.