How to write a sex scene, part 2

[resonant]

I've moved this series to my webpage. You can find it here.

Comments

[rhiannonhero.livejournal.com]

I don't mind combined zings in stories other than first times. For me, it really detracts from a first time story if there is also bondage involved, or food, or toys, or any other distraction from the intensity of the first time zing.

[lillyjk.livejournal.com]

I agree with this. combined zings don't particularly bother me unless it's a first time fic. although I hate the we must do everything at once fics - sort of a variation on everything but the kitchen sink.

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

Although this does not invariably bother me, I do think some first-time people go way overboard. Because, you know, how many kinks do you unpack the first time you go to bed with somebody? How many kinks can you have, in any developed sense, if you've never gone to bed with anybody? It never ceases to amaze me how, say, in HP fandom, all these 15-year-olds own their own ben-wa balls.

Someone will respond to this post saying they had ben-wa balls when they were 15. Bully for them. But, seriously, as a general rule, I think that's a bit of a stretch.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I basically don't like first-time-plus-voyeurism or first-time-plus-anything even when it's done well, but I figured that was a matter of taste; maybe some people do.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_minxy_/]

I like the distiction you made between 'X can't believe Y would want him' and 'dangerous and complicated emotional truths'. This is probably stretching for a comparison, but it reminds me of passive vs. active voice. The zings I find boring are the ones that are one-dimensional and passive; I want, can't have, wait, DO HAVE, OMG! Kewl. The ones that resonate have multiple layers: the coming together, the fear of it, the reasons, the barriers, the compatibility on some levels and not others, the yearning for deeper contact, for emotional security... all of that is so nuanced and complicated you could go on forever exploring it. Which is active and moving, as opposed to the notion of just getting people in place and then everything will work out according to plan. So I would almost define the passive as not a zing. Zing is an active word, after all. Of course, it's your word, so maybe I shouldn't be defining it.

So, just to thoroughly agree with you, here, the more complicated the truths you're actively and honestly exploring, the less time you have to explore another focus, at least, not with the same level of honesty. Serving two masters, kind of thing.

My biggest mistake in my first Never To See The Light Of The Internet fanfic piece was to try to epically explain why everything worked for my pairing: all seasons, all the people around them, all the friendships, all the other romances. And, by the way, writing them together for the first time. Way, way too many things to do, and none of them done particularly well. It really does help to pick one thing and do it well.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

My biggest mistake in my first Never To See The Light Of The Internet fanfic piece was to try to epically explain why everything worked for my pairing: all seasons, all the people around them, all the friendships, all the other romances.

This is really common. Just ask how many people's first story was either wildly long or turned into a series. (Mine did, though it died between Part 2 and the planned Part 3, for which I should probably be eternally grateful.)

[meri-oddities.livejournal.com]

Find this scene's zing, and hone your focus on it.

You know, I think you can apply this to most scenes in any story. I know this is one of *my* worst problems, I want to do too many thing in every scene.

And yeah, beta's are priceless. I'd never get anything right without mine. They all get chocolate for Christmas this year.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Chocolate. Good idea. Mine actually deserve diamonds and limousines, but, unemployed person here, so ...

[namastenancy.livejournal.com]

I must be very sleepy this morning because I read your post as "Pick one zing and SUCK on it. "

OK ---- must get more coffee. But that would probably work for a sex scene.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I laughed so hard when I read that!

[maryavatar.livejournal.com]

Oh God, yes. Before I even clicked on the cut tag I was nodding. I have several very picky and dedicated betas, all of whom have English degrees. I've always enjoyed the beta process, mainly because my first beta was very good at explaining why something needed to be changed, rather than just saying 'change this, it's wrong'. A good beta makes you feel like you're working together to make your story something special, and is worth his or her weight in gold. I don't beta because I know I don't have the skills to do the job justice, and it pains me when I read something that claims to be beta'd and reads like it hasn't even gone through a spell checker.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I do know it's tricky; I don't have beta chemistry with very many people, and I think I've hurt some people's feelings by not being gentle enough, and I've also had betas who were too gentle, to the point where they weren't doing very much that a spellchecker couldn't have done just as well.

[inthekeyofd.livejournal.com]

Yes, pick one zing and stick to it..sometimes there are too many and it's almost confusing, if it's a first time, there shouldn't be too much going on.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, kinks tend to be pretty important to kinky people. Sometimes they can ONLY have sex e.g., wearing the gorilla suit with someone who's dressed up like a giant banana, and sometimes it just isn't much fun. So they've probably learned to mention it *before* they get involved with someone, because otherwise the other party just gets freaked out when the gorilla suit starts showing up.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Thank you for taking up this topic. I'm going to link to this pair of posts. I hope you plan other installments!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Four total, is the plan. That's all I came up with; the rest is just listing my pet peeves.

Which I also reserve the right to do, of course, since that's what the internet is for.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Re the betas: I took that advice from you ages ago, when you talked about the beta-polka or something like that. Except how do you find the great betas? I had a great one who then got a real life and hardly ever read anything I sent her. I then got another really great one who had a breakdown and went offline and hardly ever read anything I sent her. I then gave up!!

Now what? How did you go about getting yours??

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Hm -- let's see if I can remember. I wrote feedback e-mails to writers I liked, and a small percentage of them turned into long e-mail conversations, which were probably mostly variations on a theme of the incredible hotness of Jim and Blair, and what they might or might not do in a given situation. Eventually, when I started doing chat, I started regularly running into people that I'd already corresponded with, and then somehow we were talking in chat nearly every night, and then somehow we were doing beta for each other.

You can't exactly call that a method, can you? Happy accident, at best.

The advantage of meeting up regularly in chat is that there's almost always somebody hanging around bored and eager to read something new, and the advantage of having a dozen or so people that you sometimes swap betas with is that if one of them doesn't follow you into your new fandom, or goes and gets a life, then there are still others.

[yahtzee63.livejournal.com]

One thing that I would add -- and tell me if I'm off-base here -- is that it seems you're fundamentally addressing how to write a super-hot sex scene in this series. You are, of course, the master. OTOH, there are other kinds of sex scenes that a story might need.

And I'm not talking about the bad sex/awkward sex scene, though those are key too. I just mean -- if a couple is an established pair, really established, there are ways to write sex between them that may not be super-hot but may still be sexy and highly interesting to the reader.

I'm thinking specifically of a Jack/Irina story I read long ago; sadly, I cannot recall the name, and it might be for the best, as the story overall was overlong and therefore not quite at "rec" level. But it was set during the couple's marriage, when they are husband, wife and daughter living in the L.A. 'burbs. The story, fundamentally, was about one of the characters dealing with some terrible that had gone wrong on a mission. (This, btw, is "Alias," and all involved here are spies, albeit spies who spent this story at home.) In this story, there was indeed a big, intense sex scene when the husband could finally deal with what he'd done and therefore finally "return" to his wife. However, that's never the sex scene I remember about this story.

The sex scenes I remember were the ones where the wife was trying to reach out to him, just through their normal sex life. You see that he's still somewhat emotionally shut off, but also that they have a good marriage, a good sex life, and that he's trying very hard to be there for her, even if he's not quite making it. In particular, I remember a very funny scene that had the wife trying to remember a sex trick she'd read about in a Penthouse Forum letter, trying to get him to remember it, him being somewhat appalled that she found his college-era porn, the two of them being amused at their ridiculousness, laughing and having to be quiet because their daughter's asleep in the next room, then trying the sex trick in the letter and discovering that it does, in fact, work quite well.

This sex scene wasn't super-arousing -- it was too amusing and ordinary for that -- but it's stayed with me after hundreds of hot sex scenes have all blurred into each other as so much flesh-toned movement. It told me something about the characters, and their marriage, and it felt so wonderfully three-dimensional and real, and by the end, yeah, it was sexy. I'd love to see more scenes like this written for established couples: Not scenes about Penthouse Forum letters, of course, but about the kind of sex people have after months or years, and the fact that both sex and characters are still interesting at that point.

And now I think I've just self-indulgently rambled about this weird right-angle to your topic for long enough. Begging pardon.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I already said this in the next installment, but, yes, I think that's a really good point. Not every sex scene is supposed to be all about the sex.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Zing, zing, zing, went my heart-string...s ...
...
... finding (such) betas is as hard as getting a publisher.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Then maybe there's hope that I'll accidentally stumble upon a publisher one day, since that's how I got my betas ...

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

I've really been loving this series of posts, and the thoughts they've provoked.

I really agree with distinguishing the difference between "Oh my god he wants me," scenes, and much more serious emotional minefields. Sex and love can be easily separated in my mind, and it's when they connect that the scary revelations happen. In terms of SGA, I think it's something both Rodney and John would have a lot of trouble dealing with, which is what makes scenes focusing on that dynamic so hot. Breaking down somebody's walls works much better for me than one of them trying to convince the other he's attractive.

I agree with the zing as well, and I always have to remind myself that just because it's *my* zing, doesn't mean it has to be in every story I write, that there are many many other zings out there as well. A lot of authors don't seem to understand that throwing in the entire kitchen sink doesn't make things hotter, it only makes them confusing and unrealistic. I'd rather practice at really nailing (so to speak) the zing of the moment, and expanding my range in other stories.

Seriously, thanks so much for deciding to actually post these. It's a wonderful look at the mind behind a writer I admire greatly, and a way to dissect just what it is I love about these scenes, and how I might be able to make my own stronger as well.

[chopchica.livejournal.com]

Huh, when I wrote this, it actually had paragraphs. LJ gets weirder by the day.

[ardent-muses.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. :::nods::: Yep. Never thought about this one, but it makes sense. I read a first time story not long ago where the zing was in the nervous excitement of a first time but then one of the characters did something that I personally wouldn't be doing the first time with a new partner. It was one of those "perk up your sex life" things, and it threw me out of the story. I was trying to explain why I didn't like the scene, and couldn't put my finger on it, but this was exactly why.

I've had that experience as a writer, too, when I had a really hot idea to add to a scene, but that was really not what the scene was about. Man, it hurts to put those things aside, but it's probably for the best.

So yep. ::::makes more notes::: Thank you for this!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

the zing was in the nervous excitement of a first time but then one of the characters did something that I personally wouldn't be doing the first time with a new partner. It was one of those "perk up your sex life" things

Yes! I've read that way too many times, and I'm going, "You guys bored already?"

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Also to say: getting a good beta? Hard. Very. I've yet to find someone willing and reliable and long-term, so it's not for lack of *wanting* to be beta-ed into submission. Perhaps I just don't run in the right circles!

But agree with the one-zing sex scene. Not to be confused with a one-trick pony.

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's very difficult. Being a good beta is very difficult. I myself am mostly only good for making sentences read more smoothly and asking what things smell like; one day I hope to be able to understand structural things and actually tell how to fix them.

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

This is so helpful. Thank you for doing this.

Also, I love 'Transfigurations'. I've lost count of how many times I've re-read your story. It's fantastic!

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I always love to hear that.

[neery.livejournal.com]

I forgot to mention yesterday that obviously Rule 1 ought to be: Get great betas

You make that sound so easy. In my experience, great betas are just as rare as great authors, sadly. I went through a lot of people who mostly just wanted to read the fic before everyone else, and made helpful comments along the lines of “Great story! You don’t have to change anything at all!” Although maybe I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places…

Pick one zing and stick to it.

This has been the single most helpful thing I’ve learned about writing in a very long time. Thank you.
I knew that you can’t have ten different conflicts all mixed up and try to solve them all at the same time, but I never really consciously thought about it in terms of figuring out exactly what the emotional impact is and then sticking with that - not just in the sex scene, actually, but in the whole story. It’s helped me figure out why the sex scene in my most recent story just doesn’t want to work - the zing of the plot has nothing at all to do with the zing of the sex scene, and that makes it look really out of place. (Which will probably mean that I’ll have o trash the whole scene, damn it.)

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

More from my post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/mecurtin/293750.html):

Part 2. Pick one zing and stick to it. That is, a given sex scene can only carry so much weight of meaning and complication, don't try to pack it all in at once. Stick to one major zing and let it carry you all the way for this single scene; other zings, other scenes.