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WRITING SEX SCENES
I am not actually going to tell you how to do this. I'm not writing your pieces for you, and there is no one tried and true method. But I can offer up my own thoughts about it as something for other writers/creators to ruminate on for their own process. Everyone writes differently, and I never aim to offer absolutes or hard rules. The only thing I consider a general consistency is that action scenes of any kind are some of the most difficult to execute.
I've had many conversations about the difficulty of prose as a concept. Not only does every reader read differently, but a writer is essentially being expected to craft a memory that never existed, birth all the actors in it, and then direct them flawlessly until the reader forgets it's not real. The things you're describing have to be clear enough that anyone reading it can at least understand the visuals, sound, and emotional expression. That's a tall order even when the scene is simple. Action takes that to an entirely different level, especially when you have more than one body, and those bodies are literally rubbing up against one another. Painting moving pictures without paint is never going to be easy.
I've been doing this professionally for a while now and I'm still learning. I think that's the best place to be in as an artist, but it's also intimidating to retain the understanding that, hey, this is tough. I can still fuck up. That being said, I'm no longer scared of these scenes. Part of that is just finally having confidence, being able to trust my own process, and part of that is having faith in my editing abilities which have also come a long way. The biggest thing I fall back on, however, is rhythm.
I used to take much more detailed notes on how I wanted sex scenes to go. I would give myself beats, the same I would with any kind of multi-step scene. They were pretty absurd. It would come out looking something like this:
sheepish discussion. inch closer. testing the water. A begrudgingly apologizes to B. B likes the haughty look, kisses them on the mouth. A takes it way too fucking far because oops he's been way more horny. get off with mouth? knock something over. A takes control of conversation.
I never want to plan too much because I have the kind of brain that can release the "we're done" chemicals before I finish writing if I already know everything that's going to happen down to the minute. I tend to start vague and build out from there, which I think is good advice for any writer and for any scene. Sticking to a vague beat list also leaves me improvisation room, which is extremely important to me as a storyteller. I thrive on improv and of-the-moment lines. If you know your beats at minimum, you'll have a much better idea on how to string them together. They act as a road map without restricting you.
I go into sex scenes with one main goal in mind (i.e. character A getting off character B, or first time doing X, or incorporating whatever kink/location/object, or exploring a shifting power dynamic, etc) and it's up to me to add the flow. A lot of the first draft writing is a balance of zooming in and out of a scene. I need to be able to focus on the words as I pick them while the energy is there and I'm thinking appropriately spur of the moment horny thoughts about the characters and action. Once that moment breaks, or I start to feel like I'm swerving too hard, I step back and reobserve the paragraph to make sure that it flowed alright, and then I step back again to take in the whole scene for the road map. If you know where you're supposed to wind up, it'll be easier to take detours without getting lost.
The energy of that balancing act is how I think about music I enjoy listening to. The way music comes together as one and selectively breaks apart to highlight individual instruments, grouping and ungrouping and regrouping, that's a huge part of prose writing for me. I'm trying to strike a balance between all the elements so nothing get stale or goes too far off the rails (which is also true for fight scenes, those are just as easy to lose track of or make stiff and boring by mistake). Music taught me a lot about tension, when to break it and when to build it.
Things I try to harmonize:
The five senses
Dialogue
Every relevant body/bodypart
Metaphor/Simile
Actual Action (if I'm reading erotica, I do eventually want to know what the actual dick is up to. don't skip the fun parts.)
Context! (what is this scene about? how did these characters get here? just because it's pornographic doesn't mean you have to abandon set up and outer/inner conflict)
Things I try to avoid:
Word repetition (particularly, pronouns. Readers always have to know what HE you're referring to. Read sentences aloud if you're unable to tell where things are landing.)
Sentence structure repetition (if every sentence starts with a character's name and states an action, they will build up and clutter. Mix up your lengths and your structures to keep things flowing. It can't be "he did this. he did that" all day.)
Too Many Metaphor/Simile (these are a dangerous drug and relying too heavily can make things too abstract if you're trying to focus on, ya know, SEX. It's a physical scene. It should have physical moments.)
Stiff action phrases that de-sexualize any movement (i.e. "He moved his legs aside so it was easier to reach", or "He pulled the covers down the bed so they could get in." Basically anything that you're putting in there as a means to explain how characters got from point A to point BJ that isn't part of the natural flow of your typical prose. Those phrases stick out like stage directions in a script. You can trust your readers to make the leap logic that people don't just stop undressing because the camera panned away.)
Anything that sounds too generically pornographic (some writers are able to take familiar phrases and surgically manipulate or deploy them in such a way that they feel fresh, but man there are certain phrases I have read in porn a hundred times and they hit me like I've accidentally swallowed bubblegum. This gum isn't good for me, and it's making me realize that I've been chewing on rubber that lost its flavor five minutes ago. This is where the context from the previous section comes in. Individualize your scenes. Make them memorable. This can disguise familiar phrases that may have grown rote or unsexy over time.)
Visual reference is just as helpful to a writer as it is to an illustrator! I've absolutely gotten up and contorted myself to see if I'm picturing an action correctly while writing, or just looked up image refs. No shame. Writing is writing, and fictionalized sex is a different thing than actual sex. When you're writing porn, you're still taking an artistic lens to lean into or exaggerate or capture a specific horny thought. You don't have to be perfectly realistic, as long as you're consistent in whatever world you've built, but if it's going to save you time just to look up a picture, look up the picture.
Basically everything I've said here is applicable to all writing, because as it turns out, good sex scenes and good fight scenes and all good scenes have the same thing in common: good writing. Just don't lose your nerve. If you can write one kind of scene well, you can figure out how to write this too. Dissect your previous works that you feel confident in. Read other porn that you think is really well done, and also porn you think is really mindlessly horny. How can you blend these two things into a style that works for you?
I do think you can glean storytelling lessons from any kind of artistic medium, but I can't stress how much faster you'll learn about PROSE by just reading other written works that really speak to you, and ones that don't! You can sometimes learn more from writing that didn't get you excited because it will more starkly clarify the places that missed you. Why did they miss you? What would you have done differently?
tl;dr all writing is hard! Sex scenes and action scenes become more intimidating because they ask for a close lens on multiple, complex, constantly interacting targets, but you can map that kind of scene just like any other, as long as you don't get scared off by the intimacy. Start out as vague as possible, and just zoom in from there. If you've gotten bored of it though, you may need to find a new angle. If you're bored while writing it, your readers will be just as bored while reading it.
If you're wondering how to end the sex scene, god, well, everyone is endlessly trying to figure this out. I go back to music as a reference point. Some songs come to bright, loud, dramatic endings. Some of them end abruptly, almost cruelly. Some of them slowly fade out leaving you with the echoes of the song clinging to you. There's no constant correct answer. You have to feel it out and ask yourself what it will sound like to experience this for the first time. What do you want it to feel like? What do the characters want it to feel like? What do the characters need? When in doubt, I say less is more. The longer you go on, the harder it is to end it.
AND... All of this is subjective! I'm not an expert, I'm only a professional. I can't actually tell you what "good" writing is. I can't even tell you what good horny writing is. I can only tell you what works for me, and how I try to apply that.
Seriously though, do at least tell me what one of their dicks is doing.
READ MY FOLLOW UP POST HERE!
I've had many conversations about the difficulty of prose as a concept. Not only does every reader read differently, but a writer is essentially being expected to craft a memory that never existed, birth all the actors in it, and then direct them flawlessly until the reader forgets it's not real. The things you're describing have to be clear enough that anyone reading it can at least understand the visuals, sound, and emotional expression. That's a tall order even when the scene is simple. Action takes that to an entirely different level, especially when you have more than one body, and those bodies are literally rubbing up against one another. Painting moving pictures without paint is never going to be easy.
I've been doing this professionally for a while now and I'm still learning. I think that's the best place to be in as an artist, but it's also intimidating to retain the understanding that, hey, this is tough. I can still fuck up. That being said, I'm no longer scared of these scenes. Part of that is just finally having confidence, being able to trust my own process, and part of that is having faith in my editing abilities which have also come a long way. The biggest thing I fall back on, however, is rhythm.
I used to take much more detailed notes on how I wanted sex scenes to go. I would give myself beats, the same I would with any kind of multi-step scene. They were pretty absurd. It would come out looking something like this:
sheepish discussion. inch closer. testing the water. A begrudgingly apologizes to B. B likes the haughty look, kisses them on the mouth. A takes it way too fucking far because oops he's been way more horny. get off with mouth? knock something over. A takes control of conversation.
I never want to plan too much because I have the kind of brain that can release the "we're done" chemicals before I finish writing if I already know everything that's going to happen down to the minute. I tend to start vague and build out from there, which I think is good advice for any writer and for any scene. Sticking to a vague beat list also leaves me improvisation room, which is extremely important to me as a storyteller. I thrive on improv and of-the-moment lines. If you know your beats at minimum, you'll have a much better idea on how to string them together. They act as a road map without restricting you.
I go into sex scenes with one main goal in mind (i.e. character A getting off character B, or first time doing X, or incorporating whatever kink/location/object, or exploring a shifting power dynamic, etc) and it's up to me to add the flow. A lot of the first draft writing is a balance of zooming in and out of a scene. I need to be able to focus on the words as I pick them while the energy is there and I'm thinking appropriately spur of the moment horny thoughts about the characters and action. Once that moment breaks, or I start to feel like I'm swerving too hard, I step back and reobserve the paragraph to make sure that it flowed alright, and then I step back again to take in the whole scene for the road map. If you know where you're supposed to wind up, it'll be easier to take detours without getting lost.
The energy of that balancing act is how I think about music I enjoy listening to. The way music comes together as one and selectively breaks apart to highlight individual instruments, grouping and ungrouping and regrouping, that's a huge part of prose writing for me. I'm trying to strike a balance between all the elements so nothing get stale or goes too far off the rails (which is also true for fight scenes, those are just as easy to lose track of or make stiff and boring by mistake). Music taught me a lot about tension, when to break it and when to build it.
Things I try to harmonize:
The five senses
Dialogue
Every relevant body/bodypart
Metaphor/Simile
Actual Action (if I'm reading erotica, I do eventually want to know what the actual dick is up to. don't skip the fun parts.)
Context! (what is this scene about? how did these characters get here? just because it's pornographic doesn't mean you have to abandon set up and outer/inner conflict)
Things I try to avoid:
Word repetition (particularly, pronouns. Readers always have to know what HE you're referring to. Read sentences aloud if you're unable to tell where things are landing.)
Sentence structure repetition (if every sentence starts with a character's name and states an action, they will build up and clutter. Mix up your lengths and your structures to keep things flowing. It can't be "he did this. he did that" all day.)
Too Many Metaphor/Simile (these are a dangerous drug and relying too heavily can make things too abstract if you're trying to focus on, ya know, SEX. It's a physical scene. It should have physical moments.)
Stiff action phrases that de-sexualize any movement (i.e. "He moved his legs aside so it was easier to reach", or "He pulled the covers down the bed so they could get in." Basically anything that you're putting in there as a means to explain how characters got from point A to point BJ that isn't part of the natural flow of your typical prose. Those phrases stick out like stage directions in a script. You can trust your readers to make the leap logic that people don't just stop undressing because the camera panned away.)
Anything that sounds too generically pornographic (some writers are able to take familiar phrases and surgically manipulate or deploy them in such a way that they feel fresh, but man there are certain phrases I have read in porn a hundred times and they hit me like I've accidentally swallowed bubblegum. This gum isn't good for me, and it's making me realize that I've been chewing on rubber that lost its flavor five minutes ago. This is where the context from the previous section comes in. Individualize your scenes. Make them memorable. This can disguise familiar phrases that may have grown rote or unsexy over time.)
Visual reference is just as helpful to a writer as it is to an illustrator! I've absolutely gotten up and contorted myself to see if I'm picturing an action correctly while writing, or just looked up image refs. No shame. Writing is writing, and fictionalized sex is a different thing than actual sex. When you're writing porn, you're still taking an artistic lens to lean into or exaggerate or capture a specific horny thought. You don't have to be perfectly realistic, as long as you're consistent in whatever world you've built, but if it's going to save you time just to look up a picture, look up the picture.
Basically everything I've said here is applicable to all writing, because as it turns out, good sex scenes and good fight scenes and all good scenes have the same thing in common: good writing. Just don't lose your nerve. If you can write one kind of scene well, you can figure out how to write this too. Dissect your previous works that you feel confident in. Read other porn that you think is really well done, and also porn you think is really mindlessly horny. How can you blend these two things into a style that works for you?
I do think you can glean storytelling lessons from any kind of artistic medium, but I can't stress how much faster you'll learn about PROSE by just reading other written works that really speak to you, and ones that don't! You can sometimes learn more from writing that didn't get you excited because it will more starkly clarify the places that missed you. Why did they miss you? What would you have done differently?
tl;dr all writing is hard! Sex scenes and action scenes become more intimidating because they ask for a close lens on multiple, complex, constantly interacting targets, but you can map that kind of scene just like any other, as long as you don't get scared off by the intimacy. Start out as vague as possible, and just zoom in from there. If you've gotten bored of it though, you may need to find a new angle. If you're bored while writing it, your readers will be just as bored while reading it.
If you're wondering how to end the sex scene, god, well, everyone is endlessly trying to figure this out. I go back to music as a reference point. Some songs come to bright, loud, dramatic endings. Some of them end abruptly, almost cruelly. Some of them slowly fade out leaving you with the echoes of the song clinging to you. There's no constant correct answer. You have to feel it out and ask yourself what it will sound like to experience this for the first time. What do you want it to feel like? What do the characters want it to feel like? What do the characters need? When in doubt, I say less is more. The longer you go on, the harder it is to end it.
AND... All of this is subjective! I'm not an expert, I'm only a professional. I can't actually tell you what "good" writing is. I can't even tell you what good horny writing is. I can only tell you what works for me, and how I try to apply that.
Seriously though, do at least tell me what one of their dicks is doing.
READ MY FOLLOW UP POST HERE!
god i hope this made sense
I LAUGHED LIKE A CROW AT "point A to point BJ" I was not expecting it, bravo. AND also good advice!! You put to words a lot of things I think about when both reading and writing... analyzing dishes and recipes to cook even better... I am also always wanting to know what at least one dick is doing. thank you 🤝🤝
THANK YOU!! That one caught me by surprise too LOL But yeah that's really it! we're just looking over each other's recipes.
thanks for sharing this again! i'm literally editing a foursome right now and my brain loves checklists like this, because when you're knee-deep in the scene it's hard to juggle all these aspects. very useful tips!!
god fucking speed, I'll be joining you later this year trying to write a group scene and I feel like I'm training for a triathlon LOL