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How to handle erotic scenes?

Hans

Sage
(one in particular I read when I was twelve and STILL knew it was bad: "He. . . .entered her." What is she, a door?)
Maybe my English fails me here, but do you really enter a door? I always thought a door is just passed to enter something else.

With a deep groan he entered her. He took his Hat, hung it on her hook and then sat down. He then had a look in the Newspaper and it wasn't before he had read the first lines until he started to wonder what that paper was doing inside her.
SCNR

Yea, I know my English is bad.
 
I got halfway through writing a really sexy and horribly bad sectors scene when I remembered that we aren't an age restricted forum. Could have been embarrassing.
 

Digital_Fey

Troubadour
I don't think that sex scenes are always necessary in a book - since this is fantasy, not romance, I think they can be dispensed with more easily than violence - but if they're well written they have the potential to engage the reader emotionally and get quite a bit of character development across. (Provided, of course, that the author doesn't use sex as a shortcut for True Love because they're too lazy to describe the process of actually falling in love.) Erotica is largely a matter of taste, and while I personally prefer subtlety and emotion to detailed physical descriptions, I've come across numerous authors who clearly don't share those sentiments.

What I do think is necessary in any fantasy book aimed at a YA or older audience, is an awareness of sex. That sounds weird, but what I'm talking about are books which acknowledge that yes, sex and sexual desire are an important part of being human, but don't get overly focused on either. These are often much less cringe-worthy than the work of prudish writers who are forcing themselves to deal with the topic anyway, or trying to tiptoe around it. I'm not a fan of the 'closing the bedroom door in the reader's face' approach, because the next scene invariably starts with 'After they had finished...' and makes me feel embarrassed for both characters and writer >.>
 

Derin

Troubadour
What I do think is necessary in any fantasy book aimed at a YA or older audience, is an awareness of sex. That sounds weird, but what I'm talking about are books which acknowledge that yes, sex and sexual desire are an important part of being human, but don't get overly focused on either. These are often much less cringe-worthy than the work of prudish writers who are forcing themselves to deal with the topic anyway, or trying to tiptoe around it. I'm not a fan of the 'closing the bedroom door in the reader's face' approach, because the next scene invariably starts with 'After they had finished...' and makes me feel embarrassed for both characters and writer >.>

I thought Tamora Pierce handled it well in Song of the Lioness. She just had lines like, "Alanna shared the Dragon's bedroll, to Coram's approval." (Line may not be exact, I haven't read that book for about 8 years.) No tiptoing but not distracting.
 

Digital_Fey

Troubadour
Agreed, the second and third Alanna books were pretty well done in that respect - not as gratuitous as you'd expect from teenage fantasy romance, either :p
 

Amanita

Maester
Well, maybe it's time to post something about this. ;)
Like everyone else here, I'm no friend of stories with detailed descriptions of body parts, movements, and fluids. No one really needs something like that and I've rarely seen it done well. (In fanfiction, maybe professional authors are better.)
I don't think that sex shouldn't be mentioned at all either, though. If there are people who are likely to do it, I like to see a clear mention that it has happend and if it's important for the characters and plot I'd also like to know if they've liked it and why or why not.
If I see a big romantic built-up between two characters I like to get a bit of information on what has happend, maybe I'm just overly curious like that. ;)

I also don't think that rape should be excluded at any cost, if there's a situation which would make it likely. (Such as a civil war.) It shouldn't be used as a cheap way of gaining sympathy for a character though, just like torture and child abuse shouldn't be. All of these issues demand careful handling and should be left out if the author can't or doesn't want to deal with their consequences.
I alway get annoyed at books where such things may only harm minor characters but are shrugged of by the protagonists. (Such as in Harry Potter.)

In my story there's a married couple whose relationship isn't perfect to say the least. At the beginning the woman is upset because her husband works so much during the day that he's just falling asleep next to her instead of doing anything with her and if he does it's way too rushed for her taste. During that time, she's dreaming of the romantic beginning of their relationship and hopes to return to that.
Later, she's so upset by the things he's doing that she's disgusted by the idea of letting him touch her at all and refuses to share a room with him.
I do think that this is a important aspect of their relationship next to their total lack of communication. She believes that he should understand how she's feeling without her telling him while he thinks that everything's okay while she doesn't complain which upsets her...
And both feel that their respective other isn't the person they've married 15 years ago anymore which is the most important part of it all because their shattered dreams are any important part of their characters.
 

CicadaGrrl

Troubadour
I don't think that sex scenes are always necessary in a book - since this is fantasy, not romance, I think they can be dispensed with more easily than violence - but if they're well written they have the potential to engage the reader emotionally and get quite a bit of character development across. (Provided, of course, that the author doesn't use sex as a shortcut for True Love because they're too lazy to describe the process of actually falling in love.) Erotica is largely a matter of taste, and while I personally prefer subtlety and emotion to detailed physical descriptions, I've come across numerous authors who clearly don't share those sentiments.

What I do think is necessary in any fantasy book aimed at a YA or older audience, is an awareness of sex. That sounds weird, but what I'm talking about are books which acknowledge that yes, sex and sexual desire are an important part of being human, but don't get overly focused on either. These are often much less cringe-worthy than the work of prudish writers who are forcing themselves to deal with the topic anyway, or trying to tiptoe around it. I'm not a fan of the 'closing the bedroom door in the reader's face' approach, because the next scene invariably starts with 'After they had finished...' and makes me feel embarrassed for both characters and writer >.>

Nice point. I like that.
 
I would definitely say to not be afraid of sex. It's natural, healthy, and we should treat it that way. That being said, there are places it belongs and places it does not belong. You would feel pretty odd about a tire-squealing car chase froced into a book about a gentle grandmother's quilting circle friends, and I think I'd avoid sex there, as well. On the other hand, there are places where sex falls naturally into the plot as part of the character's life. Then you get to decide how much detail it needs. This should happen the same way you would decide the impact of any other action the character takes. Does their drive to the grocery store get fade-to-black and then they're at the cupboard putting things away, or does the trip to the store include important action or character detail that needs to be shown to the reader?

I think that what an author should do regarding sex in a book completely depends on the writer and the work. Your comfort zones and the kind of work you are writing on will dictate if sex should be there, and how much detail goes into it. I do think you have to be pretty darned comfortable with the whole idea before you can do it well at all, and it's a nightmare when done badly. But honestly, I feel the same way about fight scenes.
 
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