III. ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am!’ – A Quickie for Impatient Writers
To start you off, a quick’n’dirty recipe for better smut scenes built on a slogan that is hopefully easy to remember.
1. ‘Wham’
Aragorn slams himself into his willing wife-while racing over the plains of Rohan on the back of a Meara-horse.
At the core of each sex scene lies action. Moving, touching bodies. The first trick is to make sure that how those bodies move is physically possible. The second trick is not to stop at a description of sex acts.
2. ‘Bam’
Harry kisses Ginny. She feels the wet touch of his tongue. Her skin prickles with goosebumps. She enjoys how her nipples grow taut and sensitive.
For each action, there is a reaction. Each touch provokes a sensation. That sensation can feel good or bad. If you do not describe sensations provoked by sexual acts, the sex scene will feel flat, clinical and gratuitous.
3. ‘Thank you’
Spike, the sexy blond vampire, tickles Buffy’s itch. She experiences the sensation of one hell of an orgasm. And is promptly overcome with immense gratitude at his timely assistance… or intense emotions of shame and guilt.
A sensation is not the same as an emotion. Good sensations can still provoke negative emotions. In BDSM situations negative sensations—pain—can still feel good, and result in powerful positive emotions. Without emotions, the reader will not connect with the story and the scene. Careful, though: emotions are as easily overlooked as overdone!
4. ‘Ma’am!’
In a ‘Marriage Law’ fan fiction story for the pairing Severus Snape and Hermione Granger the first sexual encounter between the protagonists is usually required by law. It is not always a positive experience for the characters and may even serve as a plot element to push them apart.
A good scene must have a meaningful function within the context of the whole story. It should advance the plot and enhance the characterisation. That is true also for sex scenes. To achieve that effect, the following questions are useful: Why are the characters having sex in this scene? What does having sex in this scene mean to them? What does having sex in this scene change for them in the story?
5. And together now: ‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am!’
A quick and dirty fuck with ex-Commodore James Norrington in the darkest corner of a tavern leaves Elizabeth Swann without orgasm and quite sore, both in certain private places and in terms of temper. Only as Ma’am Will Turner she finds true fulfilment-in the arms of a patient, sensitive husband who takes his sweet time and actually makes her come.
‘Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am!’—this slogan consists of short onomatopoeic words, rhymes, and rhythm. On its own, each word or phrase is fairly innocuous. They could also appear, say, in action scenes in a comic or graphic novel, in different panels, and have nothing at all to do with smut. Only all four elements combined, with their sense of action, rhythm and balance achieve the distinct effect of this particular joke.
(Which may also serve as a reminder that a good sex scene does not need ‘good sex’.)
But the really important lesson in this little dirty joke is that it works only because its elements work well together. And that’s the second big secret for writing a good sex scene. A good sex scene does not only need realistic sex acts. If there are only graphically described sex acts, it will end up reading clinical and/or gratuitous. It also needs more than sensation and emotion, because that can quickly veer into the realms of purple prose and clichéd descriptions. And if the sex scene ends up as the most important and meaningful scene of a story, that may not be all that believable—unless it’s an erotic story or a PWP to start with.
Balance is the key.
To Sum Up Our Quickie:
Good sex scenes
- consist of realistic sex acts
- result in believable sensations
- provoke credible emotions
- have a meaning within the whole story
- and the balance of all four elements is the key
Reading recommendation:
1That short blog entry is by far the shortest and best ‘recipe’ for writing explicit sex scenes that I’ve come across. However, for writing explicit scenes in longer stories, it seemed necessary to me to adapt the technique somewhat, as I have done for my ‘Quickie’. I think it’s important to differentiate between sensation and emotion and to pay special attention both to the context and the ‘balance’ of the complete scene.