Sex scenes and Thai food

[selenay]

mirabellawotr wrote a very coherent, interesting post on sex in fics here. Read down through the comments as well. I was fascinated to discover that I'm not the only person who finds that a great fic can be ruined by sex scenes that are glaringly out of pace with the rest of the story!

When I started writing fanfic, back in the days of writing Buffy/Giles, I had this assumption that all relationship fic had to include sex. I have no idea why. That's why my early stuff had a lot more (badly written) sex in it than my more recent stuff. Nowadays, I'm more confident about my writing and will freely admit that most of my stories work better without the sex. In fact, I'm perfectly happy to write fade-to-black, despite the 'aargh, how could you end it there?' comments I sometimes get (no, riverfox, this is not aimed at you). I only put sex in if it fits with the rest of the story and the story will be weaker without. Yes, that means that I'm seriously toying with not fading to black in an upcoming edition of Inner Voices.

Some of the hottest, sexiest fic that I've read has faded to black instead of writing a blow-by-blow account of the sex and (after cooling down) I know that the story was so good because of that tension throughout it. I've also read incredibly hot fic that just brushed along the edges of the sex without describing every movement and sound - it was the emotions, feelings and hints that made it so damn hot. The thing is that I still see people apologising for leaving out the sex or complaining about the fade to black in a fabulous story, not getting the fact that the story could have been ruined by poorly written sex. How many times have you skipped over the sex scenes because they're samey, dull or out of place?

runpunkrun has a post in a similar vein here that is an interesting rant about boring sex scenes and how to avoid them. One of the techniques to avoid boring sex scenes? See whether fade to black will work better. I just wish that more people in the fanfic world would understand and think about that before either inserting a boring and inappropriate sex scene or complaining about the perfectly wonderful fic that faded to black instead of describing every lick, suck and slap.

Why do so many of my posts lately seem to end up as thinly (or not at all) disguised rants?

In other news, I actually did a lot of work on relational databases college work, which means that I feel slightly less guilty about goofing off yesterday. Yay me. I also discovered that I'm going out for a friend's birthday to my favourite restaurant tomorrow. I was also there on Friday, but I couldn't care less because it is yummy Thai food and I rarely get to have yummy Thai food. In fact, Friday was the first time this year that I've had yummy Thai food. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it ::drool::

Comments

[thegrrrl2002.livejournal.com]

How many times have you skipped over the sex scenes because they're samey, dull or out of place?

I very rarely skip over sex scenes, even if they're poorly written--I guess part of it is the 'remind me to never to that' kind of thing.*g* It's always interesting to see what works and what doesn't. My biggest thing in sex scenes is keeping the guys in character. I want to read about how Jack and Daniel make love, not two random guys, even if it is very hot and well written. It's got to be about them, and unmistakably so. It's their interesting little character quirks that make it fun and real.

You're so right that a blow-by-blow description really isn't needed--it's what's going on in their hearts that captures my attention. I want to know what they feel, how they are feeling, I want to experience it all right along with them. I just love the love.

[selenay]

I very rarely skip over sex scenes, even if they're poorly written--I guess part of it is the 'remind me to never to that' kind of thing.*g*

You're a better person than I *g* I sometimes find myself skim-reading or just giving in and skipping a sex scene. I hate feeling that an author has counted the pages, realised that it's reached a point where there should be a sex scene (i.e. penultimate scene in the fic) and tacked one in that has 'obligatory sex scene' written all over it. It's frustrating because sometimes the rest of the fic was great and the sex scene was just...bad ::shudder::

I want to read about how Jack and Daniel make love, not two random guys, even if it is very hot and well written.

Ditto. Whatever fandom I'm reading in, I want to feel like I'm reading about those guys rather than any two guys. That might be part of what frustrates me - a lot of those bad or boring obligatory sex scenes don't read like the characters.

You're so right that a blow-by-blow description really isn't needed--it's what's going on in their hearts that captures my attention.

Exactly. I've read some fabulous fics (don't ask me to name them - I have a poor memory) and pro books that were incredibly hot without blow-by-blow descriptions or lots of technical terms that are more appropriate to a medical text. What was hot were the feelings and the hints at what was going on - it allowed me to use my imagination to fill in the rest without worrying about who's hand was where. It's easy to end up going down the purple prose route, too, but if it's done right that stuff can be as amazing as the most detailed sex scene by the best PWP goddess.