It starts with a kiss....

So here we are again, and before I start, thank you so much for the wonderful messages of support, I do appreciate them and especially the time you’ve taken to get in touch. So with that said, I might as well get straight to the point, today I am focusing on sex. Now, don’t get your hopes up, this isn’t going to be some long piece of steamy prose,( not that it isn’t a delicious thought), no, this is about writing sex scenes within a book. Now, much like talking, most adults have had some kind of sexual experience in their lives, so you’d imagine, it would be pretty simple to write about. But surprisingly, it turns out to be very difficult and for reasons you wouldn’t necessarily consider. For example, unless your two lovers are multi-limbed aliens, you only have two pairs of arms and legs to work with when writing your scene. But it is ridiculously easy to forget even this basic fact ! You can get so carried away with the action, unless you’re careful, you can have your heroine, legs wrapped around her partners waist, while she feels the soft sand between her toes. Alternatively, you can have what I call ‘Inspector Gadget Syndrome’, where the hero manages to reach the furthest extremities of his partner without even moving, so even though the couple are standing face to face, he can gently touch her ankle with his fingertips.

 

If you successfully manage to keep track, not to mention count, of the various limbs involved, the sexual act itself can be notoriously difficult to describe with any genuine accuracy, after all, we all know, we don’t necessarily look our best while in the throes of a passionate encounter. If you disagree with that last statement, may I suggest glancing in a mirror at your own ‘sex face’, and you’ll see what I mean. Also sex itself is a messy business, of course, at its best, it’s breathlessly beautiful and can leave you bordering on ecstasy, but, there’s no denying the presence of various bodily fluids. So how is the writer going to convey all the emotional intensity and physical pleasure of the sexual act, while maintaining a degree of reality? After all, you don’t want your reader looking doubtfully at the page, thinking, ‘well that never happens when I do it’ and throwing your book away feeling disgruntled.

When I was faced with writing this kind of scene, I just tried to imagine myself right there, in the moment, how it feels when you know how much you want to just touch someone, how you can long for them to touch you, that time when the world ceases to exist and there’s just the two of you...I try and picture in my mind, the setting, the lighting, in fact the whole scene..when it’s fixed in my mind, I start writing and just don’t stop until the end. It can really be extraordinary, how deeply into the scene you can become, just by blocking everything else out and focusing all your attention on that moment. So, for me, I guess writing about it, is much like the act itself…

I don’t know for sure, but perhaps that’s what writing is really about, making your reader feel everything you feel..I know that’s the reality I am striving for in my books. So, yes, it can be difficult to convey everything a sexual encounter can mean, both the physical and emotional sides, but if you can get it right...well, that can be very special as maybe its the time, more than most others, when the writer and the reader share a genuine connection.

On that thought, I shall leave you, so until the next time…

Take care out there xx