The Sex Scene: Build It And They Will...Come?

[Jude Hardin]

How do you guys feel about sex scenes in crime fiction? Honestly, I avoid them because, well, I don't feel I'm very good at them. Most of the sex scenes I come across in published books aren't very good either, IMHO.

Are there any authors out there who write good ones? Is there any such thing as a good one?

Let's see examples!

[Kenneth L. Hisel]

Jude,

I'm just a reader but when I'm reading a book and I come upon a sex scene I zip through it. You know what is going to happen and I move on to the meat of the book. Of course you can scan through it to see if there might be something important such as a knife of gun incident but that usually doesn't happen. I hope I'm not missing anything by skipping along..........

That is all,
Kenny

[Jude Hardin]

No fair, Kenny! You must read every word! You wouldn't want to miss Tab A being inserted into Slot B, now would you? ;)

[John McFetridge]

I always skip the fight scenes. The hero gets beaten up, I know, but he'll be okay.

By the way, I was in a book store last week and I picked up HIGH SEASON. I guess I'll skip the boring plot stuff, but you say there's sex......

[Jude Hardin]

LOL! I wish I could make it up to your class this summer.

[Karyn J. Powers]

If I take the class on line do the martinis come to my door?

[Jude Hardin]

Hey Jon! I know you're a literary fiction fan, so how about this scene from Norman Mailer that won the Literary Review's Ignoble Award last year for the worst sex scene:

Are you all right?" she cried out as he lay beside her, his breath going in and out with a rasp that sounded as terrible as the last winds of their lost children.

"All right. Yes. No," he said. Then she was on him. She did not know if this would resuscitate him or end him, but the same spite, sharp as a needle, that had come to her after Fanni's death was in her again. Fanni had told her once what to do. So Klara turned head to foot, and put her most unmentionable part down on his hard-breathing nose and mouth, and took his old battering ram into her lips. Uncle was now as soft as a coil of excrement. She sucked on him nonetheless with an avidity that could come only from the Evil One - that she knew. From there, the impulse had come. So now they both had their heads at the wrong end, and the Evil One was there. He had never been so close before.

The Hound began to come to life. Right in her mouth. It surprised her. Alois had been so limp. But now he was a man again! His mouth lathered with her sap, he turned around and embraced her face with all the passion of his own lips and face, ready at last to grind into her with the Hound, drive it into her piety.

How does Mailer (R.I.P) stand up to your rules? :)

[I. J. Parker]

Dear God, that was bad. Probably accounts for his success, though.

[Karyn J. Powers]

I need a program to keep up with all the new names for the same old body parts!

[Paul McGoran]

The last winds of their lost children?
Soft as a coil of excrement?

This, of course, was ol' Norman's imagining Hitler's parents going at it, right?

Maybe we could give him a pass, but no -- it's too awful.

Writing a sex scene is easy. Making it sexy is what's difficult.

[Daniel Hatadi]

It might make me sound like a prude, but I prefer the old 'quick-fade' on sex scenes, unless it truly suits the character and story. I read a Ben Elton sex scene once and it cracked me up, it was so dirty and honest and perverted.

I guess sex is like any bodily function. I don't need to know someone else's details.

Good topic. Nothing like sex to spruce a forum up. :)

[Jude Hardin]

I agree, Daniel. I think the details of a character's sex life are almost always better off left to the reader's imagination.

And some of the euphemisms just kill me. "His old battering ram"? ROFLMAO!

[Doug M. Cummings]

"Thrusting Scepter of Desire" and "Man-sword" always cracked me up. One of these days I'm going to find a way to use one of those terms. Until then, I like brief sex scenes that don't slow the pacing (or interrupt the football game), although James Lee Burke manages to slip them in (sorry) and lyrically, too.