Earlier in the month I had the pleasure of attending a talk on “Writing True Sex” with Monique Roffey, the author of The Tryst, and Leone Ross, one of my favourite lecturers and author of her new short story series, Come Let us Sing Anyway.
I came in 20 minutes late to the conversation between Monique and Leone well underway. I had missed out on the free glass of wine on entry (though I did make sure I made up for that once the talk had come to an end.)
They both came up with some interesting tips for good sex writing. The two key points I took away are:
- Don’t be euphemistic and clichéd. Whilst this is a lesson we are taught across all plains of writing, it is one of the most important tips in writing true sex. You want the reader to feel like they are in the moment, to be able to picture it in their head, and get aroused by it. That isn’t going to happen with lines such as “I kissed his mouth ravenously, devouring him” (which makes you sound more like a cannibal) and tales of “weeping orifices.” Imagine having that sort of narration during sex, it would put you off completely. A reader doesn’t want it either.
- Take inspiration from your own experience. Just like it can be hard for writers to use a different dialect, gender or sexuality, it’s also hard to write about sexual experiences that you haven’t had, or that you haven’t heard through others. In order to be the most authentic, you need to know what you are writing about. Do you truly know what an orgasm feels like? Have you woken up with aching limbs and the memory of having sex until sunlight slinks through your window? Whilst most things can be bulked up and sweet-talked with a bit of research, having your own knowledge helps too.
I remember trying to write my first novel at fourteen, encountering my first sex scene and throwing in some awful figurative language to get around the fact that I knew nothing about sex. My friends read it and laughed the whole way through, cringing at the main character’s “bulging breasts” and “raging boners.” I tossed it onto my discarded pile and only open it on my laptop sometimes if I want a good laugh, or to see how far my writing as come over the years.
“Sex-ed classes focus too much on ‘put this condom on the banana.”
Since then, sex has been a topic that I have rarely touched on, whilst a lot of my writing aimed to convey important social and political messages. It’s not that I have avoided it, it just hasn’t come up in the pieces that I have written. And I didn’t really have that much experience until a few years ago. I like to think that if I returned to that first novel now, I would be able to write it a lot better and prevent the embarrassed squirming that I felt whenever people read it at school.
During the talk we also discussed how there is a lot of taboo in society about sex. It is rarely taught about in schools, and it’s very hard for growing youths to find the right information. The easiest source of ‘information’ is porn, but that often portrays unrealistic ideas about sex. Whilst improvements have been made over the years, especially as this year it has been announced that all schools now have to give mandatory sex-ed classes, they focus too much on ‘put this condom on the banana and ignore important topics such as the gender and sexuality spectrum and consent.
The release of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2011 prompted the growth of the erotic fiction market, and it seemed that the taboo around sex in today’s media and society had begun to wither. However many analytical writers and critics have shown how awful Fifty Shades of Grey is, not just because of its horrific writing, but also its glorification of abusive relationships.
“We live in a ‘modern’ society, but we still have such old-fashioned opinions on sex.”
BDSM is one thing. Abuse is another-and it should not be tolerated, glorified or given the media coverage that it received.
Though we shouldn’t be thankful for such an atrocious and toxic piece of writing, we can be thankful for the effect it has had on reducing the stigma around sex in writing and films. Monique and Leone both discussed how we live in a ‘modern’ society but we still have such old-fashioned opinions on sex, and women participating in sex. God forbid there be a new ‘Bond-like’ film where a female spy has sex with lots of women. And how dare a mother breast-feed her child in public.
Books such as The Tryst and Come Let us Sing Anyway and their authors should be encouraged, not just for their well-crafted writing, but also to reduce the stigma, to give real education on sex and healthy relationships, and show the world that sex is a very normal, pleasurable thing, and that none of us would be here without it.
