The Male Sex-Mind Part 2

My career in writing began as a technical writer, which requires a high degree of exactness and brevity. So when I started writing fiction, my sex scenes tended to be highly accurate. And short.

    He thrust. He grunted.  Two minutes later, he groaned and rolled over.

   "Is that all?" she cried. "I want more!!!"

   "Zzzzz…"*

My Critique Partner, at the time, was a kind woman. Upon reading my scene, her brow knit and she worried her lower lip.

Mrs. Snark: "Well?"

CP: "Well, dear. It's very nice…"

Mrs. Snark: "But?"

CP: "Maybe if you included a bit more detail…"

Thus began my Purple Prose Era.

With a grunt, he thrust his burgeoning, throbbing love torch into her honey pot.

Fireworks ensued.

He groaned and rolled over.

She floated on a golden cloud of post-ecstasy and then sighed with dreamy contentment. "What are you thinking?" she asked.

"Zzzz…"

Even after I published, my hero never tended to talk too much. I'd write pages of steamy sex and hundreds of words of dialogue and yet it was always my heroine doing all of the talking.

Accurate is best, right? Right?

Wrong.

My editor always says:  "He needs to say something. Anything. He can't just grunt, groan, and moan at frequent intervals."

Mrs. Snark:  "All right, fine."

He groaned and rolled over. "I love you, baby."

"Zzzz…."

Because turnabout is fair play.

 *This was, of course, before I met Mr. Snark, because I would not wish to impugn Mr. Snark's considerable skills as a lover.