Eleven Tips For Writing Sexy Scenes by Brie McGill || KAIN

Eleven Tips For Writing Sexy Scenes

           

            So your hero has slayed the dragon, saved the princess, and confessed his love. The next logical step is for him to drop his pants, but in the case of literature--or extreme intoxication--this is more easily done than said.

           

            0) Read.

            Before you can seriously attempt to craft some steamy lovin’ of your own, I can’t stress the importance of reading the genre. Read it all. Read the classics. Read steamy romance. Read pure stroke fiction. There is something to learn from every niche. READ.

           

            1) Know your characters

            Now that you know your genre, you have to know your characters inside and out. Lovemaking will reveal the soul, or the basest Freudian motivations. Know how your characters speak, think, and act.

            Diction is extremely important. How would a character refer to his body? His lover’s body? The words in the story, if you are writing first or filtered third, absolutely must reflect the point of view of the character that is the “camera lens.” A pure maiden given to her prince in marriage would use a vastly different vocabulary than a drunk ex-convict hailing a robot hooker on the street. As an author, your job is to accurately reflect this.

            I keep a go-to list of words for his and hers. A master list of synonyms (for words such as “wet” and “thrust”) is also invaluable. Build your, ahem, tool kit.

           

            2) Foreplay

            Suspense is the mark of an excellent author, and this is especially true in the pages building up to a sex scene. How the clothing comes off speaks volumes about the characters, how they feel, who they are, how they are motivated.

           

            3) Situation

            Sometimes a situation between two characters is inherently erotic. Anais Nin wrote a short story about a woman standing on a ladder, and the man below discovering his excellent vantage of what is beneath her skirt. Sometimes a commonplace activity (such as painting the walls, in this case) can lend itself to a very erotic situation.

           

            4) Frustration

            Tease the reader; don’t let your characters give in the first time. Make them want more than anything to give in--but have something tear them apart. With romance, it’s common for emotional baggage to keep people apart, and conquering those hangups defines the climax of the story. Bonus points if your villain can interrupt characters in bed.

           

            5) Clarity of action

            When tinkering with erotic scenes for the first time, it’s easy to end up with a tangled mess of limbs that would offend ten people on a Twister mat. One character performs an action; the other character responds to the action. Keep your action sequences clean, with a new paragraph for each character. For example:

           
            Ashley removed her left sock, flinging it across the room. Her painted toenails shimmered against the purple light of the lavalamp.

            Jason salivated, eyes fixed on the arch of her foot. Springing into the air like a kangaroo, he caught the sock between his teeth.

            Giggling, Ashley wondered how on earth she fell in love with such a strangely talented man.

           

            Ashley and Jason are allowed to share bodily fluids; they are not, however, allowed to share the same paragraph.

            Another note on point of view: if Ashley is telling the story, we must never hear Jason’s thoughts. Your camera lens is your character’s brain--otherwise, we’re back to the mental Twister mat.

           

            6) Men vs. women

            Women talk about how they feel; men act. As a female writer, in my early days, my stories were full of men that talked like women, which I had intended to be manly men. Incidentally, my situation improved when I deleted huge swathes of dialogue, and focused on the development of body language instead.

            It is worth reading clichéd male vs. female psychology books and noting when men speak, how they speak, when they act. Same with women. This will hugely improve the credibility of your writing, the hunkiness of your men, and the squeezability of your ladies.

            Also, if you are cognizant of how to articulate an archetypal gender role, the more vividly you will be able to violate it, if that’s what you prefer. The more rules you understand, the better you can embellish or break them.

           

            7) Is this physically possible?

            Please make sure you have a basic understanding of human anatomy, if you feel the need to detail it graphically in your stories. I once read a short story that was incredibly hot, until a penis penetrated a uterus... repeatedly. As a female, a.k.a., someone with a uterus, the resultant pain and probable injury this prospect implies is terrifying. Make sure you what it is, where it fits, and how to get there, before you arbitrarily decide something should be there. Unless you write horror. Maybe.

           

            8) Purple prose

            Purple prose, or florid, decorative, excessively embellished prose, is generally advised against: sex, however, is the one and best time to break this rule, especially if you want to arouse your reader. Every extra descriptor means additional time a steamy image builds in your reader’s mind. The more your intention leans toward writing stroke fiction, the purpler your prose must become. If your readers are reading for a steamy scene, and that scene ends in twenty seconds... well, dear author, you should consider increasing the stamina of your fingers so you can write for longer periods of time.

            What is the best way to purple your prose? Indulge EVERY sense. Overload the senses. Make your reader see, taste, hear, feel, and smell it. Make them believe they are there. They’ve come to you to have their fantasies fulfilled. Don’t shortchange them.

                       

            9) The finale

            The best fireworks show I visited every summer as a kid had a ridiculous finale. So many things exploded so loudly at the same time that every car alarm in a ten block radius went off.

            Do this.

           

            10) Reality/consequences

            Okay, the boring stuff. Pure erotica in short-story form may skip over this, but in the context of a long-running plot, real sex has real consequences, and you are doing the reader a disservice if you violate reality. Unprotected sex makes babies, hearts get broken, BDSM requires consent, and while sharing is generally caring, this is not so in the face of disease. I enjoy reading Kitty Thomas because she handles these issues tactfully, without detracting one whit of fun from hot and horny heroines trapped in a basement.

            Also, please observe the frequency of dual climaxes in literature vs. reality.

           

            11) Aftermath/rekindling tension

            This is integral to writing a satisfying romance. Cuddling, pillow talk, the morning after. There is nothing more secret or personal than sex--so how do your characters behave after making a huge leap in intimacy?

            Also, there’s nothing like a good fight to create some drama, suspense, and segway into steamy makeup sex. But a good fight is like cooking with hot peppers--use sparingly, and handling without protection may result in genital pain.

Kain
Sex, Drugs, and Cyberpunk

Book One

Brie McGill

Genre: Cyberpunk/Steamy Romance

ISBN: 148267324X

ASIN: B00CQ8BJLI

Number of pages: 323

Word Count: 115,000

Cover Artist: Jeanne Quinn

Amazon

Book Description:

Counting days is irrelevant in the life of a well-to-do man, unless he counts the days passed in total service to the Empire. Salute. Submit. Shut up and scan the wrist. Therapists armed with batons and brass knuckles guide the derelict along a well-beaten path to Glory.

When human experiment Lukian Valentin escapes the Empire to save his crumbling sanity--through a grimescape of fissured highways, collapsing factories, putrescent sewers--he realizes the fight isn’t only for his life, it’s for his mind. Torturous flashbacks from a murky past spur him on a quest for freedom, while the Empire’s elite retrievers remain at his heels, determined to bring him home for repair.

Lukian needs one doctor to remove the implanted chips from his body, and another to serve him a tall glass of answers. Lukian attempts a psychedelic salvage of his partitioned mind, gleaning fragments of the painful truth about his identity.

A scorching, clothes-ripping rendezvous with a mysterious woman offers Lukian a glimpse of his humanity, and respite from his nightmarish past. It also provides the Empire the perfect weakness to exploit for his recapture.

To rise to the challenge of protecting his new life, his freedom of thought, and his one shot at love, Lukian must reach deep into his mind to find his true identity. To defeat the Empire, he requires the deadly power of his former self--a power that threatens to consume him.

Excerpt:

          Brigham loomed over the youth, and with a sharp gesture of the hand, spit the booming command: “Aadima.”

          The youth stirred from his drug-induced catatonia. He rolled his head to one side, the silver wired crown tipping forward, and slowly sat upright, confined by the bonds of the chair. His eyes fluttered open, brown, wide, and blank, reflecting an awareness scrambled.

          He squinted, struggling to draw Brigham into focus. A moment passed: he shook the fog out of his head, and his posture stiffened, recognizing the man in front of him. He pounded a fist against his chest in salute. “Commander Brigham, Sir!”

          Brigham looked to the screen; he glanced at his watch, and turned to Skirra. “Thirty-seven seconds. Note it.”

          Skirra fumbled with an electronic notepad, trembling and tapping in her notes.

          Brigham knelt on one knee beside the examination chair, and waved an intricate series of hand gesticulations in the subject’s face. “Greetings, Kain.”

          The man sat rigid in the chair, staring blankly ahead.

          “Dvitiiya.” Brigham paired his command with a symphony of motor signals. “Disable.”

          “Secondary Dvitiiya functions.” The youth spoke in an empty voice. “Disabled, Sir.”

          “Kain.” Brigham climbed to his feet, clutching the back of the chair. “Tritiiya.”

          The subject remained frozen in his chair, eyes glossy and unblinking.

          “Damn you!” Brigham grabbed a flat remote from his pocket, pointed it at the man in the chair and clicked.

          The youth moaned, violent tremors wracking his body. He convulsed and flopped in the chair, the leather bonds subduing him, holding him in place.

          Skirra brought her hands to her head, watching in horror as graphs spiked and numbers soared.

          “There are no uses for faulty machinery!” Brigham towered over the shackled youth, indifferent to his pain. “None! You remember that.”

          Skirra glanced at the clock, and chewed her nails.

          “Kain.” Brigham cleared his throat. “Load Tritiiya.”

          The subject’s breathing slowed and he shifted his posture, sitting upright. He stared ahead, speaking in a monotone. “Tertiary Tritiiya functions loaded, Sir.”

          “Kain.” Brigham waved his hand, and spoke in a thunderous voice. “Load Caturtha.”

          “Identification confirmed: granting access to restricted Caturtha systems.” He mechanically rotated his head toward the floor, and spoke with eyes closed. “Proceed with instructions.”

          Skirra slinked beside Brigham, and lifted a pair of clunky taupe goggles covered in a swarm of blinking lights. She leaned over the chair and rested the goggles on the bridge of the youth’s nose, and fitted the frames, one at a time, over his ears with a gentle touch.

          “Kain, do you recognize the image of this man?” He drummed his fingers against the back of the chair.

          “Recognition affirmative, Sir.”

          “Spectacular.” Brigham joined his hands in a deafening clap. “Execute primary Caturtha commands, and target this man.”

          “Target confirmed, Sir.” He stared in a daze at the lightshow provided by the goggles. “Requesting variables of mission duration, Sir.”

          Brigham pealed his final command. “Caturtha functions will terminate when his Glorious duties are fulfilled.”

 

About the Author:

Doctors suspect Brie developed an overactive imagination during childhood to cope with the expansive corn maze known as rural Pennsylvania. Unable to afford an operation to have the stories surgically removed from her brain, she opted instead to write them down.

Brie lives in British Columbia with her boyfriend and naughty black cat, somewhere not too far from the sea. She enjoys trips to the local farm, chatting with her long-distance friends on a rotary phone, and roflstomping video games from the nineties.

Brie's favorite authors include Anne Rice, George Orwell, and Hunter S. Thompson.

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