Indeed. I have read a couple trashy romance novels written by women and they were romantic but the actual sex was really not anything to write home about. Certainly nothing even coming close to the likes of someone like Larry Townsend.
All gone. I’d seen it earlier but I wasn’t really paying close attention at the time, so I didn’t clue in that it was spam. Thanks for reporting it.
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So something that fascinates me in books is how quickly or slowly a character can be killed off.
In Lord of the Flies, the character Piggy dies and is washed away by the ocean within 4 sentences.
By contrast, Dorian Gray in his namesake book dies and has his body discovered over the course of 4 paragraphs.
Both are impactful in their own way, one presents a death as inconsequential, the other stages the death as a mysterious scene for the servants who find the body.
It’s the difference between
“He played a hand of Poker and won”
and
“He spread his cards along the soft green tabletop; two kings, two fours, and an ace. He’d won.”
One simply states an action and a result. The other not only provides more details of the physical space, but implies how poor the hands of the other players at the table must be.
This is what I think about when I’m writing a sex scene or any scene where I want to convey layers of information. What are the details between the verbs that contribute to visualizing or empathizing with the scene? What do I want the reader to see and how (emotionally) do I want them to see it?
The more invested I want the reader to be, the more I’m going to pull apart the action of the scene to rest on the sensory details and thoughts of the characters. The more I want them to perceive the sex as inconsequential, the less detail I’ll provide.
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Personally, the sex scenes I like are the ones that either has a great context written around it and/or if it has the kinks that I enjoy included in it. The second part obviously will vary since everyone has different preferences/fetishes so its really up to you really. The more important thing is the context leading up to the sex scene.
I’m a huge fan of religious/conservative people being turned into lecherous, horny homosexuals, so Edlam’s stories tend to have the best sex scenes for me.
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@Rad_Pits said it: it all depends on the context — and it also depends on the reader. There’s a current story that is getting high ratings. With the exception of a few hints at the outset, the reader doesn’t find out about the context until the end (a surprise ending). Until then, the majority of the story reads like one sexual/fetish exploit after another. Like a formulaic Cole Porter song - just on and on and on until it becomes (to me) tiresome and ultimately unrewarding.
Now compare that with a story where the characters are so well-drawn that you don’t even need sex - like @anon82067173’s Master of the House. Granted, Swizz’s induction scene is pretty remarkable. I’ve tried reading it several times out of context, but the dynamic between the three protagonists are clarified so well that the “sex” (hypnotic induction) is not just sex but something more, something that can’t be communicated in any other way.
Of course that’s just me. I had an active sex life before I was 18, nearly 50 years ago, and I didn’t just “do it” but really thought about it: What makes it bad, what makes it good, and how I could maximize my “skills.” For me, just an ordinary description of sex can be boring. On the other hand, if I was someone who didn’t have an active start on sex, I could see readers anxious to read every sexual description.
So it’s all about context. Ultimately, I think every author realizes that they have to write for themselves. If others like the story, all the better.
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(blushes profusely)