Glossing over a sex scene

I need my characters to have sex. There. I said it!

Chick is waiting for marriage, but she meets THE GUY and decides she's going to have sex with him. I need them to do this or the fight coming up won't make any sense.

I've written a little of the foreplay, but I DON'T want to write a sex scene. I'm too embarassed and I want my dad to be allowed to know his little girl wrote a book. I want my husband to be able to tell his best friend without any comments about "So, that's how y'all do it." I want my in-laws to be able to read it and not be embarassed to go to church the following Sunday without feeling like they should convert to Catholicism just so they can confess to the priest and say some Hail Mary's.

So, how do they do it? Without really doing it? Without just ... cutting to the next day??? I don't want this to be a romance, and I don't want to use the word "shaft" even if talking about a mineshaft. It's too gross to even think about. Maybe I should just write the fight scene and "forget" I even started this one. Yikes.

HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Becki

I don't want to write a sex scene either, but my MC is turning out to be a lot sluttier than I'd planned so I'm holding out for replies to this, too-

I think the foreplay is enough- just make it pretty hot and heavy, cut to them pulling up the covers or turning off the light and go from there- you know? I'd rather have it all up to my imagination than giggle at the gruesome details..

Sarah

Yeah, I know what you mean, Sarah. I was taking ideas from other stuff I've read, and either the characters are slutty and foul-mouthed, virgins, or the sex scene was more along a romance novel.

I think they're going to just have to wake up the next morning. The novel is two-person first-person-point-of-view, so maybe having them each remember that night will help give an idea of what happened without actually having to talk about it. I think Ryan could have a chat with his best friend, and Carly can do the same with her gal pals (of course, as a before-that-night virgin, Carly's answer will have to come from her blush, not her words, I guess).

I was really trying to keep her innocent, but I'm hoping for a really spectacular fight between the two of them when she finds out he's supposedly (but not really, but she doesn't know that) "been with" his co-star & at least one other girl. :)

Happy writing!

Becki

I've struggled with this in the past, too. I definitely don't have an expectation that there will be graphic sex scenes in chick lit (although I'm also not bothered by them), so I think it all comes down to (a) what you're comfortable with as a writer and (b) what you need to move your story forwards. In your case, bexb, I think the most important thing is for the reader to know that your characters slept together, so the way you're approaching it is perfect!

I read where you're going with it, and I think that could work!

Essentially when glossing over a sex scene, you do what you did. Write the foreplay and then have them fall into bed and cut the scene. Or have them walk into the bedroom and cut the scene. Start it out, tease the readers a little bit and then just end it. Just like that.

Or you can do the remembering thing too, which I like. Good luck!!

Thanks! That makes me feel better. I didn't want to skip it out of squeamishness, or do anything cheesy (nothing worse than a hot sex scene that isn't actually hot!). Glad to know they can just have a little fun, wake up, and all is right with the world (until it really, REALLY isn't!) :)

And typically there isn't a graphic sex scene in Chick Lit, at least I've never come across one. They'll be frank and talk about sex, but you won't actually see it.

Right, I knew that part. It's the how to get from hummana-hummana to the next day without any bow-chicka-bow-wow. LOL I think I did it. A little "ooh he's hot" to kiss kiss, straight into waking up and having a convo with the besties. :) THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING! :)

it sounds as though you're investing too much of yourself into the character. not that that's always a bad thing! but think about it like an actor playing a part. when i was younger it always baffled me when i saw actors in interviews going "and then my character did this and was feeling that-" i would wonder why didn't they say "then *i* did that and *i* felt that", because it *was* them doing it...

how would your character behave while having sex, what would she be thinking? there must be a million things going through her mind, the first time of having sex, let alone making the huge decision to change her feelings about saving herself for marriage in the meantime. does she have second thoughts half way through? does she totally throw herself into it in a really bold way which surprises her partner?

i totally know what you mean about wondering how your friends and loved ones will read into it. i hate writing anything about my characters' parents because it always somehow descends into a rant about how i feel about my own folks and family, but you need to remember that these are characters, they're playing parts and if your writing is well written, your reader will be so caught up in the story they'll forget it was you who wrote it. sounds like an insult, but a good story just happens off the page, it's only when the story isn't working that you stop yourself and begin to think "wow, who wrote this crap...?!"

clearly everything in nano is time sensitive and this might be a far and distant memory for your story now, but hope it helps! does me good to remember these things too, as i mentioned :)

Thanks! Very good advice! I think when I re-read that section I will definitely get more inside her head and less worried about what other, ahem, parts are doing. :) I tried to skip ahead to the next day and let them each tell their stories to their friends, including how she felt about giving it up. So her response about "weren't you waiting???" is: "I know, but I love him. I can't see myself wanting to marry anyone else. He saved my life, but not just that, he saved my heart. I've felt so broken for so long, after what happened with Brian, and I didn't know if my heart would ever open up for anyone else. He gave me a gift, and I gave him me." Then she changes the subject, because she stiil isn't comfortable with talking about it. :)

Thanks SO MUCH for the advice, and I definitely will take it to heart. :)

Happy writing!
Becki

Just do the foreplay - kissing, shirt unbuttoning, hands exploring and then cut it off on a high note go to a new paragraph and do the waking up in the morning still in each others loving arms or her nestled in the crook of his arm. Something just implying it instead of describing it.

You've either got to do the foreplay and then the cliche '***' and then 'the next morning' or you just say 'they/we had sex' and don't get into gory details.

It seems like you already have your answer but for anyone else that is thinking about this issue, I think Marian Keyes and Elizabeth Young write their sex scenes really well. More about what the person is feeling and less about the mechanics of what is happening, if that makes sense.

So far I only have (implied) sex in one of my books and I handled it with the cliche make-out leading to the bedroom, end scene. It doesn't always work but it did for me. The sex scene wasn't necessarily a positive situation for my characters so I didn't want to make a lot out of it (they break up directly after. Not exactly romantic).

I say go for it and write the whole sex scene. Use the word 'shaft' at least five times.
Then edit it to what you're comfortable with.

Great interview with Barbara Kingsolver on writing sex:

http://writingtonight.blogspot.com/2011/05/check-out-writers-on-writing-barbara.html

I love her brevity.

I haven't written much this NaNo, but I love writing sex scenes. Since losing my virginity I've been a rampaging slut and have experienced a ton of sexual shenanigans from simple girl on girl shenangians to threesomes to exploring heavily in the BDSM arena to...I'll try anything once, twice if I like and three times if I'm not sure. As a result I've easily fallen into the roll as an erotica author so this year I'm challenging myself to limit or totally eliminate sex scenes from my story.

I want everyone back home to be able to read this and not be totally shocked and appalled after all!

So I'm doing silly things. My first sex scene was cut off with the line "Cue the naughty, but cliched Harlequin sex scene." And doing things like that works. In another scene I plan to use one of my old tactics when bored with sex and have my character recite in her head how to conjugate French verbs and other memorized tidbits that she's picked up in life.

It lets me have all of the shenanigans without the sex.

You know, some of the best 'sex scenes' I've ever read in books were glossed over. Not skipped, but not explicitly shared either.

Philip Pullman's scene from The Shadow in The North is lovely, especially since it is the protagonist's first time.

I think the real trick is to capture the scene in a style that is befitting your story. In Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep", he does a great job of presenting all thing sexual in a way that makes absolute sense. The characters are in high school... there's something a little illicit about the way they're written, and in some ways they're very matter of fact without glorifying the acts. It's an excellent guide.

My funniest experience with writing a sex scene happened with a NaNo a couple years ago.

First, understand that I write in public, and in this case, it was at Starbucks on an extremely busy night. I didn't want anyone reading over my shoulder, so I sat against the wall, facing out. Second, I am one of those people who flunked mysterious. Every single thought I have goes across my face, typically in neon flashing lights. Third, I used to write in a newspaper newsroom where the police scanner ran 24/7. If I'm really, really, REALLY focused, you could land a helicopter in the middle of the coffeehouse, and I'd only look up when someone's papers hit me in the face.

So on the very night that I am working on a sex scene and really getting a lot done and unable to hear helicopters landing inside Starbucks -of course that's the night that the chairman of the board of the library (where I work) decides to introduce me to his wife as " the one at the library who's writing a novel this month."

And did I add that he's a hard-core Christian?

The "so what are you writing about tonight?" question took on a whole new luster.

I gloss over all my sex scenes for the simple fact that I am really not very good at writing them and they just come out either cringey and embarrassing, or way too slutty for the character. So I do the witty banter and the foreplay, and then it fades to black, and they're waking up the next day or whatever. You can do this without it coming off as prudish.

The majority of chick lit novels I've read, very different from romances, don't treat sex as a big deal, a lengthy celebration, an important exploration of character (as in, how will he treat me in bed? Should I trust him with my physical and emotional safety?), and or even as an erotic experience. They treat it as a cliche, as something expected during a date and not necessarily interesting. I doubt a chick lit reader is looking for sexual detail. A lot of people I know do as mentioned above, and don't bother to read sex scenes. Not out of prudishness, but boredom.

The thing I don't like is when any author in any genre skips the crucial interplay that bridges talking about the weather to hopping into bed. That's too much like classic porn, and since most people really want to know how you go from talking about the weather to taking off your clothes, it's also authorial cheating. There is always a new crop of virgins and inexperienced people who truly would like to know a little more about how you get from Point A to Point B. (They probably have already researched the sexual details, thanks to the Internet.)