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Only occupation is interesting, and what causes much occupation for america humans than our emotion lives? With love, we’re leaping into the unknown, and it’s thrilling, surprising, scary, overwhelming (and sometimes underwhelming and disappointing) each astatine once. Love is often unrequited, dangerous, oregon forbidden, and adjacent erstwhile it’s straightforward, there’s inactive a communicative successful it due to the fact that we are mortal beings, hurtling toward an impending end, truthful astatine immoderate point, we (or our beloved) volition beryllium near heartbroken; love’s occupation ever makes for a bully story. There’s a precise palmy publishing industry—the romance novel—dedicated to it.
The occupation with penning astir love, and its bedfellow, sex, is it’s truthful elusive and mysterious that we often effort to wrestle it into submission by assigning tired, aged descriptions to it, oregon other we effort to obfuscate what’s truly happening and we slap a euphemism onto it. This is wherefore determination are truthful galore clichés for love: Love is blind. Love astatine archetypal sight. Love conquers all. Love makes the satellite spell round. The occupation is that these overused phrases accidental precisely thing of this complex, mysterious emotion, which is wherefore we indispensable travel up with caller and unusual ways of talking astir emotion and lust. We whitethorn ne'er beryllium capable to wholly seizure the complexities, but we indispensable try.
Pep Talk: Getting Over the Hump of Writing Sex
When I was astir six oregon seven, I heard the connection fuck astatine school. I went location and asked my begetter what it meant. He said, “It means making love.” Then helium told maine not to inquire immoderate much questions. Within a fewer days, a representation publication was near retired for me. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle features 2 pudgy characters who person enactment nether a colorful quilt. The antheral looks similar a pinkish Pillsbury dough boy. I retrieve reasoning that everything astir the publication was utterly bizarre, but the unsaid regularisation was that I would work it, and I wouldn’t inquire questions. I learned that enactment should beryllium kept secret, but the information is that our precise beingness depends connected radical having sex. It’s a earthy relation of our quality bodies, and tendency is simply a precise mean emotion, adjacent if we’re told that immoderate forms of tendency are unacceptable, adjacent forbidden.
But isn’t tendency the spot wherever truthful galore stories begin? Someone wants something. And past thing gets successful the mode of that wanting, and each of a sudden, we person the struggle and we person a story.
Tips for Writing Great Sex
Exploit the Messiness
Having an orgasm is wonderful, but this is seldom the sole crushed we privation sex, truthful simplifying it successful this mode is simply a definite misfire. Maybe your narrator oregon quality wants to consciousness loved oregon marque idiosyncratic autumn successful emotion with her. Maybe she wants to manipulate her spouse oregon person an escapade oregon defy her parents oregon marque definite her spouse yet leaves her for good. The cardinal successful immoderate of these cases is to beryllium emotionally honorable erstwhile presenting the conflicting emotions of desire, whether you’re penning astir revenge sex, break-up sex, make-up sex, dutiful sex, make-a-baby sex, forbidden sex, oregon adjacent a frustrating failed intersexual attempt.
Talk the Right Kind of Dirty
How would the characters successful your portion (including your narrator) person described what was going connected arsenic it was happening? If the narrator was saying (or adjacent thinking), “Fuck maine harder,” and you constitute it arsenic “Make saccharine emotion to me,” you person wholly missed the mark. I’ve heard radical accidental determination are nary bully ways to picture enactment and genitalia, but actually, determination are tons of ways—everything from edgy, colloquial slang to technological jargon to poetic representation and metaphor, but the connection indispensable bespeak the tone. And if you’re penning atrocious sex, past possibly those objective presumption oregon adjacent the disembodiment of your ain assemblage parts is needed by utilizing “the” alternatively of “my,” arsenic successful the breasts, the thighs, the cunt. Did that past connection marque you uncomfortable?
If you’re going to constitute sex, you’ll person to get implicit that and let yourself the afloat repertoire of enactment diction. There are nary synonyms; each concern calls for the close word, and that connection could precise good beryllium cunt. As writers, we indispensable beryllium capable to ain each connection oregon astatine slightest instrumentality them retired connected loan. Use the words that suit the code of the piece, and that mightiness mean quieting your interior voice, oregon the dependable of your mother.
Sometimes “bad” words marque bully writing. Be brave and unapologetic.
Break Stereotypes
One of the reasons stereotypes and clichés ruin our penning is due to the fact that they are mostly untrue. I person ne'er seen it rainfall cats and dogs, conscionable arsenic I haven’t been successful the beingness of an existent steaming-hot, throbbing member. (Maybe I’m missing something, but the connection subordinate reminds maine of a club.) Even if you’re penning astir stereotypically atrocious sex, your connection should beryllium caller and surprising. Oscar Wilde says, “Everything successful the satellite is astir enactment but for sex. Sex is astir power.” While this whitethorn beryllium true, don’t conscionable reenforce accepted powerfulness dynamics. We spot stereotypical representations of enactment everyplace successful fashionable culture, including my puerility representation book.
Here’s the substance that accompanies the representation of the mates beneath the colorful quilt: “The antheral wants to get arsenic adjacent to the pistillate arsenic helium can, due to the fact that he’s feeling precise loving to her. And to get truly close, the champion happening helium tin bash is prevarication connected apical of her and enactment his penis wrong her, into her vagina.” The pistillate is the recipient of antheral desire: She is the entity to his subject, the vas that helium indispensable capable with his ain need. How does the pistillate feel? We cannot cognize due to the fact that we lone get the man’s perspective. And wherefore does this primer lone amusement enactment betwixt a antheral and a woman? Why not amusement that men person enactment with men and women person enactment with women? And that radical person enactment with themselves. Despite what the book-ban radical believe, enactment is absorbing and varied, and we indispensable constitute it successful each its complexities.
Our essays, poems, and stories astir enactment should bespeak conscionable however absorbing and varied enactment tin be.
Sometimes Less Is More
Write the enactment country successful each its fleshy detail, but successful revision, inquire yourself this: Does it service the piece? Do the enactment scenes determination the communicative guardant successful immoderate important way? Or maybe, the enactment is the story. However, what’s near retired tin beryllium sexier and much absorbing than what remains. Bette Davis said, “I often deliberation that a somewhat exposed enarthrosis emerging from a agelong satin nightgown packs much enactment than 2 bare bodies successful bed.” If your explicit enactment country needs to beryllium trimmed to the exposed shoulder, the shade of those bare radical volition stay connected the page. A digression tin besides connote a enactment scene—an interior monologue, flashback, flash-forward, oregon metaphor. Anton Chekhov does this successful his celebrated abbreviated communicative “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” What happens portion we’re pursuing Gurov’s interior monologue becomes evident a fewer sentences aboriginal done Anna’s enactment and dialogue. She cries and tells him helium won’t respect her. Then Gurov takes that celebrated wound of watermelon, a metaphor for what has conscionable happened and his nonchalant absorption to it.
Writing Prompt #21: The Language of Sex
Think of each the words you would usually subordinate with sex, acceptable your timer for 5 minutes, and database them—the clinical, the raunchy, the romantic. When your timer goes off, acceptable it for different 15 minutes and constitute a enactment country (in poetry, memoir, oregon fiction—you decide) without utilizing immoderate of the words connected your list. This volition unit you to constitute astir enactment successful a caller way, reaching for caller words to picture the intersexual act. When your time’s up, person a look astatine what you’ve written. Is it the effect for a poem, story, essay, oregon chapter? Is it a country that was needed successful thing you person already written?
Bonus Prompt: Unsexy Words for Sex
Do this penning workout again, but this time, constitute down words you would ne'er subordinate with sex, the astir unsexy words you tin deliberation of, and past usage those words successful a enactment scene. Hopefully, you volition travel up with a fewer absorbing sentences you different wouldn’t person chosen for this country oregon poem, getting you implicit the hump to penning large sex.
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Adapted from 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer by Suzanne Roberts by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2026 Suzanne Roberts Available wherever books are sold oregon from the Univ. of Nebraska Press 800.848.6224 and at nebraskapress.unl.edu.
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