What's Love Got To Do With It? . . . Or, Awkward Sex Scenes

By Steven McLain

I sat down today to begin my new novel.  The fantasy genre has shifted toward things that are grittier, more hard-hitting, supposedly truer to life.  That means the violence is more graphic, the language is better suited to HBO, and the sex is if not gratuitous then definitely bordering on pornographic.  In fact, it reads a lot like those romance novels I used to eye askance in the back corner of the book store. 

The trend toward incorporating "romance" into fantasy isn't really new.  Paranormal romance and urban fantasy are basically Mary Sues writing about chicks in leather kicking butt and taking names, a trope familiar to the romance genre since at least the 90s.  Joe Abercrombie and George Martin are the guys who come to mind first when I think of the general shift toward noir in fantasy fiction.  Not that there's anything wrong with genre-blending; some interesting things come out of it.  Case in point: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. 

But the emphasis on sex and violence (especially violent or deviant sex) makes me leery.  On the one hand, I think it's prurient.  On the other, I don't think it serves the story.  Ultimately, what serves the story is up to the storyteller and the adage goes that sex sells.  So maybe the storyteller needs sex and violence to simply get people reading.  Regardless, nine times out of ten, I figure you can drop it and the reader would never notice.

But let's get back to my book.  I had to figure out a way of dropping readers directly into the action, not quite in media res, but definitely close.  So I found a moment between scenes of action, a moment I knew would be leading up to a pretty spectacular action scene and started the story there.  I think it's a good decision, and I'm happy with the story so far.  One thing that definitely took some thought, though, was who was going to be my protagonist.  I have a view-point character, but as I was thinking about it, I realized that he has none of the goals that would make him the protagonist of the story.  Much like Watson is not really the protagonist, though he tells the story, I decided to tell this story from the viewpoint of a minor character caught up in the whole shebang.

In the world of history, that is, the world of historians, the biggest buzzword of all is "agency."  It encompasses will, action, and most importantly, the ability to act.  We look at people as agents, and their actions as discreet components of historical frameworks.  So when I sat down to write this story, I had to think of my character Kared as an agent and distinguish his actions as somehow different from that of the protagonist, whose specific goals would direct the story.  Interestingly, by disengaging my protagonist from my viewpoint character, I was freed to tell a much broader story.  I knew at the beginning that I didn't want to hop from perspective to perspective--basically, that I wanted to stay in one person's head the whole time.  The easiest thing to do would have been to tell it in the first person, but I have an aversion to that, and besides, I didn't think it really fit.  Sometimes, I wanted to step back a bit and get more omniscient.

So by letting my protagonist and viewpoint characters be different people, it allowed me the freedom to do that.  That doesn't mean that my viewpoint character won't have goals of his own, just that they will not influence the direction the story takes.  My viewpoint character has to grow, and change, in ways that the protagonist doesn't have to.  And his goals, successes, and failures are ultimately smaller and more intimate for that.  I think it ties the reader more deeply into the story.

As I began writing the chapter, though, I realized that my viewpoint character, since he was not a protagonist, couldn't act with the same freedom that my protagonist could.  He would be a limited agent, so to speak.  A limited agent has a much better opportunity to explore the world I've built for this story.  In ways that a king or aristocrat might be unable to, someone confined by social, religious or class obligations sees the world in a fundamentally different way, neither better nor worse.  But we're so used to seeing fantasy worlds from that point of view that it's lost a lot of its potency.  And besides, being oppressed has a sort of fantasy ring to it already.

From the outset, then, I wanted to show my viewpoint character as a very limited agent.  He is at the mercy of several factors, most obviously his own master.  The relationship he has to the world is one of ownership; he is the property of another and completely contingent upon that relationship.  His body, not even his sexuality, is his own, yet we as the reader have to see that he as a person remains unbowed.  So I added a scene in which he is compelled to engage in sexual intercourse.

I had two options.  I like to think of the first as the James Bond approach, which skirts the actual sex but cuts at the last moment to sometime after.  There are a couple of pros to this approach.  The first is that it keeps the rating PG-13, maybe even PG, but still informs the viewers/reader as to the role and nature of the character.  We don't need the sex to know that James Bond sees women as cheap pleasures, rather than as meaningful pursuits.  The second is that it keeps the story moving.  If the point of the story is to get from Point A to Point B and kill the bad guy, then the sex adds no meaningful conflict or complication to the story.  It is gratuitous.  Unless it's not, see below.

The advantages of showing the sex are equally relevant.  It keeps people interested, it adds a layer of characterization that might have otherwise been absent, and sometimes it adds a compelling conflict.  But still, why show it.  The conflict can be unfolded simply by knowing that the event occurred.  We don't need to witness it.  The only defense I can make of the sex scene is the same defense I would offer to any questionable scene.  If it advances plot; if it promotes a richer characterization; if it somehow unfolds and ultimately helps the story, then go for it.  But those are some pretty big shoes to fill.  I'd actually offer this advice: if you can do without it, don't use it.

In my case, I pondered each of these advantages and decided that showing the sex made the reader more viscerally aware of who the character was, in a manner that actually saved time and space on the page.  It keeps the story taut, I think, while still advancing the character's journey.  So I decided to keep it in.

That being said, I was lost in the actual writing of it.  I wanted to keep it somewhat classy, and there are only so many euphemisms for genitalia you can use before you sound juvenile and trite.  Also, this isn't erotica.  I didn't want the scene to wander into titillation for its own sake.  I had to keep it tight, get in and out as fast as I could, and make sure the climax was deserved.  If I pulled that off, then I feel pretty good about the whole thing.  If not, it just sounds silly.

So that's chapter one.  I'll keep you updated.  In the meantime, let me know what you think makes a good sex scene.  Heck, what makes a bad one?  And how do you tell if its necessary?  Leave me comments below.