blargh, writing

[edenfalling]

There is nothing in the world quite as boring as writing an explicit sex scene when you yourself are not in a sexy mood. It's just all, "Oh look, more bodies moving and people having trouble thinking clearly. I hope I'm making this seem plausible. Is the emotional connection coming across? Haha, coming. Holy shit, how many more words is this scene going to take before I can get back to something less ridiculous?"

(This observation brought to you by my still tragically unfinished and untitled Dave/Jade/Terezi crossdressing porn fic, which is now at 12,700 words. So far, one person has orgasmed once. Three more orgasms to go, and then probably some winding down and more talk about Dave in a dress. *sighs and resumes writing*)

...

I wonder, maybe I could call this "The Law of Conservation of Mangrit"?

Comments

[heliopausa]

About to out myself as pretty much a hopeless writer of sex scenes here. Hopeless to the tune of 'deftly dodges the issue, and would fade to black if necessary'.

Questions:
1. Why push yourself to write something you think is dull or ridiculous?
2. Why put prescriptions on the scene anyway? I mean the ones like, everybody gets an orgasm, as if it's ice-creams being handed out on a family outing? Though you said "three more orgasms to go" and have only mentioned three participants, so maybe it's one each, and then a super-duper-mindlinked one or something? But it still feels very rule-bound.

[edenfalling]

1. Several reasons! One, because there are occasional times of the month when I think sex scenes are hot like burning; it's very much a hormone balance thing. Two, because they're an interesting technical challenge, the same way fight scenes or dinner party conversations are interesting technical challenges. Three, because I'm trying to explore a particular idea about these three characters playing around with gender roles a little bit and a bunch of that is tied up in sex so skipping the sex scene would essentially gut the story. And four, because fandom at large is WAY into porn, and I am okay with playing to that on occasion. *wry*

2. It's not a prescription so much as choreography. I wrote myself a little outline of who does what -- just a paragraph, nothing in-depth -- and now I'm elaborating on it. One person gets two orgasms because her partners are nice like that. ;-) Also, I think the theme of the fic works better if it's clear that all three participants are really into what they're doing and are trying to make sure their partners are enjoying themselves; orgasms are a useful shorthand in that endeavor.

[heliopausa]

:) re: the technical challenge aspect - I'll write a sex scene one of these days, but I expect it'll be more dialogue than precise description of the mechanics.

[transposable_element]

Yes, all the sex scenes I've written are dialog-heavy. They aren't really sex scenes, they're warmup, fade to black, debrief.

[edenfalling]

That's my usual modus operandi, when it's relevant that the characters have sex, but the details are not important -- sort of the way I might write that they ate dinner or went to sleep, but there's no need to dwell on the food or their dreams. I tend to think that the vast majority of sex scenes in fics are irrelevant based on those criteria, and are included more for generic "because it's hot!" reasons than anything else. (This is why I skim the vast majority of sex scenes. I want to get back to the plot!) But sometimes the details say something useful about characterization or theme, in which case suddenly it's time to choreograph naked bodies plus emotions.

And then, of course, there are the stories that are nothing but porn and don't claim to be anything else, but that's a different category altogether.

[transposable_element]

Would it be too mean of me to say this is really funny?

But, to be more constructive, maybe you could put it aside and get back to it when you're more in the mood?

For me the block about writing porn isn't motivation, it's acute embarrassment. I have a number of head canon sex scenes completely mapped out, but the idea of committing them to paper is just....well, maybe password protected and on a machine completely unconnected to the internet, hidden in a dark well guarded by hecatonchires...

I have written a few explicit sex scenes that aren't intended to be especially erotic, but that are about awkward first-time sex and include dialog such as "where should I touch you?" and "you'd better take your boots off" and "if you'd just relax this would be a lot easier!"

[heliopausa]

But possibly being NOT in the mood helps with a dispassionate appraisal of what's working in the scene and what isn't. Maybe it should be like the Romans (no, can't have been Romans! who was it?) who debated everything twice, once drunk and once sober?

[edenfalling]

It does make it a trifle easier to keep track of logistics!

I think that was the Saxons, actually?

[heliopausa]

Persians! (I just looked it up.) But I suspect it of being a story about the Persians, circulated by the Greeks, i.e. probably not true.

Ha! yes - further research shows it's Herodotus's story, so probably something of a Greek urban myth about those wacky Persians. (By the way - "mangrit"?)

[edenfalling]

The Greeks were very good at talking nonsense about those wacky Persians. *grin*

Mangrit is a silly neologism from Homestuck -- it's sort of... a parody game stat, like health or charisma or wisdom or things along those lines. It probably corresponds most strongly to strength and health. The female equivalent is ladyvim.

[edenfalling]

Hey, I made the post because I find the situation fairly ridiculous. :-)

If I wait until I'm in the mood to write something sexy, I may not be in the mood to write this particular story. It's a little easier to push through a scene I'm not feeling on a pure mechanical "and now this, and then that, and then the other thing" sentence by sentence level than it is to muster interest in a story that's gone into hibernation. And I can always edit for sexiness later once I've got the basic who-does-what-to-whom stuff down on the page.

I accidentally broke myself of that particular variety of embarrassment two years ago when I wrote 6,000 words of porn in response to a kinkmeme prompt in one night, and then posted it under my own name because goshdarnit, I wanted credit for my work. Losing my sense of shame at writing porn was not my intention, but it's not a side effect I feel any need to complain about. *wry*

[transposable_element]

Yes, I'm finding out about the hibernation problem. Putting something away for a while can be useful, but it can also cause it to languish, especially for someone (not me, no, never!) who has trouble finishing projects...

[lady_songsmith]

My problem with sex scenes is the hot in my head, dead on paper one. Possibly this is a side effect of having read too much porn; every time I get a scene down on paper I read it back and start thinking "this is just like every other sex scene out there; do we really need more cookie-cutter porn in fandom?" (Of course, judging by the comments/kudos statistics, the answer to that is at the very least 'it can't hurt', but I was brought up to have standards for my work, dammit mom.)

I have not quite worked up to posting it in my own name, and mostly anon-fill on kink memes. I'm thinking about socking up so that I can at least post it under a name. Though I wonder if I'd be quite so reluctant to post under this one if I didn't have only Narnia fic up? My smut writing is in other fandoms, but the incongruity of mostly-gen Narnia and all-smutty other fandoms on one account is... uhm. I don't have any story ideas in those other fandoms that don't involve sex, though, even if they have plot too.

[edenfalling]

You could always create a secondary pseud on your AO3 account for porn -- I don't think anyone would see that as anything other than a basic marketing division. But sock accounts for porn are definitely an option with a long and venerable history. :-)

Fandom always wants more porn. I made my peace with that a long time ago, generally speaking. I even like knowing exactly where to find thousands upon thousands of PWP fics when I'm in the mood! The only thing I'd change if I ruled the world is the fannish habit of inserting detailed sex scenes into fics whose plots, themes, and character arcs are firmly about other things -- they feel to me as out-of-place as, say, Victor Hugo's chapters on Parisian thieves' cant or the history of Spanish nunneries in Les Misérables, and unfortunately not half so interesting.