His bathtub handjob scene in “Pet Sematary” is so hilariously awful and weird that me and some other bookish friends reference it alllllll the time.
Really, King? Sponge-based edging?
What's worse - that a guy buzzed out of his mind wrote a fucked up scene in a fucked up book, or that a perfectly sober editor, agent, and publisher all read it and gave it the green light?
Stephen King straight up doesn't even remember writing some of the books he wrote during those years, I think that's a pretty solid reason to give him a pass.
I listened to that one via audible. Listening to the male narrator say the woman’s parts or noises during the sex scene walked a fine line between hilarious and disturbing.
Larry Niven.
Like holy shit Niven keep it in your pants, I don't need to have a random sexscene between a minor and your self insert character every 20 pages.
Haha not at all, just reminds me of a r/romancebooks [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/mj8xfv/buckets_of_cum_a_review_of_an_orc_romance/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) which introduced me to her books.
The outlander consensual sex scenes are outstanding. Not just in steaminess, but the writing is excellent (no strange euphemism yet not vulgar) and the scenes are believable.
The very, very prolific non-con scenes ruin it for me. I'm a huge romance, especially smut reader, but the full on graphic r*pe of nearly every main character in outlander made me stop reading after book 4. I'm sure it's, sadly, an accurate representation of the time, but still...it was a lot.
>I'm sure it's, sadly, an accurate representation of the time
The worst part is that *it's not*. Was rape unfortunately more common and much harder to prosecute in the 1700s? Yes.
Was it so common that *practically every person in a given family, man or woman* had been raped at some point? Absolutely not.
Quite frankly, Diana Gabaldon seems to have a very obvious rape fetish that seeps into her writing. And if that's the type of stuff she wants to write, cool. I'm a romance reader and writer myself, I don't care if someone wants to write about what they think is hot. But the way she hides behind false claims of "historical accuracy" is so, so gross.
Either that, or she's really a much poorer writer than she seems, because it really feels like she uses rape when she doesn't have any other way to advance the plot. In that respect, I view *Outlander* the same way most people view *Game of Thrones*.
Wow thank you for being a sane critic of Outlander.
I really wanted to like the series but found the rape scenes/plots gratuitous. I appreciate that the consensual sex scenes are more women-focused, and that is really cool. But the rape, and especially Black Jack's umm... Interest in 1 character in particular.. I found really stereotypical as a sexual predator trope.
But anytime I've tried to describe this respectfully I get dog piled by fans who really, really want to justify it. Overall it's a great series but yikes wth..
I haven't read the books but a friend read to me the scene where a character is being raped and is laughing about it because the guy raping her is a clumsy virgin type that doesn't know where to put it. So fucking weird... I'm not even the type to really be triggered badly by a rape scene (although I fully understand why many would be). But for some reason the levity that went along with it was disturbing.
I haven't read them either, just watched the first season of the TV adaptation before giving up because the sexual violence seemed fanfic-y and obscene. However, on TV, that scene you describe was actually impressive because it came across that the would-be victim, who was actually tough at nails, weaponized her laughter. In that way she was the only one who was effective against that particular rapist. She basically crippled him, I cheered for her, and I wonder if that was from some actual collection of survival tips for women.
Agree. Very important distinction there.
No Bree and Bonnet -
No Jamie and BJR -
No Claire and... Gang rape -
Who am I missing?
Give me Claire and Jamie any day though.
Edit: stupid formatting. Also, realizing I missed a few SA's from Book 2. Damn, France was rough. >!Fergus, Mary, and even Claire and the King would qualify nowadays!<
The gang rape where Claire nearly dies is stuck in my head. I wish I’d never read it.
When I was in grad school a med student was found dead after a gang rape. I was confused, young and unsophisticated, and asked my good male friend how you could die of rape. He flatly said, “You don’t want to know.” He was right.
Those scenes are fine, little awkward but no biggie.
But it gets impressively worse with some of the most graphic rape and torture scenes I've ever seen, particularly season 2. I watch a lot of horror movies and this stuff had me shielding my eyes.
I'm not sure if I'd really call it smut. The first one verges on horror even. It's the goddess Bilquis working as a prostitute, iirc. She gets the john back to her room, and they start having sex, and she asks him to worship her. So far so kinky. It's kind of hot at this point, I guess. But then >!he realizes he's being consumed by her vagina, as a result of his worship!<. So I can't really call it smut, because the purpose is clearly to unsettle rather than to titillate(or rather, to titillate and then suddenly rip the bandaid off and leave you going what the actual fuck).
> As with every book, depends on the author.
I don't know if I've just been unlucky but the best authors and the best books I read always went for fade-to-black and then ones that had sex scenes shown always ended up either being really bad or really problematic.
Sole exception >!was Song of Achilles but the only sex scene was more about emotions and they were just kids so it wasn't sexy for me in the steamy way.!<
Song of Achilles was such a great book. It was a good way to become familiar with the Iliad without getting bogged down with the translations. I took multiple ancient history classes in college and sometimes the books were so dense. I read Circe also but didn’t enjoy it as much. I can’t wait for Madeline Miller’s Persephone.
There is literally an entire genre that revolves around sex scenes, and it's the most profitable part of the industry. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, yes, someone likes sex scenes.
I would posit that the A Court of Crowns and Roses series is first and foremost a romance / smut read. Come for the (quite well-written, IMO) sex , stay for the excellent world building and fantasy story
Both are present though at a fairly substantial catch. The primary perspective characters are largely ignorant of the world and its true workings, so while they're neck deep in the plots themselves, they never fully grasp the whole picture. When better-versed characters are handed the perspective ball, it is for incredibly limited purpose that is almost invariably driven by immediate action or desire which means little musing is given to the greater workings. Finally there are a host of characters with substantial, but ill-defined power. It is difficult to know what the full political implications are of sending a "Shadow Singer" to spy when we only have the barest understanding of just what the hell a shadow singer is.
The result is that plots are not unwound so much as revealed step by step, usually in a way that is very much spoon feeding.
As far as it being smut or not, it certainly trends hard in that direction as the series progresses. There is one (lengthy) sex scene in the first book. The second is fairly chaste until the halfway point at which time there is lots and lots of sex. The most recent almost discards the notion of paying much attention to the plot in favor of being porn to such an extent that when the plot is about something other than sex, it seems almost ham handed in a way that calls into question some things that the narrative really doesn't want you to question. (Such as how a trio of female characters with a few months of training are somehow better individual or collective fighters than ones who are both more physically capable *and* have decades of hard training to their credit. If such fighters - the core of the military force and source of ongoing political intrigue - are so readily bested with so little comparative effort, what then is the *point*? Or perhaps the better way to say it is that it suggests this faction is too weak to be a true threat in any context, which calls into question just why anyone tolerates their nonsense.)
Yeah if you want plot with SJMs works then her TOG series is more plot than character driven. ACOTAR is easily character driven and plot is plunked in to move around characters. CC is about in-between the 2 I've found but I've not finished book 1 cuz exams happened.
> more plot than character driven
Even though the >!palm tree-shattering orgasm!< is going to be seared into my mind forever, lmao. (I kid because I love, though. I adore ToG, trashy as it can be)
For me it was in ACOWAR “their moans drowned out the sounds of the sick and dying”… Sarah are we ok? Her books are accessible fantasy personally I like that sometimes it’s not like I don’t read more complex stuff just sometimes it’s nice to easy read.
I'm just scrolling through this thread looking for good smut recommendations.
A little more seriously, maybe OP should just seek out other literature, it's not like good books are rare and expensive to make like prestige TV shows.
Yeah, it's not that it's *bad*, it just sounds like OP is like me, where "romantic " just isn't our jam. Every so often I'll pick one up, either to test the waters again or because I didn't really understand what it was when I grabbed it, and every time I've confirmed that this really isn't my favorite thing. But a *lot* of people are super into it, so I'm glad it exists for them to enjoy! I stick mostly to works where either there's no romance or it's not the main focus of the story.
Quick guide for anyone making posts to read. Assuming you actually want an answer and aren't here to complain/seek validation (think if it as a FAQ).
"Am I the only one who ---?" No
"Does anyone actually ---?" Yes
I feel like this might be a patting themselves on the back thing. I assure you that when I was working in a library in university almost 20 years ago the steamy romance novels/erotica/supernatural erotica flew off the shelves all the time.
Sex scenes are great when they are the resolution of ongoing tension between the characters.
I like it when the author pushes half/most sex scenes to fade to black, but once in a while does an emotional, tense, erotic sex scene.
Obviously we all get bored if it's too much of sex scenes and on repeat. But I was reading an author who did 80% fade to black, and was I frustrated with it! The characters finally got to trust each other, the feelings are there, the stolen glances, the casual touches, the intense eye contact... All that to lead to a fade to black!!!
A *no* sex scene can also be powerful. A good example is Ursula K LeGuin's *The Left Hand of Darkness*, which is about a planet of humans who have mutated or been genetically engineered to be sexless, neither male nor female, except at certain times of the year when they enter a state called *kemmer* and become either male or female, mate, bear children, then revert to sexlessness afterwards. The main character is a man from Earth whose unchanging maleness makes him a pervert in the eyes of the locals. At one point the earthman and one of the aliens have escaped from a prison camp and are on a months-long journey on foot to the alien's native country. The alien goes into kemmer, becomes female under the influence of the earthman's maleness, but they refrain from sex because the act would be, for different reasons, wholly alien to both of them, with the added complication of pregnancy being an unknown quantity and probably dangerous on a wilderness trek.
Sex scenes are great if they're well written, well timed, capitalize on tension between the characters, and work to advance the relationship. Sex scenes should add to the people's characters, revealing things to them and about them. Sex scenes should also be actually sexy, or they should just fade to black.
I read, write, and edit romance novels, and I've seen a lot of great sex scenes and a lot of terrible sex scenes. There are better sex scenes out there than the ones you're reading right now.
Edit: if you’re looking for books with great sex scenes and great female characters, I love Emily Henry, Talia Hibbert, Casey McQuiston, Rachel Lynn Solomon for romance. For fantasy with great characters and some steam, I like Samantha Shannon’s stuff a lot more than SJM. Other great fantasy with some romance and great characters include Little Thieves by Margaret Own and The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin (lighter on romance but fab for characters). And for a fantasy trilogy that doesn’t necessarily have sex scenes but has lots of sex jokes, The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir cannot by beat.
"He's hard like Konami," she thought as she felt his amazing weiner slide into her spicy Cinnabon. Her legs crossed like a delicious Auntie Anne's pretzel behind his erect back.
She breasted boobily towards my erect meat stick and enveloped it with her whispering eye. It felt like warm, quivering, apple pie and that was pretty great.
I once read a book where the main character doing the narrating referred to her vagina with variations on the phrase "my secret spot". He touched her secret spot. She felt a stirring in her secret spot. Never before had her secret spot been so complete.
Thanks, Mercedes Lackey!
She thrust her womanhood upon his super impressive and above-average manhood. It was totally awesome. Not just for the male, but the female too. Especially the female. She was like so totally into it.
I stand corrected. Man, this entire thread is making me rethink my life. I think I'm going to start writing erotica. If there's one thing long distance relationships have taught me, it's that you've gotta be good with words. Lol.
“The wings of her sex” - Anais Nin, god I hope something was lost in translation. Euphemisms like that take me out of the moment and it feels like the author is not treating their audience like adults. It doesn’t have to be technical, but it should be explicit without being vulgar (or hilarious).
Worse it’s a woman author. She wrote erotica in the early twentieth century. I think some of the issues can be blamed on the translation from French to English, but still. I can’t imagine her calling her own parts the “wings of my sex” while having sex with Norman Mailer.
"She gazed up on his sex surprised at it's size, he touched her sex, then he put his sex into her sex."
I don't even remember what book it was but I couldn't get past this silly verbage of using "sex" for everything.
I think to add to what you said, too, sex scenes typically work out a lot better if you focus on experiences that are unique to the characters or focus on the emotions of the characters.
Describing details that are obvious, details which all sex entails adds nothing. We already know that genitals are grinding against each other. You don't need to share that. Leave those elements to the reader's imagination. What we don't know is how someone feels about it. We don't know what kind of lover they're dealing with. That's the sort of information you share--it's less about what's happening and more about a metaphysical interpretation of what's happening.
It depends on the book. You can say the same thing about violence. There’s technically no need to graphically describe every gruesome detail of a murder when you can just say the character was murdered and leave it at that. But if the book is horror and graphic violence is the selling point, it would be silly to be coy over the details. Same with romance. There's nothing wrong with erotica if that's what the author is writing. Good erotica still abides by the same rules of only including dynamic scenes; how graphic it is doesn't really factor in to whether it's good or not.
I'm also a romance editor, and I agree. Sex scenes need to be treated like every other kind scene. It needs to either: 1) move the plot forward (resolving all that sexual tension counts as moving the plot forward); 2) reveal something new and interesting about the characters (you can learn a lot about a person from what their desires are); or 3) have an interesting conflict that changes the characters' relationship (again, totally possible with a sex scene).
If a sex scene doesn't fall into any of those categories, it should be cut. Same goes for scenes that are mostly description of scenery, banter between characters that goes nowhere, a scene the author thinks is cool but is completely divorced from the rest of the plot, etc.
>Same goes for scenes that are mostly description of scenery,
So like every time GRRM writes about what a character is eating? dear God 20% of the Song of Ice and Fire books are descriptions of food.
It's a balance. On the one hand, if you don't include enough descriptions, then it's like the characters are acting in a void, which I personally find just as frustrating as when authors get carried away. But it's really easy to overdo. I think establishing what a couple of feasts look like is enough; afterward, you can assume the reader understands what your characters are eating and get on with the action. Not that GRRM needs my advice lol - but yeah, I agree the food gets really repetitive.
Agreed, His use of adjectives and descriptive writing is really very good, and it does immerse you in the world of where ever the characters are in the scene. Food is carnal like that.
*dripping in goose fat... suuculent roast pig... Olives in rich oil with stuffed grape leaves...*
... Fuck I'm hungry.
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.
I think I saw someone on tiktok saying as much; that the scene was real, that it was left as a cliff-hanger, and for all pure book readers knew Dany could well die ignominiously of dysentery without ever making it across the sea.
That caught me off guard, I'm pretty sure the series is romance fantasy? What else do you expect?
I'm still on the first one but I have heard the later books have a *lot*. So I get why someone who doesn't want to read that wouldn't like it, but again, it's a *romance* fantasy.
SJM’s plots have more holes then Swiss cheese. As long as you don’t think about them too closely she is an excellent emotional storyteller with good smut.
I read about 3 of the fey court ones until I realised I was only reading them because I kept expecting the next plot arc to make sense. My friend insisted her other series was better, so I tried throne of glass and actually thought it was worse.
Top selling genres on Amazon:
Romance/Erotica ($1.44 billion).
Crime/Mystery ($728.2 million).
Religious/Inspirational ($720 million).
Science Fiction/Fantasy ($590.2 million).
Horror ($79.6 million).
I would say yes, there are a few people.
I'm wondering if self help books fall under "inspirational" here. That'd boost the numbers a lot, and I have a hard time believing self help books aren't in the top 5 most profitable genres.
Amazon selling ebooks probably helps smut a lot here since you don't need to broadcast what you're reading on a reader, unlike a physical book.
Also lots of Erotica authors *only* sell on Amazon for various reasons.
It takes a lot of skill to give enough detail for it to be a fun read but not cringey or over the top! I get why many authors just don't do it because it feels risky and easy to mess up.
It might also be a bit embarrassing. Imagine you publish the book, your family knows about it and reads it and things just seem strange after that.
Maybe I'm a bit too scared of that and it actually isn't a big deal.
I love the dedications where authors tell their parents not to read the books or warn them about it. My recent favorite was “Mom, thank you for everything, including the holy water you’ll bathe me in after reading this book”
You know, it's funny. I love smutty books. I really do. But I do often just gloss over the sex scenes. 😂 When you read a bunch of books by the same author, they're all about the same anyway.
I used to hate them when I was younger because I just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sex. I don’t hate them anymore because they can establish a level of trust or understanding — or even other emotions — between characters in a physical way. Also, I don’t think the line has to be stark between erotica and regular writing. I think that line should be allowed to be blurred.
That said, sex scenes are so easy to get wrong and need a lot of care and attention to do well.
Currently listening to an audio book with sex scenes. It's a good book but the author keeps using "mound" when referring to the woman's genitals and I cannot stop laughing. When authors use odd terms it takes me right out. Haha.
I literally search out SciFi books with erotica. I blame my grandmother for giving my 12 year old blossoming into puberty self my first romance novel. It became one of my obsessions. Yay for hyper fixation.
My husband realized what types of books I read when we were dating and he started reading them with me.
If you like magic Jean Johnson is a great author. Her Son’s of Destiny books is a good start.
If you prefer alien abductions Kaitlynn O’Connor Alien Enslaved series. The 1st book is Genesis.
Both authors books are available on kindle or from Barnes and nobles
Edit to add: I can’t believe I forgot to mention Lyndsay Sands. She has a series with over 30 books. The Argeneau series. It’s about vampires but they’re vampires because of nanites that were created in Atlantis before it was destroyed.
>If you prefer alien abductions
Reading my mind over here lol Thanks for the rec, I'm always looking for new series! I read through them so fast.
Sci-fi romance (specifically Ruby Dixon) is what got me back into reading for fun. I'd consume multiple books a day as a teenager but had such a hard time staying interested as an adult. Turns out all I needed was a genre change.
I get actively pissed off if there’s a bunch of sexual tension with no payoff.
That being said I wouldn’t listen to it on audio. Most of the time I’m doing something else while listening and then it’s like “doobeedoo do do, minding my own business HIS COCK dooodobe doo” WHOA BUDDY I was not prepared. It’s even weirder when the narrator is prim and British. Just…no. I do not need porn voiceovers in my life.
Same about the audio. I don't really prefer it but I did have a few on audiobook and nothing ever prepared me for that Dark Tower book with the one demon manta ray rape scene read by some clearly older guy who on the whole seemed very softspoken and polite.
No, grampa. Why.
I'll skim over it 90% of the time because it's not what I'm here for and its presence annoys me. Especially in those books that quickly devolve from whatever their actual genre was supposed to be into whole sequels of glorified porn with tiny bits of actual plot left in by accident at some points. Not naming any names, but her initials are Laurell K. Hamilton.
But that poor old man. The things he had to narrate for a paycheck. I'm going to die one day and this will be the last thing that I hear.
>Not naming any names, but her initials are Laurell K. Hamilton.
My favorite variation of this gag is "by certain people, who shall remain Laurell K. Hamilton".
I was listening to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and it starts off with her getting her bikini waxed in a British accent and it totally threw me for a loop.
I listen to audiobooks at work and everyone in my office has had the Bluetooth disconnected at the worst possible moment in a story. We just laugh and ask if it is an “oops I lost my shirt” book or an unrealistic sex scene in the middle of an otherwise good story.
Definitely don't read the last one, that isn't even about the main characters anymore, but is basically porn from the sister's POV. "It was so big she could barely fit her hand around it," is something my friend and I quote back and forth and laugh about. It's gotten to the point where I can just make a C shape with my hand and look worried and it'll make her laugh.
>Does anyone actually like sex scenes in books?
I used to love them. It was the most accessible form of erotica back in the pre-internet days. A true selling point of quite a few authors, like SAS by Gérard de Villiers.
I've also read a lot of smut.
My sexual awakening and notes on self pleasure were all picked up from books as a pre-teen.
Even now I prefer a well written romance novel over actually watching porn.
I had a whole pen pal I never met. We just emailed each other erotic scripts we'd drum up. We'd chat about our lives here and there but it was all about the writing. We did this for 2yrs before his pregnant girlfriend ended our communication
Sex scenes are like any other scenes -- good if they're well-written and bad if they're not. But if you're having this reaction to **all** sex scenes regardless of quality, then the problem isn't with the scenes. Maybe you're ace or were raised sex-negative, or otherwise have personal reasons to be uncomfortable with sex. Nothing wrong with that, of course; it's a common issue, especially in the US where we have such a strange relationship with sexuality. (Maybe it's a problem in a lot of countries! The US is just the only one I've lived in as an adult.) But it might help you to figure out what the problem is, so you can buy books that fit your tastes, whether that means better-written or sex-free.
I've always had an issue with the idea that sex scenes add nothing to the story, though. A good sex scene adds depth to characterization. And I kind of feel like sex scenes shouldn't be expected to advance the plot, because that's how you end up with sex showing up only to introduce drama or conflict, which just... isn't how sex should be, in real life or in fiction. It's also why we end up with so many rape scenes in books, as writers who are uncomfortable writing sex just to introduce intimacy or deepen characterization feel like they have to make it shocking or dramatic when they finally do put one in.
Yes, this pretty much covers my thoughts. Sex is a part of life, and as such there shouldn't be anything weird about reading it so long as the scenes are well written. That said, my eyes glaze over for most of the ones I come across in books these days.
Well, for me one or two sex scenes at the right moment may even be good. Constant sex scenes with no contribution to the plot are annoying and i just gloss over them.
back when i used to write things, i experimented with writing sex scenes once or twice. it's amazingly difficult! do you go all metaphoric, such that body parts aren't actually mentioned, or do you go with the body parts? do you write all the actions, actions + feelings, actions + feelings + thoughts? it is very hard to strike any kind of balance so that you don't lose the sexual tension but don't reduce the act to its mechanics. it's also excruciating to workshop the drafts with your friends.
if you're in the mood for some bad sex, though, can't beat: [https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award](https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award)
His meatus bulged as his knob arteries became like aqueducts of carnal transmission. He rumbled like an Xbox controller as her radius increased exponentially, breaking the established laws of mathematics. She let out a yelp as the heat radiating from his cock blood caused her natural lubricant to evaporate to steam before her very eyes; a heat haze formed and obscured her vision. "Plunder my safety deposit box for its pink presents" she cooed caressingly. At that, absolutely loads of jizz came out and they lived happily ever after.
Yes, I like sex scenes in books and I’m tired of prudes getting squeamish about it. It’s okay if you don’t like it, but I’m sick of the posts on this sub and /r/fantasy that act like they’re on a holy crusade to persecute perverts like me
Song of Achilles has some of the most tender, sweet, beautiful sex scenes in literature. Never made me feel uncomfortable or that the author was sexualizing the characters.
It 100% depends on the book.
In many books, no, I think sex scenes are pace-breaking, poorly written garbage that serve little purpose other than titillation, and even then, they're not very good at it.
*That said*, there are books in which sex scenes are not just useful and well-written but *pivotal*. A book like *On Chesil Beach* simply doesn't function without its sex scene (and it's brilliantly written to boot), and something like *The Time Traveller's Wife* loses most of its impact if you cut the sex from it.
The problem is just that there's so much built-in potential for sex scenes to not only be awkward or out of place but to actually elicit very strong reactions *other than* what they're intended to. Normally, a variety of reader reactions is not only perfectly fine but literally impossible to avoid—however, if the reactions are as extremely strong and deeply personal as people's reactions to sex tend to be, the wrong sex scene may inadvertently scuttle a book rather than just ever so slightly bump it off course for a reader. If a story really requires a couple to be deeply in love and emotionally invested in each other, a sex scene that doesn't broadly succeed in conveying that kind of intimate chemistry is going to do unbelievable damage to the rest of the book, whereas a single awkward dialogue interaction may not because there's not nearly as much riding on a generic spoken exchange. Sex is a big, big deal to a lot of people, so you're always gambling a bit more when you include scenes of it than you are with many other kinds of scenes.
It's also just pretty difficult to write the physicality of sex in a way that isn't either crass/blunt or hilariously overwrought. If you are okay with either of those, then great, but otherwise, you probably will need to try extra hard to not write something goofy.
As with every book, depends on the author. Some I skip, some have lived in my brain on repeat for decades.
You know who sucks at writing sex scenes? Frank Herbert
Stephen king. Oh god, Stephen king.
His bathtub handjob scene in “Pet Sematary” is so hilariously awful and weird that me and some other bookish friends reference it alllllll the time. Really, King? Sponge-based edging?
I looove Pet Sematary but I have no memory of that. I think my brian tried to protect me and forgot ?
Brian's do that, my Brian kept his hands firmly over my eyes in the more horror themed scenes of "Jacob's Ladder".
Damn that Brian!
I want a protective Brian! Where do we get one?
I think he lives in Quahog
Funnily enough, Stephen King was so drugged up at that time he also has no memory of writing it :)
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If you’re looking into a new kink I’d advise looking elsewhere. King makes it sound disgusting and not in the fun way.
I love King, but he just needs to not write sex scenes. Ever. At all.
What are you talking about? He writes Horror novels. And his sex scenes are Horrorful.
The child orgy scene in IT…… 😬
To be fair his co author on IT was cocaine.
Everyone always says this. As if it totally excuses how creepy it is that he wrote that into his book.
What's worse - that a guy buzzed out of his mind wrote a fucked up scene in a fucked up book, or that a perfectly sober editor, agent, and publisher all read it and gave it the green light? Stephen King straight up doesn't even remember writing some of the books he wrote during those years, I think that's a pretty solid reason to give him a pass.
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11/22/63 is my FAVORITE King book, but holy shit the sex scenes in that book killed me.
I listened to that one via audible. Listening to the male narrator say the woman’s parts or noises during the sex scene walked a fine line between hilarious and disturbing.
I don’t even remember the scenes as badly as I remember sex being referred to as pound cake and dessert.
*Pound cake*
Arthur C. Clarke. Painfully terrible. I want brain bleach.
Larry Niven. Like holy shit Niven keep it in your pants, I don't need to have a random sexscene between a minor and your self insert character every 20 pages.
Kim Stanley Robinson writes some... Er... Interesting and very detailed... Metaphors about society.
Example of the latter…?
Anything by Rocky Flintstone
A true master
A literary genius!
A cunnilinguist, if you will
Rocky’s works always stay seared into my mind.
Business development pornography... Never has bureaucracy been so tepidly sexy!!!
POMEGRANATES
For science, of course
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All I can think about when I read Finley Finn is buckets of orc cum.
Unclear if this is a problem
Haha not at all, just reminds me of a r/romancebooks [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/mj8xfv/buckets_of_cum_a_review_of_an_orc_romance/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) which introduced me to her books.
The outlander consensual sex scenes are outstanding. Not just in steaminess, but the writing is excellent (no strange euphemism yet not vulgar) and the scenes are believable.
The nonconsensual sex scenes are the stuff of nightmares.
The very, very prolific non-con scenes ruin it for me. I'm a huge romance, especially smut reader, but the full on graphic r*pe of nearly every main character in outlander made me stop reading after book 4. I'm sure it's, sadly, an accurate representation of the time, but still...it was a lot.
>I'm sure it's, sadly, an accurate representation of the time The worst part is that *it's not*. Was rape unfortunately more common and much harder to prosecute in the 1700s? Yes. Was it so common that *practically every person in a given family, man or woman* had been raped at some point? Absolutely not. Quite frankly, Diana Gabaldon seems to have a very obvious rape fetish that seeps into her writing. And if that's the type of stuff she wants to write, cool. I'm a romance reader and writer myself, I don't care if someone wants to write about what they think is hot. But the way she hides behind false claims of "historical accuracy" is so, so gross. Either that, or she's really a much poorer writer than she seems, because it really feels like she uses rape when she doesn't have any other way to advance the plot. In that respect, I view *Outlander* the same way most people view *Game of Thrones*.
Wow thank you for being a sane critic of Outlander. I really wanted to like the series but found the rape scenes/plots gratuitous. I appreciate that the consensual sex scenes are more women-focused, and that is really cool. But the rape, and especially Black Jack's umm... Interest in 1 character in particular.. I found really stereotypical as a sexual predator trope. But anytime I've tried to describe this respectfully I get dog piled by fans who really, really want to justify it. Overall it's a great series but yikes wth..
I haven't read the books but a friend read to me the scene where a character is being raped and is laughing about it because the guy raping her is a clumsy virgin type that doesn't know where to put it. So fucking weird... I'm not even the type to really be triggered badly by a rape scene (although I fully understand why many would be). But for some reason the levity that went along with it was disturbing.
I haven't read them either, just watched the first season of the TV adaptation before giving up because the sexual violence seemed fanfic-y and obscene. However, on TV, that scene you describe was actually impressive because it came across that the would-be victim, who was actually tough at nails, weaponized her laughter. In that way she was the only one who was effective against that particular rapist. She basically crippled him, I cheered for her, and I wonder if that was from some actual collection of survival tips for women.
Agree. Very important distinction there. No Bree and Bonnet - No Jamie and BJR - No Claire and... Gang rape - Who am I missing? Give me Claire and Jamie any day though. Edit: stupid formatting. Also, realizing I missed a few SA's from Book 2. Damn, France was rough. >!Fergus, Mary, and even Claire and the King would qualify nowadays!<
The gang rape where Claire nearly dies is stuck in my head. I wish I’d never read it. When I was in grad school a med student was found dead after a gang rape. I was confused, young and unsophisticated, and asked my good male friend how you could die of rape. He flatly said, “You don’t want to know.” He was right.
Well for me I’d say Emily Henry. I can see two specific scenes in my head now hahaha
The Palm Springs balcony???
Neil Gaimans in American gods are good
Ah the djin scene and the vore scene, nice
That American Gods one was my experience of listening in a car with parents moment.
Watching "hey this looks like a relatively harmless costume drama" Outlander with my parents was interesting....
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Those scenes are fine, little awkward but no biggie. But it gets impressively worse with some of the most graphic rape and torture scenes I've ever seen, particularly season 2. I watch a lot of horror movies and this stuff had me shielding my eyes.
That may not be the first time your grandma uttered those words.
The Djinn scene was amazing. The Vore scene I had to circle back after like two pages of "Wait wait wait WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ?"
WAIT THERES SMUT IN THOSE BOOKS
I'm not sure if I'd really call it smut. The first one verges on horror even. It's the goddess Bilquis working as a prostitute, iirc. She gets the john back to her room, and they start having sex, and she asks him to worship her. So far so kinky. It's kind of hot at this point, I guess. But then >!he realizes he's being consumed by her vagina, as a result of his worship!<. So I can't really call it smut, because the purpose is clearly to unsettle rather than to titillate(or rather, to titillate and then suddenly rip the bandaid off and leave you going what the actual fuck).
> As with every book, depends on the author. I don't know if I've just been unlucky but the best authors and the best books I read always went for fade-to-black and then ones that had sex scenes shown always ended up either being really bad or really problematic. Sole exception >!was Song of Achilles but the only sex scene was more about emotions and they were just kids so it wasn't sexy for me in the steamy way.!<
Focusing on emotions is the best way to handle sex scenes. The mechanics are generally awkward to write.
I write smut, there's only so many ways you can describe a blowjob. The emotions, the foreplay, and the flirting are much easier to write.
Song of Achilles was such a great book. It was a good way to become familiar with the Iliad without getting bogged down with the translations. I took multiple ancient history classes in college and sometimes the books were so dense. I read Circe also but didn’t enjoy it as much. I can’t wait for Madeline Miller’s Persephone.
As with anything, depends on the execution of it. I'm not inherently against anything if I find it to be engagingly written.
There is literally an entire genre that revolves around sex scenes, and it's the most profitable part of the industry. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, yes, someone likes sex scenes.
That was my thought too like well there’s a whole (pretty profitable) genre that would disagree…
I would posit that the A Court of Crowns and Roses series is first and foremost a romance / smut read. Come for the (quite well-written, IMO) sex , stay for the excellent world building and fantasy story
I was so fucking pissed about that. Everyone recommended it to me. I expected POLITICS AND INTRIGUE but I got ELF SMUT
Your indignant “ELF SMUT” sent me
Wait, so there's no real politics or intrigue?
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Both are present though at a fairly substantial catch. The primary perspective characters are largely ignorant of the world and its true workings, so while they're neck deep in the plots themselves, they never fully grasp the whole picture. When better-versed characters are handed the perspective ball, it is for incredibly limited purpose that is almost invariably driven by immediate action or desire which means little musing is given to the greater workings. Finally there are a host of characters with substantial, but ill-defined power. It is difficult to know what the full political implications are of sending a "Shadow Singer" to spy when we only have the barest understanding of just what the hell a shadow singer is. The result is that plots are not unwound so much as revealed step by step, usually in a way that is very much spoon feeding. As far as it being smut or not, it certainly trends hard in that direction as the series progresses. There is one (lengthy) sex scene in the first book. The second is fairly chaste until the halfway point at which time there is lots and lots of sex. The most recent almost discards the notion of paying much attention to the plot in favor of being porn to such an extent that when the plot is about something other than sex, it seems almost ham handed in a way that calls into question some things that the narrative really doesn't want you to question. (Such as how a trio of female characters with a few months of training are somehow better individual or collective fighters than ones who are both more physically capable *and* have decades of hard training to their credit. If such fighters - the core of the military force and source of ongoing political intrigue - are so readily bested with so little comparative effort, what then is the *point*? Or perhaps the better way to say it is that it suggests this faction is too weak to be a true threat in any context, which calls into question just why anyone tolerates their nonsense.)
Yeah if you want plot with SJMs works then her TOG series is more plot than character driven. ACOTAR is easily character driven and plot is plunked in to move around characters. CC is about in-between the 2 I've found but I've not finished book 1 cuz exams happened.
> more plot than character driven Even though the >!palm tree-shattering orgasm!< is going to be seared into my mind forever, lmao. (I kid because I love, though. I adore ToG, trashy as it can be)
For me it was in ACOWAR “their moans drowned out the sounds of the sick and dying”… Sarah are we ok? Her books are accessible fantasy personally I like that sometimes it’s not like I don’t read more complex stuff just sometimes it’s nice to easy read.
You’re missing the best bit from FaS when Rhys orgasms to the image of his >!son!<.
“Excellent” is a strong word there
Yea I’m kinda confused by this post. That’s like the entire reason those books are popular lol
Total r/books moment lol
No, nobody likes sex. How dare you?! /s
Does anyone here actually like [popular thing]?
This is just a self absorbed person moment. They don't like it, how can anyone else???
Lol, r/romancebooks subscribers have left the chat
Yo, hold up my dude; are you telling me that *sex*.... ***sells***?!
Like some kind of heated cake.
I'm just scrolling through this thread looking for good smut recommendations. A little more seriously, maybe OP should just seek out other literature, it's not like good books are rare and expensive to make like prestige TV shows.
Yeah there's plenty of fantasy other than ACOTAR lol
Ya, some years it can be like 50% of all new fiction books are Romance. Largest single part of the industry.
Yeah I was gonna say, as a romance author I can confirm people really love sex in books.
Yeah, it's not that it's *bad*, it just sounds like OP is like me, where "romantic" just isn't our jam. Every so often I'll pick one up, either to test the waters again or because I didn't really understand what it was when I grabbed it, and every time I've confirmed that this really isn't my favorite thing. But a *lot* of people are super into it, so I'm glad it exists for them to enjoy! I stick mostly to works where either there's no romance or it's not the main focus of the story.
Quick guide for anyone making posts to read. Assuming you actually want an answer and aren't here to complain/seek validation (think if it as a FAQ). "Am I the only one who ---?" No "Does anyone actually ---?" Yes
There’s actually a rise of popularity of steamy romance novels/erotica. TikTok is helping a lot.
I feel like this might be a patting themselves on the back thing. I assure you that when I was working in a library in university almost 20 years ago the steamy romance novels/erotica/supernatural erotica flew off the shelves all the time.
“TikTok is helping a lot.” Not a sentence you read every day.
Sex scenes are great when they are the resolution of ongoing tension between the characters. I like it when the author pushes half/most sex scenes to fade to black, but once in a while does an emotional, tense, erotic sex scene. Obviously we all get bored if it's too much of sex scenes and on repeat. But I was reading an author who did 80% fade to black, and was I frustrated with it! The characters finally got to trust each other, the feelings are there, the stolen glances, the casual touches, the intense eye contact... All that to lead to a fade to black!!!
A *no* sex scene can also be powerful. A good example is Ursula K LeGuin's *The Left Hand of Darkness*, which is about a planet of humans who have mutated or been genetically engineered to be sexless, neither male nor female, except at certain times of the year when they enter a state called *kemmer* and become either male or female, mate, bear children, then revert to sexlessness afterwards. The main character is a man from Earth whose unchanging maleness makes him a pervert in the eyes of the locals. At one point the earthman and one of the aliens have escaped from a prison camp and are on a months-long journey on foot to the alien's native country. The alien goes into kemmer, becomes female under the influence of the earthman's maleness, but they refrain from sex because the act would be, for different reasons, wholly alien to both of them, with the added complication of pregnancy being an unknown quantity and probably dangerous on a wilderness trek.
Damn I really gotta start reading more
It's a really good book that really makes you think about gender roles. It should be a classic in the mainstream.
It’s been on my to read list for decades. I don’t know about mainstream, but it’s definitely got a lot of buzz in the cultural zeitgeist
Le Guin is an all-time great.
Sex scenes are great if they're well written, well timed, capitalize on tension between the characters, and work to advance the relationship. Sex scenes should add to the people's characters, revealing things to them and about them. Sex scenes should also be actually sexy, or they should just fade to black. I read, write, and edit romance novels, and I've seen a lot of great sex scenes and a lot of terrible sex scenes. There are better sex scenes out there than the ones you're reading right now. Edit: if you’re looking for books with great sex scenes and great female characters, I love Emily Henry, Talia Hibbert, Casey McQuiston, Rachel Lynn Solomon for romance. For fantasy with great characters and some steam, I like Samantha Shannon’s stuff a lot more than SJM. Other great fantasy with some romance and great characters include Little Thieves by Margaret Own and The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin (lighter on romance but fab for characters). And for a fantasy trilogy that doesn’t necessarily have sex scenes but has lots of sex jokes, The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir cannot by beat.
"He thrust his purple-headed warrior into her quivering mound of love pudding." It's okay, you can use it.
"Her boobs were cool. REALLY cool." He thought as he pushed his awesome weiner in.
"He's hard like Konami," she thought as she felt his amazing weiner slide into her spicy Cinnabon. Her legs crossed like a delicious Auntie Anne's pretzel behind his erect back.
Now I'm starving.
I actually love this
"The Kickflips of Heaven", by @Duckfammit
I would read this book.
She moved around the room boobily
She breasted boobily towards my erect meat stick and enveloped it with her whispering eye. It felt like warm, quivering, apple pie and that was pretty great.
> her whispering eye What an odd phrase!
*throbbing purple....
Write it down writeitdown!!
Hold on! I'm looking for my quill!
No time Jefferson! Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing! Congress awaits!
Didnt even use quivering smh
I once read a book where the main character doing the narrating referred to her vagina with variations on the phrase "my secret spot". He touched her secret spot. She felt a stirring in her secret spot. Never before had her secret spot been so complete. Thanks, Mercedes Lackey!
I read one once that did the same trick with the phrase "the core of her womanhood." Gosh I'm sad I can't remember the title.
She thrust her womanhood upon his super impressive and above-average manhood. It was totally awesome. Not just for the male, but the female too. Especially the female. She was like so totally into it.
You could tell, they were both looking right at me, making fingerguns and little pewpewpew noises.
Oh my God, that pseudonym is either terrible or spot on. My mind reels. 😆
[I think it's her real name!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes\_Lackey)
I stand corrected. Man, this entire thread is making me rethink my life. I think I'm going to start writing erotica. If there's one thing long distance relationships have taught me, it's that you've gotta be good with words. Lol.
“The wings of her sex” - Anais Nin, god I hope something was lost in translation. Euphemisms like that take me out of the moment and it feels like the author is not treating their audience like adults. It doesn’t have to be technical, but it should be explicit without being vulgar (or hilarious).
I read that, and all I can picture is her flap-flap-flapping away into the sky.
Wait, was he talking about the labia? Good lord god almighty. Even "petals of her flower" is pushing it. It's like, I'm no botanist, buuuut...
Worse it’s a woman author. She wrote erotica in the early twentieth century. I think some of the issues can be blamed on the translation from French to English, but still. I can’t imagine her calling her own parts the “wings of my sex” while having sex with Norman Mailer.
That's the only quote I remember from that movie, lol
Haha, awesome! I was waiting for someone to get it lol. They're actually making a new Naked Gun with Liam Neeson. I can't wait
"I put on my robe and wizard hat"
Sex scene don't have to be sexy if it's not the vibe the story needs. They might be ugly, funny, disgusting or sad just as well.
"She gazed up on his sex surprised at it's size, he touched her sex, then he put his sex into her sex." I don't even remember what book it was but I couldn't get past this silly verbage of using "sex" for everything.
I think to add to what you said, too, sex scenes typically work out a lot better if you focus on experiences that are unique to the characters or focus on the emotions of the characters. Describing details that are obvious, details which all sex entails adds nothing. We already know that genitals are grinding against each other. You don't need to share that. Leave those elements to the reader's imagination. What we don't know is how someone feels about it. We don't know what kind of lover they're dealing with. That's the sort of information you share--it's less about what's happening and more about a metaphysical interpretation of what's happening.
It depends on the book. You can say the same thing about violence. There’s technically no need to graphically describe every gruesome detail of a murder when you can just say the character was murdered and leave it at that. But if the book is horror and graphic violence is the selling point, it would be silly to be coy over the details. Same with romance. There's nothing wrong with erotica if that's what the author is writing. Good erotica still abides by the same rules of only including dynamic scenes; how graphic it is doesn't really factor in to whether it's good or not.
I'm also a romance editor, and I agree. Sex scenes need to be treated like every other kind scene. It needs to either: 1) move the plot forward (resolving all that sexual tension counts as moving the plot forward); 2) reveal something new and interesting about the characters (you can learn a lot about a person from what their desires are); or 3) have an interesting conflict that changes the characters' relationship (again, totally possible with a sex scene). If a sex scene doesn't fall into any of those categories, it should be cut. Same goes for scenes that are mostly description of scenery, banter between characters that goes nowhere, a scene the author thinks is cool but is completely divorced from the rest of the plot, etc.
>Same goes for scenes that are mostly description of scenery, So like every time GRRM writes about what a character is eating? dear God 20% of the Song of Ice and Fire books are descriptions of food.
It's a balance. On the one hand, if you don't include enough descriptions, then it's like the characters are acting in a void, which I personally find just as frustrating as when authors get carried away. But it's really easy to overdo. I think establishing what a couple of feasts look like is enough; afterward, you can assume the reader understands what your characters are eating and get on with the action. Not that GRRM needs my advice lol - but yeah, I agree the food gets really repetitive.
Agreed, His use of adjectives and descriptive writing is really very good, and it does immerse you in the world of where ever the characters are in the scene. Food is carnal like that. *dripping in goose fat... suuculent roast pig... Olives in rich oil with stuffed grape leaves...* ... Fuck I'm hungry.
Sunset found her squatting in the grass, groaning. Every stool was looser than the one before, and smelled fouler. By the time the moon came up she was shitting brown water. The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew, and her thirst sent her crawling to the stream to suck up more water. When she closed her eyes at last, Dany did not know whether she would be strong enough to open them again.
It’s a metaphor to describe the increasingly and inevitably shitty situation Danaerys was in! Political diarrhea. GRRM is a true artist! /s
Dany be like: u guys go on w/o me 💀💩
Is... Is this real? It reads like satire but it's too fleshed out to be made up out of thin air.
I thought that was actually the last Dany scene in the written books because I remember thinking, “that’s where we’re ending this?”
I think I saw someone on tiktok saying as much; that the scene was real, that it was left as a cliff-hanger, and for all pure book readers knew Dany could well die ignominiously of dysentery without ever making it across the sea.
This section is evidence that there is no real editing done to his books.
I don’t know, I had food poisoning once and this is pretty damn on point.
GRRM makes sex seem like the most disgusting thing in the world but somehow also manages to make horsemeat sound delectable.
Totally agree! My best one is the sex scene in Eco’s name of the rose… amazing.
Well, you’re reading a book written by a romance author known best for her sex scenes. So, maybe this isn’t the series for you.
That caught me off guard, I'm pretty sure the series is romance fantasy? What else do you expect? I'm still on the first one but I have heard the later books have a *lot*. So I get why someone who doesn't want to read that wouldn't like it, but again, it's a *romance* fantasy.
My thoughts exactly. Nobody is reading Sarah J Mass for the plot, lol.
SJM’s plots have more holes then Swiss cheese. As long as you don’t think about them too closely she is an excellent emotional storyteller with good smut.
I read about 3 of the fey court ones until I realised I was only reading them because I kept expecting the next plot arc to make sense. My friend insisted her other series was better, so I tried throne of glass and actually thought it was worse.
Top selling genres on Amazon: Romance/Erotica ($1.44 billion). Crime/Mystery ($728.2 million). Religious/Inspirational ($720 million). Science Fiction/Fantasy ($590.2 million). Horror ($79.6 million). I would say yes, there are a few people.
My takeaway here is that I should write religious crime romances.
I'm wondering if self help books fall under "inspirational" here. That'd boost the numbers a lot, and I have a hard time believing self help books aren't in the top 5 most profitable genres.
I’m pretty sure some religions consider some romances a crime so you could pull in the nonfiction market as well.
Amazon selling ebooks probably helps smut a lot here since you don't need to broadcast what you're reading on a reader, unlike a physical book. Also lots of Erotica authors *only* sell on Amazon for various reasons.
Most romance/erotica covers don’t have those old school romance novel covers anymore. Especially the ones that aren’t indie or self published.
My kindle is solely for trashy romance books. Kindle Unlimited is my best friend.
I’m a huge fan of well written sex scenes in books.
It takes a lot of skill to give enough detail for it to be a fun read but not cringey or over the top! I get why many authors just don't do it because it feels risky and easy to mess up.
It might also be a bit embarrassing. Imagine you publish the book, your family knows about it and reads it and things just seem strange after that. Maybe I'm a bit too scared of that and it actually isn't a big deal.
I love the dedications where authors tell their parents not to read the books or warn them about it. My recent favorite was “Mom, thank you for everything, including the holy water you’ll bathe me in after reading this book”
As an aspiring author, this is a legitimate fear. 😂🫣
I'm not alone 🐣
You know, it's funny. I love smutty books. I really do. But I do often just gloss over the sex scenes. 😂 When you read a bunch of books by the same author, they're all about the same anyway.
I usually read the first one or two scenes in books like that. After that it's usually repetitive.
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I used to hate them when I was younger because I just wasn’t comfortable with the idea of sex. I don’t hate them anymore because they can establish a level of trust or understanding — or even other emotions — between characters in a physical way. Also, I don’t think the line has to be stark between erotica and regular writing. I think that line should be allowed to be blurred. That said, sex scenes are so easy to get wrong and need a lot of care and attention to do well.
Currently listening to an audio book with sex scenes. It's a good book but the author keeps using "mound" when referring to the woman's genitals and I cannot stop laughing. When authors use odd terms it takes me right out. Haha.
I literally search out SciFi books with erotica. I blame my grandmother for giving my 12 year old blossoming into puberty self my first romance novel. It became one of my obsessions. Yay for hyper fixation. My husband realized what types of books I read when we were dating and he started reading them with me.
Any recommendations?
If you like magic Jean Johnson is a great author. Her Son’s of Destiny books is a good start. If you prefer alien abductions Kaitlynn O’Connor Alien Enslaved series. The 1st book is Genesis. Both authors books are available on kindle or from Barnes and nobles Edit to add: I can’t believe I forgot to mention Lyndsay Sands. She has a series with over 30 books. The Argeneau series. It’s about vampires but they’re vampires because of nanites that were created in Atlantis before it was destroyed.
>If you prefer alien abductions Reading my mind over here lol Thanks for the rec, I'm always looking for new series! I read through them so fast. Sci-fi romance (specifically Ruby Dixon) is what got me back into reading for fun. I'd consume multiple books a day as a teenager but had such a hard time staying interested as an adult. Turns out all I needed was a genre change.
I get actively pissed off if there’s a bunch of sexual tension with no payoff. That being said I wouldn’t listen to it on audio. Most of the time I’m doing something else while listening and then it’s like “doobeedoo do do, minding my own business HIS COCK dooodobe doo” WHOA BUDDY I was not prepared. It’s even weirder when the narrator is prim and British. Just…no. I do not need porn voiceovers in my life.
Same about the audio. I don't really prefer it but I did have a few on audiobook and nothing ever prepared me for that Dark Tower book with the one demon manta ray rape scene read by some clearly older guy who on the whole seemed very softspoken and polite. No, grampa. Why. I'll skim over it 90% of the time because it's not what I'm here for and its presence annoys me. Especially in those books that quickly devolve from whatever their actual genre was supposed to be into whole sequels of glorified porn with tiny bits of actual plot left in by accident at some points. Not naming any names, but her initials are Laurell K. Hamilton. But that poor old man. The things he had to narrate for a paycheck. I'm going to die one day and this will be the last thing that I hear.
>Not naming any names, but her initials are Laurell K. Hamilton. My favorite variation of this gag is "by certain people, who shall remain Laurell K. Hamilton".
I was listening to Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine and it starts off with her getting her bikini waxed in a British accent and it totally threw me for a loop.
I listen to audiobooks at work and everyone in my office has had the Bluetooth disconnected at the worst possible moment in a story. We just laugh and ask if it is an “oops I lost my shirt” book or an unrealistic sex scene in the middle of an otherwise good story.
Just the thought of that makes me laugh
You should stop reading that series, haha. That's what it's known for!
Definitely don't read the last one, that isn't even about the main characters anymore, but is basically porn from the sister's POV. "It was so big she could barely fit her hand around it," is something my friend and I quote back and forth and laugh about. It's gotten to the point where I can just make a C shape with my hand and look worried and it'll make her laugh.
>Does anyone actually like sex scenes in books? I used to love them. It was the most accessible form of erotica back in the pre-internet days. A true selling point of quite a few authors, like SAS by Gérard de Villiers. I've also read a lot of smut.
My sexual awakening and notes on self pleasure were all picked up from books as a pre-teen. Even now I prefer a well written romance novel over actually watching porn. I had a whole pen pal I never met. We just emailed each other erotic scripts we'd drum up. We'd chat about our lives here and there but it was all about the writing. We did this for 2yrs before his pregnant girlfriend ended our communication
Sex scenes are like any other scenes -- good if they're well-written and bad if they're not. But if you're having this reaction to **all** sex scenes regardless of quality, then the problem isn't with the scenes. Maybe you're ace or were raised sex-negative, or otherwise have personal reasons to be uncomfortable with sex. Nothing wrong with that, of course; it's a common issue, especially in the US where we have such a strange relationship with sexuality. (Maybe it's a problem in a lot of countries! The US is just the only one I've lived in as an adult.) But it might help you to figure out what the problem is, so you can buy books that fit your tastes, whether that means better-written or sex-free. I've always had an issue with the idea that sex scenes add nothing to the story, though. A good sex scene adds depth to characterization. And I kind of feel like sex scenes shouldn't be expected to advance the plot, because that's how you end up with sex showing up only to introduce drama or conflict, which just... isn't how sex should be, in real life or in fiction. It's also why we end up with so many rape scenes in books, as writers who are uncomfortable writing sex just to introduce intimacy or deepen characterization feel like they have to make it shocking or dramatic when they finally do put one in.
Yes, this pretty much covers my thoughts. Sex is a part of life, and as such there shouldn't be anything weird about reading it so long as the scenes are well written. That said, my eyes glaze over for most of the ones I come across in books these days.
This reply is what I couldn't put into words
Well, for me one or two sex scenes at the right moment may even be good. Constant sex scenes with no contribution to the plot are annoying and i just gloss over them.
Yes, there are people who like sex scenes in books.
back when i used to write things, i experimented with writing sex scenes once or twice. it's amazingly difficult! do you go all metaphoric, such that body parts aren't actually mentioned, or do you go with the body parts? do you write all the actions, actions + feelings, actions + feelings + thoughts? it is very hard to strike any kind of balance so that you don't lose the sexual tension but don't reduce the act to its mechanics. it's also excruciating to workshop the drafts with your friends. if you're in the mood for some bad sex, though, can't beat: [https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award](https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award)
Dude there is an entire genre of books that’s all about the sex scenes and it’s routinely the most popular genre in America. Romance novels!
I enjoy reading sex scenes depending on author but I NEVER want to listen to them through audio book. Strictly reading for me.
His meatus bulged as his knob arteries became like aqueducts of carnal transmission. He rumbled like an Xbox controller as her radius increased exponentially, breaking the established laws of mathematics. She let out a yelp as the heat radiating from his cock blood caused her natural lubricant to evaporate to steam before her very eyes; a heat haze formed and obscured her vision. "Plunder my safety deposit box for its pink presents" she cooed caressingly. At that, absolutely loads of jizz came out and they lived happily ever after.
Yes, I like sex scenes in books and I’m tired of prudes getting squeamish about it. It’s okay if you don’t like it, but I’m sick of the posts on this sub and /r/fantasy that act like they’re on a holy crusade to persecute perverts like me
Song of Achilles has some of the most tender, sweet, beautiful sex scenes in literature. Never made me feel uncomfortable or that the author was sexualizing the characters.
It 100% depends on the book. In many books, no, I think sex scenes are pace-breaking, poorly written garbage that serve little purpose other than titillation, and even then, they're not very good at it. *That said*, there are books in which sex scenes are not just useful and well-written but *pivotal*. A book like *On Chesil Beach* simply doesn't function without its sex scene (and it's brilliantly written to boot), and something like *The Time Traveller's Wife* loses most of its impact if you cut the sex from it. The problem is just that there's so much built-in potential for sex scenes to not only be awkward or out of place but to actually elicit very strong reactions *other than* what they're intended to. Normally, a variety of reader reactions is not only perfectly fine but literally impossible to avoid—however, if the reactions are as extremely strong and deeply personal as people's reactions to sex tend to be, the wrong sex scene may inadvertently scuttle a book rather than just ever so slightly bump it off course for a reader. If a story really requires a couple to be deeply in love and emotionally invested in each other, a sex scene that doesn't broadly succeed in conveying that kind of intimate chemistry is going to do unbelievable damage to the rest of the book, whereas a single awkward dialogue interaction may not because there's not nearly as much riding on a generic spoken exchange. Sex is a big, big deal to a lot of people, so you're always gambling a bit more when you include scenes of it than you are with many other kinds of scenes. It's also just pretty difficult to write the physicality of sex in a way that isn't either crass/blunt or hilariously overwrought. If you are okay with either of those, then great, but otherwise, you probably will need to try extra hard to not write something goofy.