What Makes a Sex Scene Good?

It’s time for another one of my guest posts over at Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi’s Writers Helping Writers site. As one of their Resident Writing Coaches, I’ve previously shared:

• insights on how to approach an overwhelming revision
• how to increase the stakes (the consequences for failure) in our story
• 7 ways to indicate time passage in our stories (and 2 issues to watch out for)
• how to translate story beats to any genre
• how and why we should avoid episodic writing
• how to find and fix unintended themes
• how “plot” holes can sneak into our characters and worldbuilding
• how TV shows can help us learn to hook our readers
• what we can learn from stories that successfully break the rules
• how to ensure revisions aren’t creating rips in our story
• how to create strong story goals that won’t slow our pacing
• how to keep readers supportive through our characters’ changes
• how to use bridging conflict to kick off our story’s momentum
• how to create the right pace for our story (and make it strong)
• how to make the “right” first impression for our character
• what options we have if our story doesn’t fit the usual approach to conflict
• 3 ways to improve our use of tropes (because they aren’t all bad)
• knowing when to treat our setting like a character
• how we can make setting details meaningful rather than boring
• how to fix broken stories by delving into story structure
• how a focus on the plot arc vs. the character arc affects our story
• understanding scenes and sequels and figuring out a good balance
• how to create story stakes that matter and give meaning
• how to know when a deeper POV might hurt our story
• how and when we can use foreshadowing
• understanding our character-arc options in shorter stories
• how to define our story by using questions from journalism
• how to use (and not abuse) the “lampshade” technique
• how to portray close relationships (from friends to lovers)
• how to avoid giving readers déjà vu when repeating information in a book series
• the difference between flashbacks and dual timeline (and when to use each)
• how to strengthen our story with tropes
• how to intertwine themes to add depth to our story
• how to keep our series fresh with “similar but different” storytelling
• using context to deepen our writing (and differentiate our stories from AI slop)
• what creates great storytelling (and how can we improve)

With this turn for another coaching article at WHW, I’m looking at steps that can help us write uncomfortable scenes. Awkwardness, complex emotions, and tricky descriptions (and so on) can make it difficult to summon our muse and get into the writing mindset.

Number one on many authors’ lists for uncomfortable scenes to write is a sex scene, especially a non-cringe-inducing sex scene. So in my guest post, I’m using my experience as a romance author to share ideas that can help us get past discomfort, and then in this post, I’m sharing how I applied those steps to a scene example (and don’t worry, we’re sticking to PG-13 in these posts *smile*).

Note: Of course what makes a sex scene “good” is very much a subjective measure. However, for the purposes of this post, we’re exploring how to make a sex scene good for the overall story—its storytelling, pacing, character development, etc. In other words, we’re talking about writing sex scenes that matter to the story.

Writers Helping Writers: Resident Writing Coach Program

First, learn how to approach any type of uncomfortable scene in my guest post at WHW:

Ooo La La: 5 Steps to Write Uncomfortable Scenes

Come visit my guest post, where I’m sharing 5 steps that will help us focus on storytelling to more easily write uncomfortable scenes, including:

• understanding the role the scene plays in our story
• giving the scene more purpose and ties to our story
• thinking about what emotions and experience we want for readers
• developing a writing “toolbox” of appropriate words, descriptions, and emotions
• narrowing our focus to our character’s point of view

Then, come back here to check out an example of how those steps helped me write a sex scene that matters…

(Obviously, some stories may include sex scenes that don’t matter. The writing craft of those scenes may still be very good. However, as I mentioned above, the purpose of this post is to explore how to make a sex scene matter to the story, and that means looking at sex scenes from a storytelling perspective.)

Case Study: The First Sex Scene from Ironclad Devotion

If you’ve ever come across examples of supposedly well-written excerpts and been unimpressed, you understand the difficulty of reading out of context. When we’re reading a scene normally, we have insights and emotions carrying over from the previous scenes of the story. We get where the characters are coming from, we know their motivations, and we understand their worries. We know why they’re not “just doing A, B, or C” and instead exhibiting behavior that might seem stupid out of context.

Especially with any type of high-emotion scene, such as a sex scene, even the best writing can feel melodramatic out of context. In an excerpt, there’s no context or history for what led to this point, we don’t see the triggers that led to an emotional outburst or know how the issue was touchy for the character, and so on.

Put that together with my promise to keep these posts PG-13, and you know why I won’t be quoting from the case-study scene. Instead, I’m going to talk about Ironclad Devotion‘s first sex scene from the perspective of storytelling and the Steps shared in my guest post.

Step #1: Identify the Scene’s Storytelling Purpose

In the story Ironclad Devotion, the heroine is a faerie who needs to absorb positive energy from those around her to remain on Earth (and she has a life-and-death reason for wanting to remain). Just prior to this scene, she experienced a massive loss of energy, so she’s desperate to find good vibes immediately.

In this moment, there are only two others close enough who could possibly act (unknowingly) as a source of positive-emotion energy. One is a child suffering from major pain and exhaustion and the negative emotions of betrayal—not helpful to the heroine. The other is the hero love interest.

Bingo. We have a storytelling reason for the heroine to evoke positive emotions in the hero, despite the risk of changes in the plot, character, and relationship arcs. She’s risking exposure to someone she has to work with, and even though she assumes it won’t be an issue due to her magical ability to erase memories, the act goes against her personal code of caution.

The scene isn’t gratuitous, as it changes everything between the characters and their relationship and is a major turning point in the plot. The rest of the story wouldn’t exist without this scene.

Step #2: Expand How the Scene Ties into the Story

However, even though a scene is necessary to a story, there’s often more we can do to make it matter to the story. For this, I recommend exploring the Scene Elements list to meaningfully tie a scene to the story in multiple ways. Every scene, even a sex scene, should have at least 3 reasons for existing.

We’ve already identified that this scene acts as:

• a plot point (she’s low on energy)
• a character’s goal (she identifies the hero as her only potential source of energy)
• action to advance the plot (she decides to approach the hero for energy)
• action to increase the tension (she’s going against her personal code and risking exposure)
• character motivation (she desperately needs energy immediately)

In addition, the scene also ties into the story in other ways. She thinks she can “shortcut” a way to get energy from the hero (i.e., no sex required), but instead, his reaction to her reveals that she’s more vulnerable to him than to any other human. (In a scene from the beginning of the story, he learns a detail about her that gives him some measure of control over her, even though he doesn’t realize it yet.) In fact, the exposure risk she thought she could erase instead becomes larger and irrevocable.

So looking at the rest of the Scene Elements list, this sex scene also ties in with:

• a cause of character conflict (she loses control to him)
• how stakes are raised (she’s now exposed)
• worldbuilding (how the detail he learned about her grants him control)

I could go on with additional ways the scene ties into the story, but I think these examples are enough to demonstrate that it should be easy to find at least 3 reasons for a scene to exist. If we’re struggling to find 3 reasons, we might need to rethink the scene.

In this case, it’s apparent that the story wouldn’t work without this scene. The scene really does matter to the story.

Step #3: Determine the Reader Experience

For this scene, I thought it most important for readers to understand the heroine’s motivation to go against her personal code. Previous scenes had explored why she’s worried about taking certain risks, and readers needed to fully understand those risks and yet why she has no choice in this moment.

In a romance, it can be easy to throw characters together and then just assume that—because of the genre—it’s obvious that the characters “belong” together. However, I prefer writing romances that depict healthy relationships, and that means I have to show all the reasons why these characters bring out the best in each other.

For this story, both of the characters struggle with trusting anyone. So these characters learning to trust each other is a big part of their growth, their relationship arc, and the story’s theme. Therefore, this scene, where she’s forced into a vulnerable situation and has no choice but to trust him is a huge turning point in the overall story.

I wanted readers to understand why she doesn’t trust or take risks usually, why she didn’t have a choice in this moment, and then I wanted readers to feel the shock of learning that he has control over her. That twist leads to a strong subtext of domination throughout the scene (that has made readers say it was one of the sexiest sex scenes they’d ever read *grin*).

In addition, for sex scenes in particular, part of determining the reader experience is deciding on the “heat level” of a scene—how “spicy” the scene will be.

With this case-study scene, I knew this had to be an open-door sex scene because I had to show her complex emotional changes and vulnerable admissions, reveal her worries and motivation changing throughout the scene, and let readers see how she finds a way to still reach her goal and get the tiniest amount of reassurance back from the hero. Also, as the heroine is a blunt character, the descriptions throughout this scene weren’t going to be flowery or euphemistic language.

In other words, my genre (paranormal romance), my characters (straightforward and blunt), and reader expectations (paranormal romance is usually on the spicy side) all determined how detailed this sex scene should be. And the complex emotional journey gave me the emotional touchpoints to focus on throughout the scene to bring readers along for ride.

Step #4: Develop a Toolbox of Appropriate Words, Descriptions, and Emotions

At this point, we should know what the scene needs to accomplish and why it matters to the overall story—and to readers. Now, we need a writing “toolbox” of techniques that give us the how we should write the scene.

As I mentioned above, knowing the type of sex scene I needed to write, with the level of detail, story situation, and character point of view, I knew the toolbox I needed to use for the writing itself. For example:

• My blunt heroine meant that I needed to use more explicit language.
• My goals for the reader experience meant I could use minimal visual and physical descriptions (just enough to set the scene) and instead keep the focus on the emotional aspects.
• My heroine’s emotional journey swings from one extreme to another, so I could use all the techniques I knew to capture her emotions.

However, what’s appropriate for a paranormal romance sex scene is going to be different from what’s appropriate for intimate scenes in another genre. But this means that a well-written sex scene requires an author to like and respect their genre enough to read within it.

We won’t know what will strike readers as cringe-worthy or too flowery or melodramatic unless we read other examples to see what readers expect. Those examples will help us know what’s appropriate for our story.

I’ve read widely within the whole romance genre, so I’ve built up that toolbox over many years and was ready with the right tools for writing this scene. If we haven’t done that pre-research before writing, we’re more likely to struggle or need to catch up.

(I’ve written more about how to approach this step in previous posts: Dread Writing Sexy Scenes? 5 Tips for Success and Sexy Scenes: Open Door or Closed Door?)

Step #5: Focus on Our Character’s Point of View

Like many authors, I use a deep point of view (POV) for my writing. Using a deep POV can also be the most important (and helpful) tip for writing uncomfortable scenes.

If we can deeply put ourselves into a character’s shoes, suddenly our discomfort or awkwardness doesn’t matter. Believe me, I’ve written some scenes that would freak me out to experience, but it only matters what my characters think of the situation.

One of the worst things we can do is let our awkward feelings infect a sex scene, unless we want readers to have that awkward feeling as well. And if our characters are “into” the scene, a deep POV will help our writing and will help us deliver the experience we want to readers.

As I mentioned in the guest post, writing from within this deep point of view can also help us avoid the clichés of sex scenes. After all, our character should be unique, which means how they approach and react to intimacy should be unique as well.

However, what if our genre or the rest of the story doesn’t use deep POV? After all, deep POV isn’t the right choice for every story.

In that case, we can still put ourselves deeply into our character’s perspective to get the benefits of less awkwardness and avoiding clichés. But when it comes to our writing techniques, we can add back in filtering words, thought tags, and so on (the writing techniques that create distance between a character and the reader).

In other words, for non-deep POV stories, we can put ourselves deeply into the character’s shoes for knowing what to focus on in the scene, but then use our story’s actual POV for the writing itself.

For Ironclad Devotion, using deep point of view helped me write sex scenes that flow with the story, reveal character traits, force the characters to change, and evoke emotions in readers. In this first sex scene, the heroine and hero both have to face uncomfortable truths about themselves. That vulnerability brings them closer together than either planned, yet at this early stage in their relationship, they still find ways to protect themselves from the emotional fallout. Readers experience that entire emotional journey.

Throughout the whole story of Ironclad Devotion, these same Steps apply, so none of the sex scenes would exist in any other story. That also means there’s no risk of feeling repetitive—either with other sex scenes in the story or with my other books. Each scene is unique and fits the situation within the story at that time.

Each scene adds to the story. They matter to the story.

Add that with details that feel authentic and true to the character and their situation. Focus on creating the experience for readers that you want. And as long as our writing craft is solid, chances are the scene—no matter how sexy—will be “good.” *smile*

Have you struggled to write sex scenes or other uncomfortable scenes? What helped you get through the struggle? Do you have other advice to add? Do you have any other thoughts or questions about this topic? (My WHW posts are limited in word count, but I’m happy to go deeper here if anyone wants more info!)