How do you avoid sameness in sex scenes?

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I was wondering how authors avoid sameness across their sex scenes. I don't mean the variety of venues or physical arrangements involved. I feel like my scenes have a certain timbre that I could pick out of a line up of stories. Part of it is because I'm working on a longer story that involves the same characters, but that doesn't entirely account for it. I thought this must be an issue other people have dealt with. Any suggestions?

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It was brought to my attention that my original post would benefit from clarification. I'm finding it hard to cure the vagueness because I do not have a word for the quality I am trying to describe. It's like trying to describe the concept of "taste" or "smell" if we didn't have those words.

Since I don't have the right words, I'll attempt an analogy. Like all analogies, it has its limits, but I hope it will convey the idea. An artist can paint an endless variety of subjects, but his work may still be recognizable. Whether it's use of color, brush technique, etc., the artist's style has a certain "feel" to it. This does not have to be the case. Picasso had an easily identifiable style in cubist or surrealist works, but he was an excellent realist painter. His realist works and his modern works don't look like they were painted by the same person. I would like to create sex scenes that don't feel like they were created by the same person.

I view sex as a sort of physical dialogue. I feel like my scenes all have the same accent. I don't have examples of this that I could show you because the only stories I've published so far involve the same characters, so their "accents" are understandably the same. I don't have this problem outside of sex scenes.

Have you ever realized that you were reading someone's work under a different pen name? You recognize something - you may not even realize exactly what it is - and once you've noticed it, you can find so many similarities that you know with certainty that it is the same author, even if they're writing about different subject matter. I'm concerned my sex scenes might be like that.

I hope that better explains what I mean.

 

[NotWise]

I was wondering how authors avoid sameness across their sex scenes. I don't mean the variety of venues or physical arrangements involved. I feel like my scenes have a certain timbre that I could pick out of a line up of stories. Part of it is because I'm working on a longer story that involves the same characters, but that doesn't entirely account for it. I thought this must be an issue other people have dealt with. Any suggestions?

I'm not sure this question is a fully-formed thought, or maybe it's just hard for me to read.

You're not asking about places or positions, but about attitudes? If so, then I think that's a problem I have. I don't really try to avoid it. It's fundamental to how I write.

Then again, using different characters in different situations should give you variety. If you normally write from a male POV, try writing from a female POV. If you usually write in an unrealistic situation, try writing in a realistic situation. Etc., etc. Change the framework you're writing in. Change what your characters need and want.

 

[Damoiselle]

So, my boyfriend is my editor. He frequently has to encourage me to just get more detailed in my sex scenes, because you know...I'm writing for a porn site, and that makes my tendency to shy away from explicitness a little absurd. The hurdle for me to get over is that I genuinely find emotional tension more sensual to focus than specific physical descriptions. And I realize that's just not the case for most people.

So yeah, when I'm actually having to write the physical details I often feel like I'm floundering, and even more so when I realize I have to do it again and again and change it up. Like, how do I do this without saying the word cock thirty times in a row and wait is that even a problem.

One thing that kind of helps is trying to think of what the tone a specific character would go for. I'm personally a little flowery in how I describe things, which can be a problem when I'm trying to write a guy who would probably just think about bouncy tits.

I guess in the end, the best approach I've landed on is picking your terms and tone (which I realize might speak more directly to your question) based on how you think the perspective character would think. Hopefully getting into the mindset of different characters will guide you into helping things vary.

 

[SimonDoom]

This is a vexing issue. I enjoy writing sex stories but I find that the sex itself is the least interesting part to write. There are only so many ways to describe how part A fits into part B.

The way to mix it up from story to story, I think, is to focus on the emotions and sensations. Think of the sex act not just as a physical act but as the culmination of a drama involving two characters. Write it that way. While the mechanics may not vary that much from one story scene to another, the drama will.

 

[SamScribble]

This is a vexing issue. There are only so many ways to describe how part A fits into part B.

Exactly!

Write a story someone might want to read. Create characters the reader can cheer for (or boo). Include some activity of a sexual nature - but not too much.

Good luck.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The hurdle for me to get over is that I genuinely find emotional tension more sensual to focus than specific physical descriptions. And I realize that's just not the case for most people.

This is a good point. I'll often get to a point in a story or a chapter where I reckon it's about the right place to write a sex scene, but my characters say, "Whoa, sunshine, we're not ready yet," and I circle around it slowly until the emotional scene is set and they let me in. I recognise it now as a 'thing" that goes with my style - and obviously becomes a part of my style - slow burn but setting up the mood so it's "just right." The sex sits on the emotion, not the other way around.

It seems to work, judging by the number of comments along the lines of, "I love that slow build up that you do, but my god it's well worth the wait!"

 

[KeithD]

I try to provide a variety of interesting venues and circumstances. But, yes, after the thousandth sex scene you need to start implementing swinging chandeliers.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

Sometimes it's more erotic to discuss feelings or emotions instead of actions.

As another person said above, there's only so many ways to put a dick in a pussy, mouth or ass.

While I've never intentionally used the same descriptions twice, U;ve been editing all my stories to try and make them better, before reposting them under my new handle, and I've found a few parts that used very similar phrasing.

I've spent a lot of time doing research and looking up definitions and synonyms to make the stories more original.

Remember The first known written fiction was created between 5 and 6,000 years ago. There is not a single writer, including Shakespeare who wrote anything total original.

 

[JuanSeiszFitzHall]

What I try for in a sex scene is to convey what goes on for all of the participants physically, emotionally, and sensorily, with the latter the most immediate for the reader, if not necessarily the most important. The physical part can be thought of as choreography (Part A fitting into Part B), and with the participants not necessarily going about this smoothly, maybe with stops and rearrangements. The emotions are often what lead the participants into the sex, and checking in along the way (by the author) can show if the emotional drives are fulfilled. What the emotions are after the sex can be story-important. So emotions can carry through before, during, and after the sex.

The sensations that the characters experience during the sex, I believe, are what make the scene work (or not). Is a sensation what the character expected? If so, is that a good result? Was it more or less intense than expected? Does the sensation turn out to be something entirely new or different? If so, how does that tie in to the character’s feeling about the other person(s)? The sensations aren’t just orgasms, they can be the buildups towards orgasms, and surprising effects from touch, smell, and taste.

In a sex scene I try to use active verbs, write short clear sentences, and state what’s going through the characters’ minds and bodies.

If the story is part of a series, or is long enough that the characters have already banged several times, the options would be to have the characters become more adventurous (and thus have different sex) or, if they like their same-old comfort zone, let the next sex scene be shorter and less closely observed. If possible, use that scene and the participants’ interaction to advance the plot.

Exactly what sex they have, and how often, arises from who they are. Backstory work can be tedious, especially if you’re not able to include it in the story, but it makes the characters more likely to be interesting to the reader. Know your characters before you throw them together in bed (or backseat, or flowerfield, or urban alley).

https://www.literotica.com/stories/memberpage.php?uid=5116173&page=submissions

 

[KeithD]

Remember The first known written fiction was created between 5 and 6,000 years ago. There is not a single writer, including Shakespeare who wrote anything total original.

You mean since what those written five and six thousand years ago, right? Those would have been original stories.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

I guess in the end, the best approach I've landed on is picking your terms and tone (which I realize might speak more directly to your question) based on how you think the perspective character would think. Hopefully getting into the mindset of different characters will guide you into helping things vary.

That seems like the best approach. It's how I try to work with the characters in any situation. Maybe I'm less successful in creating differentiation in sex scenes because the expression available to the characters is more limited. Just like the problem you and others mentioned of only having so many ways to describe a particular act (or body part), I'm finding it difficult to vary the character's reactions, both physical and emotional.

I'm personally more emotion-driven, but I'm trying to provide more physically oriented content to balance it out. There are only so many descriptors of noises a person makes, even though we know from actual experience that the noises are innumerable. I know what noise my character's supposed to be making, but I don't know how to convey that to the reader. I feel like our language is missing a lot of words.

I'm enjoying your Imperius series, by the way, and I absolutely sympathize with the problem of stories taking much longer to tell than they were supposed to. As one of your readers, I won't mind it a bit, though!

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Amendment to the Original Question

I've edited the original post to add clarification of my question.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

This is a vexing issue. I enjoy writing sex stories but I find that the sex itself is the least interesting part to write. There are only so many ways to describe how part A fits into part B.

The way to mix it up from story to story, I think, is to focus on the emotions and sensations. Think of the sex act not just as a physical act but as the culmination of a drama involving two characters. Write it that way. While the mechanics may not vary that much from one story scene to another, the drama will.

That's how I want it to work and how I'm trying to write it. It's not the mechanics I'm concerned about, although those are necessarily limiting. I want the dramatic context to provide the variation I'm looking for, but I'm not convinced it does. I don't want the reader's emotional response to be the same every time.

I'll think about what you've said and try to find a way to implement it better than I have. I realize I'm making it sound like I write terrible sex scenes. That's not the case (I hope!) I just want to improve them as a physical dialogue that reinforces the dramatic context. I appreciate the advice.

 

[NotWise]

I've edited the original post to add clarification of my question.

Most of us probably write sex in a certain style. I know the sex scenes in my earliest stories here and in my latest stories are written in similar styles--maybe recognizable, but I'd be flattering myself to think they're that distinctive.

I have tried changing things by incorporating elements I've seen in other people's writing (especially from Leslie Marmon Silko's Yellow Woman), but it hasn't really effected my voice all that much. The elements I emulate in other people's writing are probably those that are consistent with my own voice.

That's probably what you have to do if you want to change your voice. Find scene's by other authors and incorporate elements of their style. To extend your analogy, Picasso was a chameleon as far as style went, but he didn't invent realism or surrealism. He learned those styles from other artists and made them his own.

 

[IsItBad]

ideas

you have to totally take yourself out of character

ie.....portray your sex scene not as you would live through it....but in a totally different way.....it helps to look at tons of pics .....see people doing things you've never even known were things....anyway....thats one idea

another is....literally change the way you do sex.....most people spend a lifetime revolving around patterns of behaviors that ultimately all distill down to certain things.....but....the reality is....there are many many ways to skin a cat ...and you CAN teach an old dog or cat new tricks

anyway....i find most people do tend to boil it down to the same ole same ole and it definitely does not have to be so

 

[HeyAll]

The sex has to fit the context of the story.

For instance, if it's a professor/student thing on campus, they're trying not to get caught and the professor is nervous about the taboo.

 

[RelentlessOnanism]

Yeah, it's a real issue. I think, to a certain extent, it's unavoidable. Even the most creative and imaginative writers are going to struggle to come up with endlessly new and innovative ways to describe the sexual act.

Looking back at my own work, there are various tropes and phrases that I tend to fall back on. I think I'll just have to try and pretend it's a deliberate stylistic choice and just hope no one notices.

 

[UsuallyPresent]

In some ways, first-person sex is easier for me to write uniquely than omniscient 3rd person, because I can filter the slot-a-tab-b mechanics thru the character’s POV. This both increases the narrator’s character and lets me alter the fuck recipe - assuming I’m writing different characters, or in a defined timeline. ‘First’ and ‘latest’ instance of a given scenario/sensation are easily discerned as different, after all.

The challenge there becomes how to differentiate between the Nth & n+1th instances, which can be difficult...

 

[Blind_Justice]

The mental state of all involved can play a huge factor in the way a (sex) scene feels to the reader. There is a world of difference between two lovers lounging in bed, languidly caressing each other and slowly escalating versus a heated, rabbit-style fuck in a broom closet, both parties tense beyond belief because any moment, they might be found. The best methods - besides paying attention to the actor's mental state - to shake up things are varying the location, time of day, mood and how the participants got there. Like Simon said, there are only so many ways to put Tab A in slot B, so the "dressing" has to carry some of the weight. Also, as a personal note - no need to repeat over five paragraphs how deep/hard/fast he thrusts or how jubilant she exclaims. Readers have something called "imagination" and given the right stimulus, the rest happens automatically.

In my stories, sex seldom is the driving factor and thus most scenes have wildly varying setups, participants and moods. My lady love claims my best moments are when the scene is awkward - like the sex scene in "Mud & Magic"'s first chapter. I have tried several times to write a short stroker (Faceless Executioner, Nikym's Predicament, Tear's Desire), but each time the story ran away from me and turned into something entirely different. Even if I wanted, my sex scenes seldom feel samey, at least to me.

 

[Damoiselle]

That seems like the best approach. It's how I try to work with the characters in any situation. Maybe I'm less successful in creating differentiation in sex scenes because the expression available to the characters is more limited. Just like the problem you and others mentioned of only having so many ways to describe a particular act (or body part), I'm finding it difficult to vary the character's reactions, both physical and emotional.

I'm personally more emotion-driven, but I'm trying to provide more physically oriented content to balance it out. There are only so many descriptors of noises a person makes, even though we know from actual experience that the noises are innumerable. I know what noise my character's supposed to be making, but I don't know how to convey that to the reader. I feel like our language is missing a lot of words.

I'm enjoying your Imperius series, by the way, and I absolutely sympathize with the problem of stories taking much longer to tell than they were supposed to. As one of your readers, I won't mind it a bit, though!

Thanks, I'm so glad you're enjoying it! It's such a specific example of what we're talking about here. My first chapter of Imperius got lots of feedback that I underplayed the actual sex. For me, the dialogue was enough to get into a sexy mindset but my most reliable criticism was that there was too little foreplay.

Oh my god, I know exactly what you mean about the limitation of language, especially in regards to specific sounds your character makes. We really, really need more words for how people laugh and gasp and moan.

It's a shame most words for laughter relegate the meaning into only easy amusement. As you know, I have a character who sometimes responds with grim, frustrated humor to bad situations, and who once laughed involuntarily at a terrible degree of tension. I want there to be a perfect word for a short, scoffing breath of a laugh, but so far it seems there isn't.

And more than that, gasping moans. When sex happens, especially the flavor I'm trying to evoke, most moans are also gasps, in my experience. But we just don't have enough words.

When it comes to Imperius, the issue is huge for me. My boyfriend and I eventually developed a metaphor: Stew. We like comparing challenges to other challenges, we were seeking about for something I was doing when I would go write and return to him with a story where I lovingly described a silk dress, but then when the sex came it was all like, "She felt his fingers enter her sex," and then like, I just describe his eyes and then she comes, with none of the explicit physical stuff in between. He said it was like I was just bringing him water and carrots, with none of the other important ingredients.

So, now when I actually succeed at presenting the whole picture, his acknowledgment is sometimes along the lines of "That's good stew."

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I think one of things we have to become comfortable with is operating within those limitations as efficiently as possible, which sometimes mean embracing certain repetitions. There's a school of thought that going with "said," over other synonyms is mostly preferable. While I might use, "retorted" at one point or another, I think in general it's better to just say "said."

So, in a choice between "She interjected," versus, "She said, cutting him off," I lean toward the second more even if it seems less efficient. It's just also less distracting for most people.

I think there's a similar issue when it comes to ways to describe the penis and the vagina. Maybe we should just pick our preferred word for that story, and then keep at it. I wrote an incest story where I used both pussy and cunt, and I kind of regret it now.

Not just because there was a comment critiquing my use of the latter as offensive, but because I think it might be more fluid (maybe counter intuitively so) if I had just picked one.


On the other hand, in Imperius I go with mostly "quim," because I think it works for the neo-futuristic style, but I believe I've also used cunt and I think that wasn't too bad. This isn't easy.

 

[NoJo]

"sex scene" does not equal "fuck scene".

 

[Damoiselle]

One thing that has kind of begun to help me over the years is really keeping in mind that we don't perceive the world just directly. Every person is seeing the world through the individual processing machine that is their brain, and there's research to show they our experience and bias can absolutely effect the image rendered.

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-times-evidence-science

^ TLDR, people may have once not really "seen" the color blue, because the ability to see a thing can actually be effected by our knowledge of a way to describe a thing. It's the old college chestnut, "how do I know your blue is the same as my blue?"

Well, I think it works for other things too. If I try to remember going in that the character I'm writing is distinct for me, and they will see things differently from me. Feeling can shape perception. I can't necessarily just make myself see the world differently, but if I go into remembering that the world *can* be seen differently, I think it helps.

 

[Maeven_quinn]

Sometimes it's more erotic to discuss feelings or emotions instead of actions.

As another person said above, there's only so many ways to put a dick in a pussy, mouth or ass.

Yeah, SimonDoom said it, but this is the key though right

There are only so many ways to describe "she took his dick in her mouth."

But there are an infinite number of emotional, circumstantial states that can make that interesting. "Sure she loathed him for what he did to his sister, and yet he didn't even know who she was. All she had to do was get past one awful hurdle, and then her sister would be out of jail. She took his dick into her mouth."

 

[ElectricBlue]

Looking back at my own work, there are various tropes and phrases that I tend to fall back on. I think I'll just have to try and pretend it's a deliberate stylistic choice and just hope no one notices.

Or, accept that those tropes and repeated images ARE the foundation of your style and precisely the reasons your readers have favourited you as a writer, why they come back to your stories and want more. I can't imagine how my readers would react if suddenly my stories didn't have endless long scenes in gardens and cafés or women shedding beautiful clothes and combing their long black hair. Where's EB gone? they'd ask, I don't like these blonde minxes in short skirts. "Wait, what?" said Suzie .

Have you ever realized that you were reading someone's work under a different pen name? You recognize something - you may not even realize exactly what it is - and once you've noticed it, you can find so many similarities that you know with certainty that it is the same author, even if they're writing about different subject matter. I'm concerned my sex scenes might be like that.

Coming back to the OP's re-statement of their original question - if you're writing the same characters in the same story line, why is that sameness a problem? Isn't it going to jar readers out of their engagement with your story if they get to the second sex scene with the same characters and suddenly the narrative voice shifts, or the style changes, and (to take your art analogy) suddenly they're seeing Les Demoiselles d'Avignon when previously they were seeing the Blue Period? That's going to disrupt the flow, isn't it?

Or are you saying the rest of your narrative is Les Demoiselles, but every time you hit the sex scenes, damn, there's the lady in blue again? If the problem is the latter, then you need to unpick how you're writing the non-sexual narrative, your phrase and sentence cadence, your choice of words, etc., and make sure you're keeping those style tropes consistent across both plain narrative and sex narrative.

I guess, for me, it's understanding exactly what it is that defines your style and if that's what draws in your readers - and if you want to keep giving them that. Don't know if that helps - not even quite sure what I'm saying. Something about knowing what it is that defines your style and keeping it consistent within any given story.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I think one way to overcome sameness in a story is the same way successful couples overcome it in real life, by changing something, altering the circumstances somehow.

For example... It’s his 30th birthday. Big line there. So they go to a fancy resort, rent a luxury suite. Does that offer any differences? Of course - the hot tub, the elevator, the view out the window, the availability of a hotel masseuse, room service, a different feel to the pillows. Everything is different to s9me extent from at home, even if it’s still Tab-A-in-Slot-B. And every difference gives the writer a different experience to explore and describe.

Even if it’s at home in the same bed, we can always find something on which to hang a tale - bitchy boss at work causes him to come home in a bad mood or he gets home to find her up a ladder trying to change a lightbulb or they‘re planning a vacation. It’s all grist to our mill.

Edit. One of my favourite writers is the late Greg Clark, who did the most wistful short stories for many years. One was after he was asked where he got his ideas. His answer was to find ways to make every experience unique. He gave the example of being in WW2 London as a correspondent. He walked into a bar and, to his surprise, saw his brother, a senior Air Force officer, at a booth with a couple of other men. They hadn’t seen each other for a very long time. Rather than simply going over and saying hello, Clark sent the waiter over asking for his brother’s autograph. Joe naturally came to find out who was asking... A simple chance meeting was turned into a heartwarming two or three-page yarn.

There are always ways around the banal or ordinary. Our craft or art is finding them.