What makes a - not good, but GREAT sex tale?

[CharleyH]

I have pretty much stopped reading Lit tales. I am sure I've bypassed some good stories in the process. However, I've often read tales on Lit that are little better than the (sadly) Hollywood blockbuster called 'Twilight: New Moon'.

Pathetic romance (I forgive the absence of sex because it's a teen flick), but as a romantic drama it should at least have contained sexual tension. It did not, amongst other things.

We talk of emotion in sex stories, but what about sexual tension in our stories? Isn't sexual tension the basic conflict in any sex story?

 

[The_Fool]

I have pretty much stopped reading Lit tales. I am sure I've bypassed some good stories in the process. However, I've often read tales on Lit that are little better than the (sadly) Hollywood blockbuster called 'Twilight: New Moon'.

Pathetic romance (I forgive the absence of sex because it's a teen flick), but as a romantic drama it should at least have contained sexual tension. It did not, amongst other things.

We talk of emotion in sex stories, but what about sexual tension in our stories? Isn't sexual tension the basic conflict in any sex story?

It's all about the foreplay.

 

[CharleyH]

It's all about the foreplay.

Thank you.

 

[oggbashan]

It's all about the foreplay.

But not too much or the reader gets bored, nor too little or the reader will be disappointed.

I'm guilty of both errors.

Og

 

[Stella_Omega]

It's not about the foreplay, it's about the release after the tension. If you've built up the tension well, you get a better climax. Ogg is right, it can be tricky...

 

[CharleyH]

It's not about the foreplay, it's about the release after the tension. If you've built up the tension well, you get a better climax. Ogg is right, it can be tricky...

I agree that creating sexual tension is tricky, but I am saying that it is sexual tension that ultimately makes a story HOT. It's physics: there can't be a good release without appropriate tension.

 

[Liar]

Tension, urgency and risk taking. Would a story be really hot without some sense of danger?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Tension is tension. Hemingway talked about it. Tension begins the exact moment the fish tastes your bait and you feel the line pull. Or boxers touch gloves. Or you get a peek at her charms.

 

[sr71plt]

It takes two to establish a great tale of anything. Both the writer and the reader. The writer only has the one shot with a story--but there's an infinite variety of readers. Quite often the hardest to please are just that and it's not the writer's problem or fault.

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Leave out expressions like "40DD", "10 inches" and "Poop Chute" and concentrate on the emotional content. The rest is just useless.

 

[driphoney]

Finding the crux of why there is tension is hard I think. Hard for me anyway. Sprinkling in the little turn-ons, generating the background tension throughout the piece; those nuances are hard to create. I can do pretty decent snappy dialogue occasionally, but it's more than that.

But I think it's more than tension that's needed for a truly great sex scene. I have to be invested in the characters in some way, there has to be a depth of feeling, a connection.

 

[lance gt]

JJ has it right. Emotions are what make each and every otherone's points valid. Tension is caused by evoking sexual feelings between two characters and building and playing on those feelings brings the reader into it with their own experience of it. The intensity of their interaction in what they feel for each other in terms of intimate knowledge, desire, passion, are what create that level of reflective emotion a reader is looking for to get involved in. They are the key elements in bringing realism and purpose to the story.

 

[mikey2much]

Writing sex is the same as any other type of story

Writing a sex story is no different than writing any other type of story. You need to have characters that the reader will care about. You have to make a story draw the reader in to the point that the reader feels the tension.

I think that JJ is right in her post that you can’t get there describing the bodies of the characters, you need to develop them as people.

Ogg is right about it being a hard balancing act. I seem to err on the side of too much background on my characters and I think that it cost me readers.

 

[Tarakin]

I'm a firm believer in storylines, but then again my scores aren't that great, so I may err in this...

 

[Stella_Omega]

I agree that creating sexual tension is tricky, but I am saying that it is sexual tension that ultimately makes a story HOT. It's physics: there can't be a good release without appropriate tension.

There are so many women that agree with you, Charley. They've even given it its own genre designation; UST, for Unresolved Sexual Tension.

I like Driphoney's remark, that the Why of it is important.

Mikey2much, how have you been?

 

[mikey2much]

Hi Stella

How is the world treating you these days? I have been lurking in the shadows here but now I have a bit more time so I am trying to write again. You have any new stories?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Tension: Characters gotta want or dread something thats important to them and the reader. Tension is the creation of expectation that the want or the dread will happen. The expectation is created by clues and hints that validate one or the other or both. The best tension leads to a confounded outcome the reader never suspects. I'm thinking of the old joke about the smartest Democrat in the world.