Love and Rockets: Integrating Sex Scenes in your SFRs
AUTHOR: Jennifer Dunne

Hot. Steamy. Sexy. Spicy. Whatever you call it, readers want to read it, and publishers want to buy it. As sf romance writers, we have the added benefit of being able to get as creative and adventurous as we want with our characters' sex lives and being able to tuck it under the umbrella of worldbuilding.

I'm a naturally sensual writer and have been writing hot love scenes since my first book, Raven's Heart, where the hero and heroine spent most of the book "technically not having sex." My latest book, Sex Magic, has the highest steam quotient yet, filled with explicitly detailed magical spells that just happen to be exquisite sexual acts.

The single most important thing to remember about writing sex scenes is that they are *scenes.* The action (read: hot monkey sex) is not sufficient on its own. It must contribute to character or conflict and maintain tension in the reader. Remember my comment about characters' sex lives being part of worldbuilding? Too much sex (i.e. it doesn't advance character or conflict) in a book can be just as boring as long, detailed descriptions of the history of the Andalusian invasion of 2012. The key, as with all aspects of worldbuilding, is to use only those pieces that are integral to the book's plot.

Consider a couple who is madly in love and wants to express that love by having the aforementioned hot monkey sex. They agree on a time and place, and nothing interrupts them during their glorious three-hour interlude. They're happy, but your reader won't be. Your reader will start skimming the sex to get back to the *story.* Those scenes are superfluous.

So how do you make the sex scenes integral to the plot? (That's a much better solution than cutting the sex scene, right?) As with regular scenes, use the "Yes, but..." strategy. In the above example, if the couple wanted to get together on a space station for hot monkey sex, but her ship didn't arrive until 6pm and he was due to ship out at 8pm, their coming together would be fraught with tension.

That's an external tension. You can develop character and conflict at the same time by using internal tension. Two techniques are having characters try to hide something about how/why they're making love (e.g. he's a vampire or he's really doing a magical spell) and using sex for an ulterior motive (e.g. to transfer magical energy, to silence someone's questions, or to distract someone enough to answer questions). But my favorite technique is when the characters have an unbreakable external reason to avoid having sex (e.g. he has to remain chaste, she's been injured, or dire consequences will result from consummation). They must then use creative problem solving to find a way to be intimate. That allows for inventive and innovative sex that is integrated into your story, rather than seeming like you were working your way through the Karma Sutra as you wrote.

As far as actually writing the scene, it's best if you write about what turns you on, not what you think will arouse your readers. Readers respond to your emotions coming through your characters, even if the activity is not something that they'd normally find arousing in real life. Or, as my editor at Ellora's Cave puts it, "You've got to squirm while you're writing it for them to squirm while they're reading it."

Use the level of language that you feel comfortable with. There are a lot of writers who equate explicit sex with gutter talk. My keyboard would seize up if I tried to write that way...so I don't. As long as you're not so euphemistic the reader doesn't know what you're talking about, you're okay. Even making up words in your alien terminology is fine, so long as they're clear from context.

Lastly, have fun. The only limits are what you impose on yourself, so you're free to explore all your wildest fantasies or just revel in your physical side. Sex is best when there's no performance anxiety. Just write what you feel and let what happens, happen.

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Jennifer Dunne has integrated explicit sex scenes into the plots of Raven's Heart, Dark Salvation, Shadow Prince, The Tower, and Sex Magic. www.jenniferdunne.com