On showing vs telling (while writing porn)

This is the ninth in a series relating to how writing sex in fiction is beneficial to you as a writer. The previous post can be found here.

I wasn’t intending to write this post, but halfway through the previous one I realised that I was giving advice from a perspective of ‘showing’ very many details which may not be conventionally considered vital to a good sex scene. This is on purpose, because highlighting character humanity and small details are things that draw the reader into the story; but it’s by no means intended to be prescriptive, nor is it the only way to write a scene (and nor should it be).

Every writer starts out with ‘show don’t tell’. Most writers get given that phrase as their first piece of advice. It’s a vital piece of advice, and most writers who stick at it then go on to a phase in their development of ‘purple prose’. This, also, is a vital stage of writing, because it’s one of the places where writers actually learn to develop their own voice. Anyone can write too little; anyone can write too much. (And everyone, at some stage, will.) But one of the things which makes a writer’s voice individual is where they land on the scale in-between those extremes.

I’ve been using the word ‘porn’ loosely and tongue-in-cheek: but the fact is that my sex scenes are more like erotica. The main difference between them is that porn is just about the sex; erotica tends to have plot, emotion and character arcs. There’s nothing wrong with either, but in very broad strokes they can also represent the two extremes of ‘tell more than show’ and ‘show more than tell’, with a sexual medium.

Personally speaking, I don’t write sex just to be titillated. Or, I do, but part of the titillation involves the characters’ foibles and needs, their humanity (broadly defined given that not everyone writes sex between humans). For me a sex scene without those things might be hot, but it’s forgettable, and I’d much rather read the other.

For other people it’s going to be different. If a writer wants to focus on writing the sex, only the sex, with only the physical sensations and lacking the feeling or too much of the character emotion, that’s a valid choice. Doing so (and learning how to do so well, which is the important part) trains that writer how to write with less description, how to make every word count to get their point across successfully (in this case, their goal is most likely to titillate the reader, even if the reader is only themselves).

I do encourage people to write sex with a perspective as to the feeling, awkwardness and foibles of the participants, however, because that teaches the other side, and it’s easier to take out than try and fill in. What’s important to say? What’s too much? Where’s the line between making characters seem over-dramatic or just tightly wound? I mentioned in the post on writing character emotion that it’s possible to make emotions overblown: that is exactly this principle in action. It’s an over-description of its own, a form of lending too much weight to something which really doesn’t need it.

I started out this series from a position that the only way a writer can really be free to use the correct words is if they’re unafraid to use any word, as long as that use, or that lack of use, is conscious and considered. (A reminder: when I say writers ought to be unafraid of words, I’m not saying this means we have carte blanche to use them inappropriately and without regard for the impact on our audience.)

Writing with a focus only on the physical aspects of sex is valid, but if that’s all a writer ever writes, they’re holding back their own development. (And, of course, the reverse: a writer who only ever writes with a lot of description is ignoring the ability to write with fewer words.) Dean Wesley Smith once said something to the effect that a good writer will start out writing sparsely, go on to writing densely, and then many of the best writers will go on to writing sparsely again. The difference is that the second time around, they’re doing it on purpose.

Now, he was talking specifically about word-use (ie, how many words are actually needed to grab the reader and convey intention), but the premise is similar to both the development of author voice and the development of the skills needed to know how much focus is needed for a given scene.

Your author voice will turn out to be somewhere in the middle of ‘lacking description’ and ‘purple prose-y’. Thanks to all the different techniques you can focus on learning while writing sex, it’s a lot easier to figure out where you’re most comfortable on a level of focus. That is going to be your default, where you shine; your comfort zone. That’s the place where someone reading your work will recognise you, often before you even realise you have that comfort zone.

The skill, on the other hand, is a necessary tool to controlling the narrative and its tones. Do you want to focus on the awkward shenanigans, or do you want your characters to come off as suave and cool? Do you just want the sex, or do you want the emotions with it? Do you just want character-emotion porn, or are there going to be plot aspects? Your answer is going to change from scene to scene, story to story. There’s no one right answer, only a technique to develop and wield as you need it.

The first sex scene I ever read was plot-dependent, so it didn’t linger overmuch on the sex (half a page, maybe). The sex scenes I read next, in a different series by a different author, were pretty much gratuitous fantasy (pages long). Different stories, different needs, and those two things will hold true even if the author is the same. The point is that the author knows it, and can do it on purpose, and on levels which don’t just involve sex scenes.