Sex

Yup!  It has come to this.  Sex is the topic for tonight. Not sweaty, moaning, body aching sex that is had with another person.  I don't even remember that kind.  Nope, I am committing the ultimate switch-and-bait as I want to discuss sex in literature/fiction.

The other day on my FB profile, I took an informal survey about 50 Shades of Grey. I have just finished The Hunger Games trilogy and I thought that maybe something a little saucy would be fun. I have heard that it's pretty kinky, so vicarious living might be a good thing. 

I was surprised at how many friends gave the book a big thumbs down. Poor writing, one complained. Story drags a bit, said another. Hype and not really sexy proclaimed another.  Overall, more shoulder shrugs than I was expecting. That got me to thinking about what we as readers expect when it comes to sex scenes in a book or short piece of fiction.

I have two sex scenes in my novel.  Neither are particularly explicit, though the first one is a little more detailed.  I pull out of both scenes before I have to say anything like "he plunged into her waiting and wet womanhood with a lifetime of pent-up passion coursing through his veins" (I don't even know how to write like that. To be honest, I don't know if people actually write like that.  Probably, just better than what I could muster). I leave the juicy tidbits up to the reader's imagination.  It's fairly obvious what is about to happen in both scenes and I just don't think the reader needs or even wants me to connect the dots. Besides, by the time I got to the second scene, I was giggling uncontrollably.  Not the case with the first one.

Is less better? Does it depend on how artfully the scene is written?  Anais Nin has some very graphic descriptions in her stories and I don't object.  Yet, she might be the only author I have read who aims to be sexually graphic (other than Ginsburg).

I've decided against 50 Shades of Grey.  I don't mind sex (are the gods listening out there), but I'm not sure that I'm interested in a book where that has been the big selling point.  I mean, I've seen porn and it's pretty stupid.  I prefer to use my brain a little more productively.