Common Mistakes People Get Wrong About Writing Sex

If you are a romance author, one of the most important things you have to do is write a good spicy scene. Now, this is not me saying that there is no room to fade to black romances. The only rule of writing a romance book is that the book must end in a happily ever after (HEA) or Happy For Now.

But for a lot of us, one of the most important parts of writing a good romance is writing spicy sex scenes that leave your audience hot and bothered in the best ways. Yet, there are some misconceptions when writers decide to write this type of romance. Your sex scenes should be hot, but in this post, I am going to show you how to write hot and steamy scenes more effectively that will not only make you a better writer but make your readers happy too. Let’s get into it!

1. Writing Good Sex Is Easy

A lot of people, both in and out of publishing, assume that writing good sex is easy. I often hear ‘How hard can this be? They say this because a lot of people think that their own personal experience will make writing good sex a breeze, or that sex is simply insert tab A into tab B. That is false, and this type of mindset is the quickest way to write mediocre sex scenes.

You have to think outside of your own experience. When writing good sex scenes, not only do you have to think about what your audience thinks is hot, but also the logistics of every participant in this sex act, their feelings, and what you want to achieve by writing it. There are a lot of moving parts to this that no one thinks about. Ask anyone who has participated in porn films or an actor who had to do a good bed scene.

There is a lot of prepping and planning that goes into it. The author who can write a good sex scene with zero preparation is rare, and you should never expect (especially if you are new to this) that you are that rare author that achieve the same result.

2. You Don’t Need Sex Education

Every time I talk about sexual education, when in regards to writing good sex scenes, people scoff at me. It’s the same mentality that I spoke of earlier, of thinking your personal experience will make writing sex easier. The truth is that most people don’t have adequate sexual education. I know I sure as hell didn’t. I got a video in sixth grade talking about how not to get pregnant and a video detailing the best-known STDs.

And this was in the wake of the AIDs/HIV epidemic.

And if you were really unlucky, you got abstinence-only training and purity rings. What I picked up about sex came from things I pieced together via trial and error and, later, my own research. Then add my asexuality on top of that and my autism. Sexual education will not only make you better, but it will also help ground your stories in reality. I will urge you, if you are writing about disabled or trans bodies, that you should take time to do your research because trans and disabled people tend to have sex differently than abled cis people. This is not me saying that you can’t write out-of-pocket sex scenes, but you can’t bend the rules unless you know the rules.

3. Reading Smutty Fanfic and Books Is Not Sex Education

I will admit right here that I fell into that trap. I was stubborn about it because I consume a lot of smutty fanfic and romance books. I have been reading these types of stories all of my life. I thought that since I was reading these types of stories and that I had sexual experiences in my teens and twenties, I didn’t need sexual education.

Then in 2022, I decided to grow and learn more about my craft of writing romance, and I decided to buy a lot of used books about sex and sexual education. Due to my autism and my asexuality, I have a weird relationship with attraction and sexuality. I generally didn’t know how to convey sexual attraction at all, and it’s something even today I struggle with.

But the more I researched and studied sex education the more I realized that a lot of the things I read in fanfic or in smutty books were wrong. For example, I didn’t know that a clit and the prostate are  stimulated in different ways. And that orgasms for those two types of stimulation is very different.

Taking your sexual education from books and fanfic is like playing a very filthy game of telephone. A lot of the stuff in them is either misinformation or misinterpreted in a way that is very different from real life. This is how a lot of readers end up in trouble because they will take what they learn from fanfic or books and try them out in the real world.

4. You Need Real Life Sexual Experience to Write Good Sex Scenes

There is a misconception that you need to be sexually active or have had sexual experience to write good smut. And that is simply not true. Does having real-life sexual experience help? Yes, because there is some things that you can’t grasp unless you have the lived experience.

However, in real life, there are tons of sex repulsed asexual people, people who have never had sex, or are celibate, who write spicy stories. I have actually found that some of the hottest smut I have ever read was written by asexual people. I would also like to mention here that I am bisexual, aromantic, and asexual, and write smutty fanfic and romance books. Sexual orientation or lack of sex life is an obstacle to writing good spicy scenes.

This means that you have to do more research, more preparation than allosexuals or people who are sexually active. A good way to do this is by taking sex education course, reading articles, or books. But also by asking people who have sex or have that lived experience can also add reality and context to what you write.

Another good idea is to choreograph your sex scenes. Katee Roberts famously uses her kids’ action figures and Barbies to get a good visual of everyone’s limbs and what positions she needs her characters to be in. They are wooden dummy dolls that artists use as a tool for perspectives and body movement.

But you don’t have to be sexually promiscuous to write good sex scenes, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

5.  Only Penetrative Sex Counts

I had to unlearn this the hard way because slash fanfic and m/m romance in particular are bad about this. One of the biggest reasons this type of mindset is perpetrated so much in these spaces is that these spaces are primarily full of cishet women. And cishet women from a very early age, due to the patriarchal society we live in, are taught that the only sex that counts is penetrative. Even though most cis women never orgasm by penetration alone.

But as a result, cishet women think the only sex that counts is penetrative. And as someone who has spent a long time in queer spaces, I have learned that is simply not true. A lot of people (more than you realize) don’t like penetrative sex. Actually, 75% of cis women do not experience an orgasm with penetration as the only stimulation. There are a lot of people who will say, “Oh, you just need the right partner, and you will enjoy it.”

And that is utter bullshit.

And it’s not just women who feel this way. A lot of queer men don’t like penetrative sex as well and prefer other forms of sexual stimulation. Oral sex, masturbation, and frotting still count as sex. Not to mention, a lot of women prefer oral or clitoral stimulation to penetrative sex, especially when having sex with other women.

I haven’t even touched on trans sex and how, for a lot of trans people, vagina or anal play is simply not in the cards due to gender dysphoria. Let’s leave this thought that penetrative sex is the only true way to have sex in the dustbin of time, because it’s simply not true.

6. You Don’t Need Kink Education

There are many literary sins E.J. James is responsible for, but perpetrating the thought that if you are writing kink, you don’t need to do any research on kink, to anyone who has even a tiny bit of information on BDSM and the kink community overall. The Twilight fanfiction-turned-New York Times Best Seller and popular movie series is a crime. It’s very clear from the outset that the author E.L. James did not do one link of research on real-life kink or what being safe, sane, and consensual truly means.

This is why even after more than a decade since this book was published, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ still gets a visceral reaction from the kink community.

If you are writing about anything outside of your lived own experience or expertise, your priority should be to do your research. This is not only respecting the real-life people from the community you are depicting, but this is how you stop the spread of misinformation. Read books, watch videos, take courses, and maybe get a sensitivity reader.

And yes, I do believe if you’re writing kink, that maybe you should have someone within the kink community take a look at your book or story before you post it. Again, treat this as if you were writing anything outside your own lived experience.

7. The Education Will End At Some Point

After you brush up on your sexual education, you will think that you are done with it. The thing is, education never ends. I am always consulting my sex education books (they are on a bookshelf right next to my desk) every time I write a sex scene. I will look over diagrams of bodies, read highlighted sections, read an article about kink, and ask my friends.

Writing good sex is not something to learn and master and never use again. It’s like any good skill, you have to constantly hone it by practice and by continuing your education. If writing good spicy scenes is important to you, then you should make sure to prioritize maintaining the skills you have.

Let me tell you, when I first got started writing sex scenes, I didn’t know what I was doing. The moment I open up my word processor, I immediately freeze. It took me six long years to get to the point where I am now, where I can write sex scenes and be satisfied with them. And I still practice, I still read books, still highlight the favorite parts of my books that I find hot as inspiration.

The work never ends.

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And those are my 7 Common Mistakes People Make when writing sex scenes. Did I make a mistake? What do you think of this list? Let me know down in the comments.

 

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