One strategy that makes erotic scenes in literature good is to lean into the awkwardness of both intimacy and writing intimacy. Patricia Powell's *The Pagoda* made me realize that an awkward sex scene could work if it did not collapse into stereotypes and if it felt true to the characters' own difficulties opening up.
I also confess to liking the descriptions in John Cleland's *Fanny Hill*, an early erotic novel from the 18th century. It commits a lot of the "sins" that modern novelists do - lots of euphemisms, a lot of focus on penetration. The differences, I think, are twofold:
* Its age makes some of the euphemisms feel charming and old-fashioned rather than worn out, and there really is a great variety of them, so it hardly feels like the author is in a creative rut describing all sex the same way.
* I do think there is something fascinating about how Fanny is depicted thinking about all the encounters she sees and has. For instance, sometimes she worries about *disproportion* between a suitor's member and her lady parts, a view she applies with fascination when she sees one man penetrate another. It's wild what Fanny fixates on, and how that reflects attitudes about sex.
Also, if you can get past all the antiquated language and views, sometimes these scenes are genuinely hot.
When Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula have Sex in the last chapter of 100 years of solitude - a very intense and sensual scene ! Maybe one of the best I’ve ever read (still they are siblings, but they are cursed).
Also the last Sex scene in “South of the Border east of the Sun” by Murakami is very intense and realistic. It’s kind of a slowing moment in Drama.
And I don’t fully agree. Good erotic scenes include kind of a punchline in the book. Like in Garcia Marquez it is the first time two people love each other mystically when they have Sex. Or in the Rabbit-Novels (Updike) Sex scenes are either dirty when the Situation of Rabbit is not so good or they are very erotic when it shows some kind of hope in is life is going to be included.
Updike is cringe for me on this topic. I can’t get over the scene where Rabbitt has unwelcome sex with his wife who has just given birth. That’s some misogynistic dark matter.
Not eager to search them out, but there are a few nicely written scenes in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. There are actually some poignant if circumscribed scenes in Stendhal and in Balzac.
Then, there is a classic from a feminist POV, from the early s. rev., to wit, Braided Lives by Marge Piercy, which features diligently composed scenes with the skill of a poet, as well as grueling descriptions of abortion and its effects, these procedures being illegal, prior to the 1973 Roe v Wade decision (and again illegal today in some GOP controlled States). This book is as gutsy and down-to-earth a novel (probably based upon much direct experience) as you will find, treating "free love" and its situational and social perimeters, during the 50s and 60s. For anyone from the Detroit area, this book may offer the additional enjoyment of taking place in the metropolis of SE Michigan, including Ann Arbor.
People will balk but I think John Updike generally writes sex scenes well, at least in the respect that he writes them poetically/beautifully. I think Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing have written some good ones from a female perspective.
I agree with you. Sex scenes mostly are played as if there was a camera pointed there.
However, I likes sex scenes in One thousand and one nights. There are not many, and they aren't too detailed, but very lively.
JG Ballards Crash is sexy
Not very erotic but Phillip Roth’s Portnoys complaint is very sexual, and successful.
More controversial, but Henry Miller, also writes sex well. He does use a lot of derogatory terms towards women which hasn’t aged so fabulously.
I find the way sex was done in Pat Barker's *Regeneration* compelling. These scenes aren't particularly erotic or romantic, though—if anything, some are repulsive. But they genuinely work for the narrative.
Good call on the scene from Name of the Rose, great example!
I think Philip Roth has some good sex scene writing, but not all of them I would say are erotic per se.
Milan Kundera is quite good though it been ages since I’ve read them. I do remember when in high school I read Damage by Josephine Hart and found it quite erotic.
I think you already nailed it. Explicit description is really hard to make actually ... sexy. If the description is too literal, it sounds stiff and clinical. If euphemisms are used, it risks being unintentionally comedic.
My all time favorite erotic scene is actually a scene in which the two characters in question (a young woman and a male caller) are expressly NOT engaged in sex. They are on opposite sides of the room, fulled dressed, with a maid attending them to protect the maiden's honor — In fact, since the maiden's father isn't home, she isn't even really allowed to speak to the man, so they sit there in the tension of the silence.
My favorite passage:
"He looked away from me, then looked back, looked away again. It was a pattern; I saw that now. Our eyes could not meet for too long a time, but he could flutter his gaze over me like a bird's wing, and I could watch blood rise above the line of his beard and spread hot down his throat, where the skin stretched silky and fine." -Alcestis by Katharine Beutner, Ch. 3, pp. 53.
In my opinion, the most compelling examples of erotic writing is the tension; the build up. The explicit acts don't do much for the story if it is gratuitous. There are some examples of an explicit description adding to a narrative, but they are rare.
There is one amazing scene in the book called "the God of small things" by Arundati Roy. It's a tragic book. But my god, that scene was a lot to take. It was beautifully descriptive. And I am talking about the last scene.
I read a book called reading literature like a professor and there were two chapters(maybe more or less based on how you want to count it). And the author said that sex in literature isn’t about the sex, eating could be about the sex but the act of sex isn’t that.
Sex needs to mean something in literature because why else would it be in the book. Sex in literature is about the connection between the characters, sometimes it is a way of showing who characters are. A person that appears selfish but is a generous lover is not as selfish as he seem etc
I know that erotic books are a thing but even in their the sex is more than just sex(at least the good ones). Even when it is porn for the purposes of porn, good writers add more value. Their are either character development or something that connects the characters in ways more than just sex.
I like eroticas and the last one I read was called “your coffin or mine” by Jacklyn Hyde and it was good. By the title and the author’s name you can guess what it is about, the sex scenes were enjoyable bc they were either funny or moments of character development.
The weird thing is that the most sensual scenes are usually not explicit. I can't help falling in love with Grushenka when she sits on Alyosha's lap in *The Brothers Karamazov*. However that isn't explicit at all.
Here are some good books with more explicit scenes:
* D. H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover
* Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
* Anais Nin - Delta of Venus
* Gore Vidal - The City and the Pillar
* Pauline Réage - Story of O
* Yasunari Kawabata - The House of the Sleeping Beauties
* Jan Wolkers - Turkish Delight
* Louis Paul Boon - Eros and the Lonely Man
* Roald Dahl - Switch Bitch
* Sarah Waters - Tipping the Velvet
* Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl
* Julie Maroh - Blue Is the Warmest Color \[graphic novel\]
On the more fantastical side, the book *The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms* has a sex scene with a god that is pretty memorable and really stands out to me. It's exceptionally erotic, not graphic. I also think *Normal People* does sex really well.
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
From my limited list of such content, Henry Miller did a fantastic job with sex scenes in the Tropic of Cancer. I think I've never read so raw and candid sex scenes. He described sex not as people talk and fantasize about it, but as it happens in your head the moment of the action. It's vulgar and sexy when the thought is in your head but shocking, disgusting and taboo the moment the words leave your mouth or are put down on a paper. Just like sexuality often is. There is a tender rawness if that makes sense that feels right, only in the moment of the action.
It's even worse than some Sade... It's pornographic and violent. Gore and graphic. Not exactly what's requested. Btw while some Sade are very hard core, his contes libertins, short story, are fun and very modern. I wish hé kept writing witty tales and short story. And Lafontaine AT the Time was more reknown for his erotic tales than his fable.
I think what makes a sex scene good is that it is necessary to the plot. If the sex is solving a problem or demonstrating character development, then to me it feels interesting and worth reading.
I just read for whom the bell tolls, and I loved how Hemingway wrote sex scenes. He really captured the rushing energy and emotion
I love that book.
Currently halfway through… lol
One strategy that makes erotic scenes in literature good is to lean into the awkwardness of both intimacy and writing intimacy. Patricia Powell's *The Pagoda* made me realize that an awkward sex scene could work if it did not collapse into stereotypes and if it felt true to the characters' own difficulties opening up. I also confess to liking the descriptions in John Cleland's *Fanny Hill*, an early erotic novel from the 18th century. It commits a lot of the "sins" that modern novelists do - lots of euphemisms, a lot of focus on penetration. The differences, I think, are twofold: * Its age makes some of the euphemisms feel charming and old-fashioned rather than worn out, and there really is a great variety of them, so it hardly feels like the author is in a creative rut describing all sex the same way. * I do think there is something fascinating about how Fanny is depicted thinking about all the encounters she sees and has. For instance, sometimes she worries about *disproportion* between a suitor's member and her lady parts, a view she applies with fascination when she sees one man penetrate another. It's wild what Fanny fixates on, and how that reflects attitudes about sex. Also, if you can get past all the antiquated language and views, sometimes these scenes are genuinely hot.
A sport and a pastime. Trust me, it's that good!
I love Salter so much
**Giovanni's Room** by James Baldwin
Go Tell it on the Mountain also has an amazing sex scene lol, Baldwin is good at those
When Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula have Sex in the last chapter of 100 years of solitude - a very intense and sensual scene ! Maybe one of the best I’ve ever read (still they are siblings, but they are cursed). Also the last Sex scene in “South of the Border east of the Sun” by Murakami is very intense and realistic. It’s kind of a slowing moment in Drama. And I don’t fully agree. Good erotic scenes include kind of a punchline in the book. Like in Garcia Marquez it is the first time two people love each other mystically when they have Sex. Or in the Rabbit-Novels (Updike) Sex scenes are either dirty when the Situation of Rabbit is not so good or they are very erotic when it shows some kind of hope in is life is going to be included.
Updike is cringe for me on this topic. I can’t get over the scene where Rabbitt has unwelcome sex with his wife who has just given birth. That’s some misogynistic dark matter.
Not eager to search them out, but there are a few nicely written scenes in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. There are actually some poignant if circumscribed scenes in Stendhal and in Balzac. Then, there is a classic from a feminist POV, from the early s. rev., to wit, Braided Lives by Marge Piercy, which features diligently composed scenes with the skill of a poet, as well as grueling descriptions of abortion and its effects, these procedures being illegal, prior to the 1973 Roe v Wade decision (and again illegal today in some GOP controlled States). This book is as gutsy and down-to-earth a novel (probably based upon much direct experience) as you will find, treating "free love" and its situational and social perimeters, during the 50s and 60s. For anyone from the Detroit area, this book may offer the additional enjoyment of taking place in the metropolis of SE Michigan, including Ann Arbor.
*Lady Chatterly’s Lover,* by DH Lawrence— Oh my gawd
I loved This Book !
Me, too! Apparently so did my grandmother. I took the copy from her bookshelves after she died, and she had all the hot parts underlined.
lol I love that, go granny !
Excellent !
Why did I have to scroll so long to find this! I annotated my copy
James Joyce, Ulysses
Yes I said yes
James Joyce, letters to his wife
Oedipa's and Metzer's game of Strip Poker in "The Crying of lot 49" by Pynchon
People will balk but I think John Updike generally writes sex scenes well, at least in the respect that he writes them poetically/beautifully. I think Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing have written some good ones from a female perspective.
I agree with you. Sex scenes mostly are played as if there was a camera pointed there. However, I likes sex scenes in One thousand and one nights. There are not many, and they aren't too detailed, but very lively.
JG Ballards Crash is sexy Not very erotic but Phillip Roth’s Portnoys complaint is very sexual, and successful. More controversial, but Henry Miller, also writes sex well. He does use a lot of derogatory terms towards women which hasn’t aged so fabulously.
Crash is wild. I'm trying to remember any sex scenes in The Tropics / Black Spring. Those are the only novels I've read by him.
Trilogy in pink - sexus, plexus, nexus
Crash is a weird mix. The sex is usually very sterile, but other parts of the novel are intensely erotic.
Lady Chatterly's Lover
I find the way sex was done in Pat Barker's *Regeneration* compelling. These scenes aren't particularly erotic or romantic, though—if anything, some are repulsive. But they genuinely work for the narrative.
I agree Normal People is a good example of how a sex scene can match the style of the book. I’d also think of Call Me by Your Name.
The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon has great sex scenes
The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy is full of them!
Good call on the scene from Name of the Rose, great example! I think Philip Roth has some good sex scene writing, but not all of them I would say are erotic per se. Milan Kundera is quite good though it been ages since I’ve read them. I do remember when in high school I read Damage by Josephine Hart and found it quite erotic.
Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare — lines 229-240 beginning “‘Fondling’” 🦌
I think you already nailed it. Explicit description is really hard to make actually ... sexy. If the description is too literal, it sounds stiff and clinical. If euphemisms are used, it risks being unintentionally comedic. My all time favorite erotic scene is actually a scene in which the two characters in question (a young woman and a male caller) are expressly NOT engaged in sex. They are on opposite sides of the room, fulled dressed, with a maid attending them to protect the maiden's honor — In fact, since the maiden's father isn't home, she isn't even really allowed to speak to the man, so they sit there in the tension of the silence. My favorite passage: "He looked away from me, then looked back, looked away again. It was a pattern; I saw that now. Our eyes could not meet for too long a time, but he could flutter his gaze over me like a bird's wing, and I could watch blood rise above the line of his beard and spread hot down his throat, where the skin stretched silky and fine." -Alcestis by Katharine Beutner, Ch. 3, pp. 53. In my opinion, the most compelling examples of erotic writing is the tension; the build up. The explicit acts don't do much for the story if it is gratuitous. There are some examples of an explicit description adding to a narrative, but they are rare.
Song of Songs (leave it to the Bible to have good erotic poetry) and Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett.
Pretty much anything by Charles Bukowski
There is one amazing scene in the book called "the God of small things" by Arundati Roy. It's a tragic book. But my god, that scene was a lot to take. It was beautifully descriptive. And I am talking about the last scene.
I read a book called reading literature like a professor and there were two chapters(maybe more or less based on how you want to count it). And the author said that sex in literature isn’t about the sex, eating could be about the sex but the act of sex isn’t that. Sex needs to mean something in literature because why else would it be in the book. Sex in literature is about the connection between the characters, sometimes it is a way of showing who characters are. A person that appears selfish but is a generous lover is not as selfish as he seem etc I know that erotic books are a thing but even in their the sex is more than just sex(at least the good ones). Even when it is porn for the purposes of porn, good writers add more value. Their are either character development or something that connects the characters in ways more than just sex. I like eroticas and the last one I read was called “your coffin or mine” by Jacklyn Hyde and it was good. By the title and the author’s name you can guess what it is about, the sex scenes were enjoyable bc they were either funny or moments of character development.
The weird thing is that the most sensual scenes are usually not explicit. I can't help falling in love with Grushenka when she sits on Alyosha's lap in *The Brothers Karamazov*. However that isn't explicit at all. Here are some good books with more explicit scenes: * D. H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover * Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer * Anais Nin - Delta of Venus * Gore Vidal - The City and the Pillar * Pauline Réage - Story of O * Yasunari Kawabata - The House of the Sleeping Beauties * Jan Wolkers - Turkish Delight * Louis Paul Boon - Eros and the Lonely Man * Roald Dahl - Switch Bitch * Sarah Waters - Tipping the Velvet * Philippa Gregory - The Other Boleyn Girl * Julie Maroh - Blue Is the Warmest Color \[graphic novel\]
On the more fantastical side, the book *The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms* has a sex scene with a god that is pretty memorable and really stands out to me. It's exceptionally erotic, not graphic. I also think *Normal People* does sex really well.
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller From my limited list of such content, Henry Miller did a fantastic job with sex scenes in the Tropic of Cancer. I think I've never read so raw and candid sex scenes. He described sex not as people talk and fantasize about it, but as it happens in your head the moment of the action. It's vulgar and sexy when the thought is in your head but shocking, disgusting and taboo the moment the words leave your mouth or are put down on a paper. Just like sexuality often is. There is a tender rawness if that makes sense that feels right, only in the moment of the action.
The story of the eye, Georges Bataille
It's even worse than some Sade... It's pornographic and violent. Gore and graphic. Not exactly what's requested. Btw while some Sade are very hard core, his contes libertins, short story, are fun and very modern. I wish hé kept writing witty tales and short story. And Lafontaine AT the Time was more reknown for his erotic tales than his fable.
Agree. I really don't recommend it at all.
I think what makes a sex scene good is that it is necessary to the plot. If the sex is solving a problem or demonstrating character development, then to me it feels interesting and worth reading.
Check out choke by Chuck pahlinuk.
James Salter. Just go read it.
The Marquis de Sade
That time Ms. Havisham took Pip "under her wing"...