Do you like sex/love scenes in the stories you read?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would answer "it depends on the book". A book like "Pride and Prejudice" without love scenes (love scenes - not graphic sex) would be meaningless. Love scenes in a hard SF novel are probably irrelevant.

Harry... I'm surprised at you! Suggesting that SF characters can't have legitimate feelings that can be impacted by others, and that a sex scene can't play a legitimate part of that! You've been in that Dalek shell too long, mate!

I've read plenty of SF that has had well-placed sex scenes that were clear parts of the characters' development (in fact, I wrote a few of them myself). I see nothing wrong with them. As an aside, I can enjoy them too, even if they aren't absolutely essential to the story. So bring 'em on, and please don't read over my shoulder unless I know you very well...

[cathie]

This seems to me like a rather strange poll. To which I have more than one answer!
It's not a true case of whether one likes love/sex scenes in a book or not, more a case of what type of genre do you read? Fiction or non fiction?
From there it's a case of authors, who are great storytellers, who create characters that touch a chord within us, the readers. In essence, who are our favourite authors.
Just remember lots of people read romance and erotica within the storyline elements of science fiction or paranormal or suspense or historical fiction too.

Books are to tell a STORY (fact or fiction), I have no problem with sex/love scenes as long as they make sense to the character buildup and the plot of the story I am reading. That being said, if I am reading romance story I want sex/love scenes.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So are a lot of other bodily functions, but there is no reason to describe them in excruciating detail.

Oooh, I think sex says more about an individual (not to mention their relationships) than those other bodily functions.

Or at least it should be more ...creative. Done perfunctorily as other bodily functions would definitely be a snooze not worth reading about.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by cathie

This seems to me like a rather strange poll. To which I have more than one answer!
It's not a true case of whether one likes love/sex scenes in a book or not, more a case of what type of genre do you read? Fiction or non fiction?
From there it's a case of authors, who are great storytellers, who create characters that touch a chord within us, the readers. In essence, who are our favourite authors.
Just remember lots of people read romance and erotica within the storyline elements of science fiction or paranormal or suspense or historical fiction too.

Books are to tell a STORY (fact or fiction), I have no problem with sex/love scenes as long as they make sense to the character buildup and the plot of the story I am reading. That being said, if I am reading romance story I want sex/love scenes.

Well said, cathie.

Bernard Cornwell seems to have a glaring lack of them for this reason. i.e., You get to know the characters so well, it feels strange to do a cut away when they might be getting warm. lol

It's always so glaring, it makes me pause to wonder why. Is he afraid of offending readers who don't want to read anything that smacks of romance? Porn?

Or is he afraid he wouldn't do even a little of it well? I mean, I don't expect him to be graphic, but a little reference to their thoughts about it a time or two would be nice.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by sircastor

The thing that made me hate The Time Traveler's Wife was the sex scenes.

I really must be getting old. I don't even remember any sex scenes in the book .
.

[Cyclops]

I get to those sexy bits and wish I coukd fast forward past them. It just seems pointless to me, and totally ruins a good film too!

[Cyclops]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would answer "it depends on the book". A book like "Pride and Prejudice" without love scenes (love scenes - not graphic sex) would be meaningless. Love scenes in a hard SF novel are probably irrelevant.

I'm with Harry! I mean, Daleks making out, perrlease!

[Bilbo1967]

I guess it depends what you're looking for. My personal interests were flagellism, necrophilia and bestiality.

Then I realised I was flogging a dead horse.

[Cyclops]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I guess it depends what you're looking for. My personal interests were flagellism, necrophilia and bestiality.

Then I realised I was flogging a dead horse.

Permission to post that on facebook?

[Enkidu of Abydos]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I guess it depends what you're looking for. My personal interests were flagellism, necrophilia and bestiality.

Then I realised I was flogging a dead horse.

I usually get jokes very quickly. It took me a while to get this one.
And then I went totally .

Originally Posted by orlok

I really must be getting old. I don't even remember any sex scenes in the book .
.

Forgetting about characters in a book having sex is normal, you're OK as long as you can remember who you had sex with (unless you're a rockstar of course). You should at least remember the ones you did in the last month.

Originally Posted by Piper_

Oooh, I think sex says more about an individual (not to mention their relationships) than those other bodily functions.

Or at least it should be more ...creative. Done perfunctorily as other bodily functions would definitely be a snooze not worth reading about.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I guess it depends what you're looking for. My personal interests were flagellism, necrophilia and bestiality.

Then I realised I was flogging a dead horse.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Enkidu of Abydos

You should at least remember the ones you did in the last month.

Well that will be easy...

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by Cyclops

Permission to post that on facebook?

Of course, although I can't claim it as one of my own; I heard it somewhere else some time ago.

[Anthem]

Originally Posted by Catlady

So are a lot of other bodily functions, but there is no reason to describe them in excruciating detail.

Unless your audience gets off on them. Then you got one, and that is totally the way so many hack writers make their money.

[Prestidigitweeze]

The value of sex in writing isn't always reducible to plot, story and/or vicarious gratification. All of that is great, but those aren't the only ways to incorporate sex into fiction.

Sex is a shared and yet exclusive experience -- shared in the sense of perhaps involving a partner and perhaps not being private (depending on one's situation and proclivities); exclusive because specifically linked to one's private perception of it.

The victory of sex, the emotional beauty of it, can be the sense that two people are sharing the same act as if they occupied one body. The tragedy can be that they can never truly share that experience in the most literal sense. The paradox of sex is an intense part of romantic love. I would argue that stories about lovers kept apart are often metaphors for this. The complication can symbolize repression, but it can also symbolize lovers' banishment to the helmets of their skulls, to the limitations of their joining.

Someone who writes intuitively about sex can offer insights into an experience that others might treat as rote. That person's style and point of view might also telegraph levels of meaning that wouldn't be there if they were writing about anything else.

The sense of being impaled on a grid of desire, of being the vessel for a kind of grim drive, is the nightside of sex writing and it, too, can be revelatory if written about consciously and well.

Peter Handke depicts an odd disconnected automatism in "The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick"; I can see that mindset being interesting in a first-person or third-person-limited sex scene, too.

Molly Bloom's soliloquy in Ulysses is an obvious example of transcendent writing about sex, but there are many, many others.

Fine examples have been written by friends of mine throughout the years; sex scenes add to the sensibility, the aesthetic, the sweep, the inclusiveness of their fiction. I wouldn't say that sex necessarily added to their plots in every case because some of them were writing a different kind of fiction, which places more emphasis on rich sensory input and the interplay of thought than storytelling.

This is sometimes called stream of consciousness writing, which some people associate only with automatic writing (like Breton's) or unrevised writing (like Kerouac's), but which can be as carefully done as any conventional narrative that emphasizes story and plot. In many cases, the stream is carefully edited and rewritten.

John Hawkes' The Blood Oranges is a fine example of that. It is also a novel which is largely about sexual experience.