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teddywesworl · 2 months ago

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different anon but re: sex scenes ask, i’m curious to see how you lay out things to outline for continuity of characterization, and what the drive and stakes are in a scene to avoid the sexual archetypes. would you mind sharing what that process looks like for you? really admire your technical breakdowns of writing (yes even and especially when they end up being ‘controversial’)

ok so. I had to take this ask to a word doc to get all my thoughts in order, so that’s your fair warning about how involved my answer is going to be.

First off, I gotta say I always think it’s funny and strange which “takes” of mine get people in a twist, because it’s very frequently the really basic foundational stuff that you would be taught in the first week or two of any introductory fiction writing class. One time, multiple people blocked me on twitter for saying that every paragraph should serve the whole and that readers will get bored if you go on tangents that have nothing to do with the core drive of the story. There was a qrt with the ‘no fun allowed’ robot. I was basically explaining what “kill your darlings” actually means, but even that was too much.

That said, I think the key to continuity of character in sex scenes is very simple: treat sex as any other action, and treat sex scenes like any other scene.

Naturally, that’s easier said than done, because it contains within itself a pair of mandates:

Get your character fundamentals down before attempting to apply them to sex, and

Deconstruct your own relationship with DHSM archetypes.

Yes, sorry, the almost three hour long Contrapoints Twilight video really is the best framework I’ve ever encountered for breaking down cultural norms concerning sex in fiction (and irl tbh), and I think it’s required viewing for anyone who really wants to deliberately subvert those norms.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Step one: character fundamentals.

In the simplest possible terms, good smut is character work. You’re taking blorbo and putting them in a situation. Often, this is a deeply vulnerable situation wrapped up in a lot of emotions. What kind of emotions are they feeling? Do they feel vulnerable? How do they respond to that vulnerability? Are the blorbos boning out of love? Affection? Frustration? Fear of loss? Is it a hatefuck? Multiple of the above? That’s layer one.

Next layer down: are both (or however many) parties here for the same reason, or are their motivations and experiences different? Everyone in a story has their own drives which may be in conflict with one another or, at the very least, play off of one another in interesting ways; the same principle should apply to sex scenes.

Example.

This is from chapter 2 of baseless fabric:

Rook’s fingers bury themselves in Lucanis’s hair, her nails scraping his scalp. “I’ll show you,” she says, and then—oh, yes—tongues and teeth and spit! Rook’s arms around Lucanis’s neck. Arching backs and sweet sighs and a pleasure that fogs Lucanis’s mind. Rook pulls at Lucanis, and Lucanis tries to keep his hips away. He is embarrassed at how quickly he has grown hard; he is alarmed that he could be so forward, so presumptuous as to expose himself in this way and to seek this kind of pleasure in her. Why? asks Spite. It is for her. She came to you for this. Lucanis struggles against this reasoning, though he knows that Spite is correct. That strange despair deep within grows fat on this knowledge. He is still afraid, and it was such long and difficult work to accept that he would never be desired in this way by a person he desired in turn.

Three parties are involved in this scene: Spite, Lucanis, and Rook.

Spite has no sexual attraction or sex drive per se, because he is a non-corporeal entity to whom those concepts are kind of alien, but he enjoys physical pleasure and has an emotional attachment to both Lucanis and Rook, so there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t enjoy sex. He experiences everything Lucanis’s body does, and he has a front row seat to the inner workings of Lucanis’s fucked up little brain. In the video game as written, one could argue that Spite’s core drive is essentially to help Lucanis first survive and then recover from extraordinary trauma (out of. Spite. literally). He picks apart Lucanis’s fear and self-hatred and exposes all of it to Rook, in full confidence that Rook can fix it.

Lucanis, meanwhile, is a big ol’ demi virgin who (I was just talking w @ofcrowsanddragons about this last night) has come to view his own basic human needs as monstrous. It’s dangerous for him to need anything. Even sleep! He’s had both physical and emotional vulnerability drilled out of him from a very young age! He can’t let anyone know he needs! What if his needs are exploited? What if someone notices he needs something and takes advantage? For Lucanis, I imagine that allowing himself to be vulnerable in a safe, controlled way that feels good, with someone he trusts entirely, would be… woof. Very intense.

Rook is the wild card in terms of fanfic and character study, because, as a customizable PC, she could be anything. And she might be physically undescribed in my fics, but the character choices I’ve made aren’t by mistake; I’m writing about The Lucanis Romance, after all, and that provides opportunities for Rook to play both partner and foil. And so: my Rook is sexually experienced, shameless, and a bit vulgar, and she grew up poor. She’s Lucanis’s opposite in a lot of ways, and she serves to highlight his hangups by contrast. He talks down at himself for “seeking pleasure in her,” while her desire for him is uncomplicated. She wants this guy. She cares for him. It feels good when he touches her. On its own, maybe that’s not super interesting fodder for fiction, but she and Spite force Lucanis to reckon with his irrational self-talk and maladaptive coping mechanisms. She can get away with being a bit two-dimensional, because her main function in the story is to challenge his perspective.

The climax (lol) of the fic is arguably the following line in chapter 3: “The despair of fulfillment, the anguish of joy—he thinks he is not made for such things, and so he fights them, even desperate as he is to submit.” Everything in this first encounter between Lucanis and Rook builds toward that final evolution of the idea that Lucanis fears his own emotional needs and resists their fulfillment.

Et voila: Lucanis’s character is examined and has the opportunity to develop through sex!

Still, I admit, all of this is easier said than done. Character study of any kind takes practice to get a feel for, and writing effective character-driven sex requires that you be aware of your own relationship with culturally imposed norms.

Step two: becoming an archetype understander

Watch the Contrapoints video if you haven’t. Yes, in full. I promise it’s worth it. But if you want to save it for later and keep reading this post now, DHSM stands for Default Heterosexual Sado-Masochism, and it’s an extremely useful framework for understanding how patriarchal romantic and sexual roles are organized.

Natalie Wynn defines DHSM as “a division of sexuality into bipolar roles,” as follows:

She goes on: “In reality, none of these roles are interchangeable or even necessarily correlated. Being masculine does not imply being a top, and neither imply being dominant. […] But in DHSM, these roles are assumed to be bundled together and assumed to belong to the sexuality of men.”

I contend that when we are reading E-rated fanfiction and we cross that jarring threshold from in-character plot to out-of-character smut, we have most often just encountered the author deferring to cultural sex scene-writing norms prescribed by DHSM. And, importantly, the sex scene doesn’t have to be heterosexual for DHSM to be in the room!

One of the most important things you can do as you’re writing sex is to ensure that you are aware of the cultural pressure to conform to this false dichotomy. Notice I didn’t even say ‘don’t conform;’ there are certainly ways to examine & play with DHSM while nominally conforming to it. However, DHSM is omnipresent as a basic assumption in mainstream romance and romantic subplot, and you may be surprised at the extent to which the average person automatically reaches for it while writing. In fact, once you start seeing it, you may not be able to stop.

One of the things I really like about Lucanis as a character is his relationship to DHSM. He’s an assassin, arguably a professional predator. He is extremely rich, and he ends the story with a nation-shaping amount of political power. He is also, quite literally, possessed. His whole personal arc is about his fraught relationship with agency. His romance arc requires that you, the player, pursue him to a much more dramatic degree than any of the other companions, just to get to the point of acknowledged flirtation. He breaks the assumed role. He looks like the Latin Lover trope sprouted wings; but that’s not him.

This is, frankly, why a large proportion of the Rookanis ao3 tag bums me out: there’s so much fic in there that pulls back toward that assumption of bipolarity, flattening him as a result. Lucanis as an aggressive or dominant lover does nothing for me, because I feel that it misunderstands his approach to intimacy.

Now what?

I’ve just said an embarrassing number of words about writing pornography. But how does one synthesize all this stuff?

Here’s an exercise I recommend:

Pick a pairing of your choice and consider each character’s relationship with the DHSM dichotomy. Deliberately run down those columns above and decide which character more closely matches each descriptor in each pair, individually—if they match either, which they may not! Examine the ways in which that pairing might break bipolarity.

Then, try to come up with a sexual scenario that demonstrates that break in DHSM. This is a valuable exercise because it attacks both points simultaneously: it forces you to think of your character fundamentals, and it directly challenges the archetypes.

To use the same baseless fabric example, Rook is clearly the pursuer, but she’s got an exhibitionist streak, and she very much desires penetration:

She leans back, rests her weight on her hands, and deliberately opens the vee of her thighs. Her chemise drapes across them, and it hides very little. There is a shadow beneath, intensified by the flicker of the hearth, and Lucanis’s eye is drawn inexorably down—

Later in the same scene, Spite's POV refers to the act of penetrating Rook as surrender:

The body knows what to do. The instinct for it is ancient and innate, and the rhythm is made at the conjunction of Lucanis’s flesh and heart and mind. It is surrender, a hopeless exposure of underbelly and throat, and it feels good. Lucanis plants one hand on the table and rolls his hips.

Lucanis also acknowledges, multiple times, that he had his own preconceived notions about how sex is supposed to go, which Rook has challenged. For example:

Rook hums and smiles and closes the narrow gap between them. What begins as a simple press of lips develops into the luxuriant slide of tongues, Lucanis pushing the hem of her chemise up so he can bury his hand between her thighs. Rook hooks a knee over Lucanis’s hip and tugs him in until he acquiesces and thrusts into her. It is all slow and lazy. Soft. It feels the way Lucanis always thought it should, except in the ways he couldn’t have foreseen. His body aches from the violence of the previous day, and Rook’s must, as well; the pleasure cuts through the pain, colors it, transforms it into something almost sweet. Rook’s arms coil around him, and she makes the most beautiful little sounds.

(Uh oh, buddy! That's a little masochistic of you!)

If you are working deliberately to improve your character-driven sex scenes, I strongly recommend starting with short (up to like 3k words) ficlets as practice. Pick a trope or two to toss in for extra “put the blorbos in situations” sauce. Forced proximity! Drunken confessions! Hurt/comfort! Fuck or die! Etc. All great fun. Alternately, sometimes you will simply be possessed by the knowledge that certain characters will have certain kinks. Like Lucanis and somnophilia (you get it, right? I don’t even have to explain why. Isn’t that neat?).

As a side benefit, doing this exercise thoughtfully will make you better at character writing more generally. No, really. Spending this time analyzing characters’ relationships to intimacy will help you understand what makes them tick in so many other ways.

Let me sum up.

So, in summary: good smut is character work, and you need your character fundamentals first. However, cultural norms impose the division of sexuality into bipolar roles. Breaking that bipolarity subverts a subconscious expectation, adds tension and interest, and forces both writer and reader to really think about the characters in front of them.

Does that……. Does that answer your question about process?? I swear I didn’t start with the intent to write two thousand earth words about this. And also, I don’t typically sit down and think to myself “how will I break DHSM today?” I have enough practice at this point (and a deep enough obsession with the function of social power) that my disdain for DHSM automatically inserts itself into basically everything I write. I do think these two pieces (1. character first and 2. fuck DHSM) make up the foundation of how I approach smut, though, so hopefully this has been a useful response!!

#anon #2200+ words if you're keeping track #i'm realizing now while formatting the post after copying from word #that i literally didn't even touch on like. what makes smut hot #OH WELL that wasn't the point #character drama makes smut hot. to me #power exchange makes smut hot. to me

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