129: Writing Spicy Scenes

 

Writing effective *spicy* scenes is an important skill for writers (if that's something you want to include in your book.) Learn how to approach writing this type of scene and my tips for structure + pacing. 

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writing spicy scenes

Welcome to your big creative life, a podcast for writers and creatives that helps you live your best big creative life, whatever that means for you. I'm Katie Wolf, a writer, book editor and creator. Join me every week for tips and discussion on writing, mindset up leveling your life and anything and everything that will help you achieve your big creative dreams. Let's get started.

 

Hello, welcome back to Big creative life. Thanks for joining me, thanks for being here. It's a big day in the wolf household because my daughter Audrey has a tooth coming through. She's six months old, so it shouldn't be surprised. But I was shocked to this morning when I saw it. It's not all the way through. It's like just starting to push through on on one of her bottom teeth. And she's been having signs of teething for a while but she's also been sick because she started daycare. And it's been this on and off thing of her being sick. And so I just assumed that was why she was being fussy and running warm and feeling kind of sick because she got something from daycare.

 

Yeah, I just can't believe she's that old. Like I know, she's six months again, it shouldn't be a surprise that she's getting a tooth but it's crazy to think about. Yeah, what else is going on? I am recording this at the end of April. So when this episode comes out Who knows what will be happening with the TikTok ban, but President Biden just signed the bill and it looks like... it has... I think it's is it nine months? I think it's nine months for to divest and find a different owner. Spin off TikTok and yes, it's not a sure thing. Yes, there are a lot of months before a band would go into place. But it still terrifies me. And I talked to a reporter actually from the Nashville scene about this issue.

 

I used to live in Nashville, I have a friend who works at the Nashville scene. And she knows that this is a big deal for me and could have a big impact on my business. So she had this reporter reach out to me and we talked about it. And honestly, like it was fun to talk to a reporter because I've never really done anything like that before. But also, it felt kind of therapeutic to talk about it. And to tell politicians like what I think about this like, well, the one of the things he asked me was like, What do you wish people in power in Congress knew about this from your side of things.

 

And the truth is that TikTok is an incredible app. And it has done so much for me. And it does so much for so many people, not just small business owners like me, where the majority of our clients or revenue come from TikTok but just as a resource for people in the writing community in the book community, it's to think that that might go away is really heartbreaking. So anyways, it was it was an interesting process, and it did feel therapeutic to talk about it. And look, I like Instagram. I like Instagram stories a lot more than the actual like reels or posts. I really do enjoy stories, but I just have not been putting much effort into Instagram because I was able to grow so much faster on Tik Tok. And so my Instagram strategy has been just repurposing a lot of my tic Toks over to Instagram.

 

And so my goal now my objective, my priority is to like fall back in love with Instagram and be posting a lot more original content on Instagram. And also YouTube, you know, focusing on on that too, because even if this band doesn't happen, I think it was a good wake up call for a lot of us authors, just people in the book community, people in the writing community that it's not the best idea to focus all of your efforts on one single app and have no presence anywhere else because you never know what's going to happen with these apps. So that's what that's what I'm going to be focusing on. Coming up is just falling back in love with Instagram, creating some good content there. So make sure to follow me on Instagram at Katie Wolf and YouTube at Katie wolf if you don't already.

 

Okay, let's talk about sex scenes. I think I'm going to call this episode like something to do with writing spicy scenes as opposed to sex just in case. It gets flagged somewhere. I don't know if it would, but that's what we're talking about. We're talking about sex scenes. This is something that I don't have a ton of experience with writing on my own. Just because I haven't written anything where it felt necessary or natural to include a sex scene in it again in something that I have written. I have like a minor, slightly spicy scene, but that's really it. They're difficult. It's difficult for me to write. I think if that's the case of a lot of people, but I edit a lot of spicy seasons. I added a lot of romance. I added a lot of fantasy that has spicy scenes, other genres.

 

So this is definitely something that I've gotten very familiar with, from an editor perspective and from a coaching perspective. So I'm gonna give you some things to think about and some tips for how to approach this. If you are new to writing spicy scenes, if this is something that you want to do, but feel kind of awkward, and it probably will feel awkward, like, don't let that deter you from writing it. Like let's just be honest especially when I'm like, copy editing someone's space.

 

I don't know, it's just funny to think about, like, I'm like looking at comma placement in a in a like, extremely sexually explicit paragraph or something. I don't know. It just makes me laugh sometimes. But it's become so normal to me, I don't even it doesn't even faze me now. So, okay, what I want to first present to you as a as an approach that you can use to think about the structure of a spicy scene is to think about it this way through three different lenses.

 

First of all, we have the logistics of who is doing what, where body parts are placed all of the just logistics, then the physical experience of the point of view character, what are they feeling? What experiences are they having, and then also their internal experience? So what are they thinking? What are they feeling about what's happening? So those are three different categories of things that you can look at. Ways that you can approach the structure of a spicy scene logistics, who's doing what, where, etc. physical experience, what is your your point of view character that we're seeing this through their eyes? What are they experiencing physically, which also kind of falls under logistics? I know. But I like to think about them as separate things because it's character driven versus just like action. And then the internal experience. So what is your character thinking and feeling about what's happening about what they're experiencing?

 

It can be helpful to block out the scene and the logistics. First, this is a good strategy to use if you are new to writing space, and it just feels overwhelming and it feels awkward. Block out the scene. And what I mean by this is just tackle the logistics of it first. So from the moment that the space starts, from the moment that your characters start to get physical with each other, what happens? How do things progress? What exactly are they doing? What sexual acts are they doing? And then all the way through to the end? Just blocking out who's doing what, where they are? What who's doing, I am trying to talk about this in a way that's not too explicit.

 

But basically, you get my drift, like who's doing what, what sexual act? Are they engaged in all of that, then you can go back in later. And add in that that experience of the character like what is what is the character? How is the character reacting? Are they enjoying this experience? Is it causing them pain, emotional pain, or physical pain? are they experiencing some guilt or regret? Or they think, are they thinking about someone else? Are they just lost in this sensations and really enjoying themselves themselves, just think about all these pieces of it, right? Because it's the sex, the spicy scene is not just what's happening, it's all of these other pieces as well. So a well written spicy scene has these different components in it. And there's a nice balance between all of these things.

 

Because if you just have a dry, spicy scene, that's just he did this to me, then we did this, then we did this and then I did this to her, you know, it's gonna feel like it's lacking. And it might also come across as you not being confident as the writer that you just want to list out these things and rush over it and then wrap it up. Okay, so the next thing that's important to think about, this is more the case if you are writing something that's like erotica, or, or romance specifically, I think, I don't think this applies as much when you're writing a spicy scene and other genres. But think about if you want the sexual experience, the spicy seem to be based in reality, or if you do want it to be more fantasy based and what I mean by that is okay, so I'll give you an example because this is probably easier to talk about specifics than as opposed to talking about it in vague terms.

 

So I was editing a client manuscript once that was more It was a historical romance that had a lot of spice in it. It was not erotica, and erotica quickly for distinction of what these terms mean, erotica is a sub genre, where if you take all of the spiciness, all of the sex out of the book, there would not be a plot, there would not be a book, those things are so intrinsically linked that you can't separate them. Now, a romance that just has some spicy scenes in it, the spice is not the focus of the book, the spice is not the plot, it just supports the plot. So that's the distinction. So it was a historical romance that had a lot of spice in it. Like it was pretty sexually explicit.

 

And there was a scene where a character had, I think, five orgasms in the span of like, a page or so like one, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, which is that in the realm of possibility for some people? Sure, maybe that that has happened before. But that doesn't feel super realistic, it doesn't feel super authentic. So if you are writing something like erotica, where the focus is really the space and those those real, it's not really always necessary to portray a realistic, sexy, then that might be fine. And same thing with romance to some extent, like I think part of reading fun. Part of the fun of reading spicy scenes in romance is getting lost in the fantasy of it. And you know, the love interest is usually like an incredible lover, and very attentive and like all these things, kind of the perfect love interest, the perfect partner.

 

So that is part of the fun. But be careful that you're not veering too far into it being so unrealistic that the reader is like, wait a second, this is just insane. Love multiple orgasms, that's great for your characters to experience. But again, five, and in the span of one page, it's just, that's a lot. So just be thinking about if you want to have this be more based in reality, or if you do want it to be fantasy, if you want it to be this escape for your character. And it doesn't matter so much about things being realistic. Just think about which approach you want to take.

 

Oh, my next piece of advice for this, excuse me, is to describe, to filter what is happening to filter this experience through the eyes of your character, this will apply unless you are writing something like third person omniscient, which is where there is someone an unnamed narrator who is able to jump into the heads of multiple people, and they can stand back and observe what's happening and tell us about it through the heads of different different characters. But that's not super common. So most likely, you're going to be writing in either first person which is just I did this, I said this I whatever, or third person limited and in third person limited. You can have multiple point of view characters.

 

Maybe one chapter is character, a one chapters character, B, etc. But when we're in a character's perspective, we don't jump around to different characters, we're only we're limited, just why it's called third person limited to what they can see and experience and hear and feel and all of those things. So the sexual experience needs to be filtered through their eyes and their body and all of that and why I want to mention this, that might sound obvious but why I want to mention this is occasionally in books that I'm reading or books that I'm editing, I will see things like I wrote down an example on my my sheet here, that if your character is a 25 year old man, he probably wouldn't think about his partner's heat blossoming between blossoming between her velvet size, or her womanhood back into me like a flower opening like a toy like a 25 year old guy is not going to think about his partner in those terms, unless that is part of your character's personality and identity.

 

That he views the world this way that he speaks in this way, then sure that might match up. But for most 25 year olds, like that's not how they're going to talk about sex. That's not how they're going to talk about their partner. So just be mindful that what you are describing matches how the character would think about those things happening. Yeah. It's y'all it's a little I don't want to say it's awkward because it's not awkward for me to talk about this, but I just, I don't want to do it in a super like, explicit way.

 

So I don't want this. This episode to be like variables is explicit. So I'm trying to be mindful of the things that I'm saying. Okay, so we talked about approaching the logistics the field to go experience the emotional experience experience. And one last thing I want to mention about all these pieces, is the pacing of a spicy scene because that can impact how effective and how strong the scene is, you do not have to go into graphic detail about what happens, you can gloss over things, you can do the Fade to Black tactic, which is where your characters begin to get intimate, they begin to get physical, and then the scene cuts away, the scene ends and then we pick back up later or the next morning or after when they're in bed still, or something so so none of this is like stuff that you have to do.

 

And again, you don't have to get into graphic detail and have a long drawn out sex scene. But if you do want to write a spicy scene, and you do want to give us the full shebang, all the way from starting to get intimate and physical to climax to the characters or what's happening afterwards. Think make sure that the pacing feels right. And I'm I struggle when I talk about pacing sometimes because to me pacing is one of those things where it's easier to spot in revision, like once you have the scene already written, it's easier to tell if it just moves so quickly. And you're like, wow, I need to slow this down. That happened so fast. Or if you're like, oh, this goes on for pages and pages and pages and feels very slow, I need to speed this up. It's often just one of those things that you have to wait and identify when you have the scene written.

 

But you can be intentional before you write. And just think through how much page time you want to give this experience. How much weight do you want it to do want to lend to this scene? How much emotional impact do you want this moment to have on the characters. If it's just a one night stand, and the character is fumbling around and doesn't really matter, then maybe it is appropriate to have it be really fast paced and over quickly, and then we move on. If it is a climax and sense of a book's climax, not sexual climax. But if it's the pinnacle moment, for your two love interests, you're writing a romance and they're finally getting together, they're finally giving into their feelings for each other and having sex for the first time, then maybe that experience needs to be slowed down a lot more because it is a big deal.

 

So just think about the weight that you want to give this moment. And whether it deserves a lot of page time, or you want to give it a lot of page time or whether it can be over quickly. And there's not a right answer. Again, it's just going to depend on your book, it's going to depend on your characters. So there's not a right answer for how long a second scene should be how much detail you need to go into none of that. It really is just up to you your writing style, your genre, your store all of that. But just be thinking about the pacing, how much page time you want to give it and then also when you're in the editing process, and you're going back to revise, read through the sex scene on its own to see if you need to either slow it down or it may be speeded up.

 

There are any tweaks that you want to make there in terms of how long things take. Okay, so that is writing spicy scenes. It's yeah, some writers really enjoy spicy scenes and find them very easy and some don't. So if this is something that you want to tackle, and you just feel awkward about, I get it. But hopefully the tips in this episode will help you have an approach of how to tackle this and how to how to break it down.

 

It really does become a lot about logistics, I think on the first on the first draft. And that's something to check in editing as well, making sure that like if they start on the bed, and then halfway through, they're suddenly on the floor like you need to tell us that they move to the floor. So making track or keeping track of consistency just in terms of of what's happening is important as well. So good luck with your spicy scene.

Katie Wolf