Literature is all, or mostly, about sex. – Anthony Burgess

Tonight I am teaching a class on writing sex, and I’ve culled some quotes as a way to begin to think about it.

My own thoughts, in brief, are these:

1) Sex, like dialog, must do more than one thing, and must do it in the style of the story and the character. It might advance the plot–it usually will.

2) For this reason, we very seldom see middle-of-the-week sex in a book. That is to say, sex plays a role in the story and therefore is the first time or the end of an arc or in some other way unexpected, a revelation, a reversal, a betrayal.

3) Sex in a book is not exciting in and of itself, unlike, at the best of times, the real thing. That is true of life as of sex: importing run-of-the-mill good times into narrative doesn’t work. We’re about story here, folks. And sex is a good way to make things happen, make things go wrong, turn everything around.

Here are some thoughts from others:

1) Sex almost always disappoints me in novels. Everything can be said or done now, and that’s what I often find: everything, a feeling of generality or dispersal. But in my experience, true sex is so particular, so peculiar to the person who yearns for it. Only he or she, and no one else, would desire so very much that very person under those circumstances. In fiction, I miss that sense of terrific specificity. – Anatole Broyard

2) Plotting is like sex. Plotting is about desire and satisfaction, anticipation and release. You have to arouse your reader’s desire to know what happens, to unravel the mystery, to see good triumph. You have to sustain it, keep it warm, feed it, just a little bit, not too much at a time, as your story goes on. That’s called suspense. It can bring desire to a frenzy, in which case you are in a good position to bring off a wonderful climax. – Colin Greenland

3) Plotting isn’t like sex, because you can go back and adjust it afterwards. Whether you plan your story beforehand or not, if the climax turns out to be the revelation that the mad professor’s anti-gravity device actually works, you must go back and silently delete all those flying cars buzzing around the city on page one. If you want to reveal something, you need to hide it properly first. – Colin Greenland

4) I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting. – Gore Vidal

5) If the sex scene doesn’t make you want to do it—whatever it is they’re doing—it hasn’t been written right. – Sloan Wilson