Elizabeth Benedict’s book doesn’t urge fiction writers to include sex scenes, but if they do, she offers suggestions for making them better:
1. A good sex scene should always connect to the larger concerns of the work.
2. A good sex scene is not always about good sex, but it is always an example of good writing.
3. A good sex scene is always about sex and something else.
4. Writing about sex thrives on all the things that nourish good fiction: tension, dramatic conflict, character development, insights, metaphors and surprises.
5. Sex is nice but character is destiny.
6. There is nothing more predictable than pornography; literary sex is unpredictable.
7. Use the terms for things that your characters would use. Be sure the vocabulary you use is appropriate to the rest of the story.
8. Who your characters are to each other is key.
9. The characters must intensely want something (though what they want may not be sex).
10. Sex is not an ATM withdrawal. Narrate from inside characters’ minds, not from the viewpoint of a camera set up to watch the action.
11. You need not be explicit but you must be specific.
12. Make characters aware of their physical surroundings.
13. The best characters continually surprise us. Consider surprising actions, speech, distractions, insight, and language.
14. Don’t forget that your characters can talk to each other.
15. Remember that we live in the age of AIDS.
Story Press, 1996