The fine line between Erotic & Porn

My post is the angst I, a writer, go through when trying to depict sexual activities in an erotic manner yet not stray so far that I’m writing porn. Okay you can stop smiling now. Really it is an issue, which I think other writers experience...or hope they do so that I’m not the only one who obsesses over it. That would be too weird, right?

Getting back to my point.

When I write sex scenes I truly take my time in setting it out into print. I not only think about what I am describing but how to write it without using crudity or words that are too graphic or harsh for the book’s overall tone. As a writer I want the sex to stimulate the reader’s fantasy yet not...well... read nasty. For me it’s a continual balancing of what I think will turn the reader on verses crossing a line into what I call the “yuck” reaction from a turned-off reader.

Of course there is the opposite worry. I fear that in trying to be a tad vague or avoid using too graphic a word or set of words I will fall into the “overblown” verbiage of a ridiculous prude. An example: he took the throbbing shaft of his manhood and let loose a volley of....you get it right?

Another anxiety comes from the knowledge that my ideas on kink or novel sexual gyrations may not be interesting or erotic to the readers. Which is not to imply I have any right weird kinks or do novel...okay stopping here.

Then the issue arises that, in a mystery series, you need to be inventive in sex scenes or else the sexual encounters of your characters fall into a boring repetitive pattern. They kiss, they get into missionary, they move to doggie..etc. How many ways can you tell it and still be erotic and not seem crude?

Thanks to a certain book, current readers want a bit of rough in their sex prose {thank you so much Fifty Shades}. So the problem then becomes when is rough sex being erotic and when did you go so explicit in describing it that your scene qualifies as the prologue scene for a snuff film.  The continual nightmare I call, “ did I go too freaky in describing that sexual activity?”

I fear my dilemma in this area will never end. I want to be frisky and inventive in the sex I portray and hopefully I succeed. But I belonged to a generation that did not write about sex; we just engaged in it like rabbits. So blushing away I write my sex scene but know I look for that line in the sand that marks the border of good erotic sex and just good dirty sex.

Feel free to write to me : l.g.fabbo.gonnella@gmail.com