Writing sex scenes can so easily go horribly wrong – so what’s the secret to a crafting good one? We ask some of Ireland’s best-known novelists to tell us about their approach to frisky fiction
Irish authors talk about writing sex scenes
You don’t need to go too far up or down the bestseller chart to find desire, erotic awakening, sexy romance or a good old-fashioned bonkbuster. Miranda July’s All Fours centres on the sexual reawakening of a 45-year-old perimenopausal woman, while plenty of complex relationship sex was threaded through Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo. Yael van der Wouden’s sex-soaked debut The Safekeep won the Women’s Prize for Fiction earlier this year. ‘Romantasy’, as exemplified by Rebecca Yarros’s wildly bestselling novel Fourth Wing, is thought to be a genre on the rise, thanks to BookTok.
It seems inescapable for anyone wanting to explore meaty characters, relationships or simply the human condition. And yet sex in fiction writing often feels like something that is so easy to get wrong (the Bad Sex in Fiction Award doesn’t exist for nothing).