Since posting this, I've removed my books from Amazon, and am moving them to Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing Press. They're all pdf ebooks, all free, and always will be.
T-Man, my second novel, has sex in it. Yes, sex. So the questions I had to decide as an author were, should I include any (the answer was yes, but the question is still worthwhile), if so why, and how explicit?
Include?
Throwing in some sex might seem like a no-brainer, but that's not necessarily so. I'll get to three reasons in the next section. A fourth is pretty simple. One person's oooo is another person's ewww. You might find a sex scene pretty exciting. Someone else might, too. But will all your readers? Because, if you gross some out, they are unlikely to ever read you again.
So it's not an idle question.
If So, Why?
In college I used to joke that I'd write a best-seller someday, with the title Gratuitous Sex. (The sequel would be Obligatory Violence.) Which, of course, sums up the issue: is there an actual reason to include sex, or is it purely gratuitous (i.e., thrown in just for notoriety/sales)? And the way to approach that issue is:
- Is the sex needed for the plot?
- For the characterization?
- Because readers expect it?
So, basically, if the plot requires it, you include it.
Is it needed for the characterization? This is a trickier question (and is "no" in the case of T-Man). After all, you can establish a character as a woman-chaser or man-chaser without cutting to the chase, so to speak. You can establish someone as a sadist without inducing violent nausea in readers, as well. So including sex scenes for characterization is going to require some justification.
Do readers expect it? In a modern romance novel, they pretty much do, so go for it. That's what they're looking for. Sex scenes are all...part of the service. If, on the other hand, you're writing a biography of some general, maybe not. Lord Wellington might have told a would-be blackmailer "Publish and be damned," but that doesn't mean the rest of us should.
How Explicit?
Now we come to the really difficult question. There's several answers, I would say:
- As explicit as readers expect
- As explicit as you can pull off, and
- As explicit as all your readers will enjoy.
Finally, you don't want to be more explicit than your readers will enjoy. This gets back to the oooo vs. ewww question. Whatever you write, you'd better like it yourself; but if you want it to be read, the readers' wishes are the ones that count.