How to Get Over the Hump of Writing Sex

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Only trouble is interesting, and what causes more trouble for us humans than our love lives? With love, we’re leaping into the unknown, and it’s thrilling, surprising, scary, overwhelming (and sometimes underwhelming and disappointing) all at once. Love is often unrequited, dangerous, or forbidden, and even when it’s straightforward, there’s still a story in it because we are mortal beings, hurtling toward an impending end, so at some point, we (or our beloved) will be left heartbroken; love’s trouble always makes for a good story. There’s a very successful publishing industry—the romance novel—dedicated to it.

The trouble with writing about love, and its bedfellow, sex, is it’s so elusive and mysterious that we often try to wrestle it into submission by assigning tired, old descriptions to it, or else we try to obfuscate what’s really happening and we slap a euphemism onto it. This is why there are so many clichés for love: Love is blind. Love at first sight. Love conquers all. Love makes the world go round. The problem is that these overused phrases say exactly nothing of this complex, mysterious emotion, which is why we must come up with new and strange ways of talking about love and lust. We may never be able to completely capture the complexities, but we must try.

Pep Talk: Getting Over the Hump of Writing Sex
When I was about six or seven, I heard the word fuck at school. I went home and asked my father what it meant. He said, “It means making love.” Then he told me not to ask any more questions. Within a few days, a picture book was left out for me. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle features two pudgy characters who have sex under a colorful quilt. The man looks like a pink Pillsbury dough boy. I remember thinking that everything about the book was utterly bizarre, but the unsaid rule was that I would read it, and I wouldn’t ask questions. I learned that sex should be kept secret, but the truth is that our very existence depends on people having sex. It’s a natural function of our human bodies, and desire is a very normal emotion, even if we’re told that some forms of desire are unacceptable, even forbidden.

But isn’t desire the place where so many stories begin? Someone wants something. And then something gets in the way of that wanting, and all of a sudden, we have the conflict and we have a story.

Tips for Writing Great Sex

Exploit the Messiness
Having an orgasm is wonderful, but this is rarely the sole reason we want sex, so simplifying it in this way is a sure misfire. Maybe your narrator or character wants to feel loved or make someone fall in love with her. Maybe she wants to manipulate her partner or have an adventure or defy her parents or make sure her spouse finally leaves her for good. The key in any of these cases is to be emotionally honest when presenting the conflicting emotions of desire, whether you’re writing about revenge sex, break-up sex, make-up sex, dutiful sex, make-a-baby sex, forbidden sex, or even a frustrating failed sexual attempt.

Talk the Right Kind of Dirty
How would the characters in your piece (including your narrator) have described what was going on as it was happening? If the narrator was saying (or even thinking), “Fuck me harder,” and you write it as “Make sweet love to me,” you have totally missed the mark. I’ve heard people say there are no good ways to describe sex and genitalia, but actually, there are lots of ways—everything from edgy, colloquial slang to scientific jargon to poetic image and metaphor, but the language must reflect the tone. And if you’re writing bad sex, then maybe those clinical terms or even the disembodiment of your own body parts is needed by using “the” instead of “my,” as in the breasts, the thighs, the cunt. Did that last word make you uncomfortable?

If you’re going to write sex, you’ll have to get over that and allow yourself the full repertoire of sex diction. There are no synonyms; each situation calls for the correct word, and that word could very well be cunt. As writers, we must be able to own every word or at least take them out on loan. Use the words that suit the tone of the piece, and that might mean quieting your inner voice, or the voice of your mother.

Sometimes “bad” words make good writing. Be brave and unapologetic.

Break Stereotypes
One of the reasons stereotypes and clichés ruin our writing is because they are mostly untrue. I have never seen it rain cats and dogs, just as I haven’t been in the presence of an actual steaming-hot, throbbing member. (Maybe I’m missing something, but the word member reminds me of a club.) Even if you’re writing about stereotypically bad sex, your language should be fresh and surprising. Oscar Wilde says, “Everything in the world is about sex except for sex. Sex is about power.” While this may be true, don’t just reinforce traditional power dynamics. We see stereotypical representations of sex everywhere in popular culture, including my childhood picture book.

Here’s the text that accompanies the picture of the couple beneath the colorful quilt: “The man wants to get as close to the woman as he can, because he’s feeling very loving to her. And to get really close, the best thing he can do is lie on top of her and put his penis inside her, into her vagina.” The woman is the recipient of male desire: She is the object to his subject, the vessel that he must fill with his own need. How does the woman feel? We cannot know because we only get the man’s perspective. And why does this primer only show sex between a man and a woman? Why not show that men have sex with men and women have sex with women? And that people have sex with themselves. Despite what the book-ban people believe, sex is interesting and varied, and we must write it in all its complexities.

Our essays, poems, and stories about sex should reflect just how interesting and varied sex can be.

Sometimes Less Is More
Write the sex scene in all its fleshy detail, but in revision, ask yourself this: Does it serve the piece? Do the sex scenes move the story forward in some important way? Or maybe, the sex is the story. However, what’s left out can be sexier and more interesting than what remains. Bette Davis said, “I often think that a slightly exposed shoulder emerging from a long satin nightgown packs more sex than two naked bodies in bed.” If your explicit sex scene needs to be trimmed to the exposed shoulder, the ghost of those naked people will remain on the page. A digression can also imply a sex scene—an internal monologue, flashback, flash-forward, or metaphor. Anton Chekhov does this in his famous short story “The Lady with the Pet Dog.” What happens while we’re following Gurov’s internal monologue becomes obvious a few sentences later through Anna’s action and dialogue. She cries and tells him he won’t respect her. Then Gurov takes that famous bite of watermelon, a metaphor for what has just happened and his nonchalant reaction to it.

Writing Prompt #21: The Language of Sex

Think of all the words you would normally associate with sex, set your timer for five minutes, and list them—the clinical, the raunchy, the romantic. When your timer goes off, set it for another fifteen minutes and write a sex scene (in poetry, memoir, or fiction—you decide) without using any of the words on your list. This will force you to write about sex in a new way, reaching for fresh words to describe the sexual act. When your time’s up, have a look at what you’ve written. Is it the seed for a poem, story, essay, or chapter? Is it a scene that was needed in something you have already written?

Bonus Prompt: Unsexy Words for Sex

Do this writing exercise again, but this time, write down words you would never associate with sex, the most unsexy words you can think of, and then use those words in a sex scene. Hopefully, you will come up with a few interesting sentences you otherwise wouldn’t have chosen for this scene or poem, getting you over the hump to writing great sex.

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Adapted from 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer by Suzanne Roberts by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © 2026 Suzanne Roberts Available wherever books are sold or from the Univ. of Nebraska Press 800.848.6224 and at nebraskapress.unl.edu.