Adding Visual Impact to Your Story
Part VI – Adding Sex and Humor to Your Story
Adding sex scenes or introducing humor into your story can greatly enhance it. Or, they can help flush it down the toilet.
Let’s start with sex.
Is it okay to put sex scenes in your story?
That depends on several things.
- How adept are you, the author, in describing a sexual scene?
- Does it fit comfortably with your story and character images?
- How appropriate is it for your target age group?
- How will it be received and perceived by your readers?
- And finally, does it meet any publisher’s or seller’s restrictions?
For us, it’s a “Yes, sex is definitely okay in a story”. Now, we’re going to add a lot of: “Only if’s.”
What works and doesn’t
Let us first comment on what we’ve seen others do that we thought didn’t work.
Don’t try and play it too safe. If your couple is going to make love, have them make meaningful love.
Let their touching, petting and actual love making express their love and feelings for each other. If you try to avoid being graphic, the scene is going to lose its meaning.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, don’t be too graphic. This is a story, not porn. Make the scene realistic and meaningful but not too explicit.
Less is more
If you’re going to add a sex scene, use the reader’s imagination as much as possible. Lead them to where you want the scene to go but don’t take it there. Let them get there on their own. For us, less has always been better where a sex scene is concerned.
Undress your couple in a provocative way. Describe the trail of clothes they left. You’d be surprised how much you can say just by painting a picture like the one below.
Next, lead them to a bed, a couch, a wall, or table and leave them locked in a passionate embrace. Your reader will fill in the rest. And, trust us, they will do it better than any words you write can. Especially if you lead them to someplace other than a bed. Remember, there’s an unspoken message and image in where you lead them.
Keep your characters in character
Be certain the scene you paint and the characters’ actions fit the characters you’ve created for your reader. If your male MC is only 5’ 8” tall, don’t have the female MC amazed when she sees he’s hung like an elephant. Unless of course she’s noticed early on that his jeans don’t fit quite right.
Also, if he’s been gentle and caring, keep him that way. Contrary to the belief of some, most people don’t change when they lose their clothes.
Be tasteful
Make sure your sex scene is done tastefully and that it fits comfortably into your story line. Don’t just dump them into bed on page three. Let them get to know each other and the reader get comfortable with who they are and their feelings for each other. Finally, be sure the scene’s appropriate for your target age group. If your books are aimed at teens, back off on the explicit descriptions. Make them age appropriate. (Yeah, I know, teens these days know more than we do but it’s not your place to get them there.)
We’ll end with a few Only If’s and several No-No’s.
- Never exploit one sex or the other in any way.
- Always make it obvious that it’s consensual, and enjoyable to both parties.
- No drugs or violence, ever!
- Make sure the partners are clearly past the age of consent.
- Finally, unless they’re trying to start a family, make sure they have safe sex. Especially if they only recently met and don’t know if their partner is disease free or who they might have been with.
Remember, no matter what genre the story is in, making love should not just be a physical act. It should enhance and convey to the reader the love, trust and feelings they have for each other.
Oh, and happiness too!
Yeah, we know, sex may have different connotations in genres other than romance and love stories, but we still think treating your sex scenes with the rules we’ve noted is your best bet.
One final point. As soon as you put a sex scene in, stand by for the seething reviews to roll in. No matter how tasteful and careful you are with your love scenes, you will surely offend someone. Actually, a few someones. So, be ready.
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Adding humor to your story
Everyone loves a good joke and every author loves it when a reviewer says their story made them laugh out loud: Better yet, that they were embarrassed when they looked up and everyone was watching them because they were laughing so hard.
But humor is one of the hardest things to pull off in a story. Like sex, it can also make or break a story and many of the same do’s and don’ts apply.
What works and doesn’t
Make sure your humor will be understood by your readers. So often authors use “in jokes” or descriptions that leave the reader shaking their head with no idea that it was supposed to be funny.
You don’t need to write something funny or tell a joke in every paragraph or on every page. But, once you introduce humor into your story, your readers are going to expect that, from there on, it will continue.
The best way to insert humor is to describe something funny or have one or two characters convey the humor through dialogue.
Pick the humorous characters early and set them up with fun personalities. We’ve seen cases where they’re bashful, then come out of their shell later, but that’s more difficult to pull off.
Although they can, they don’t need to tell jokes or funny stories. Snide comments will do just fine, and even those can be scattered.
Let the sense of humor from these characters draw out humorous responses from others.
Less is more
Slip in subtle comments or funny scenes where they are least expected and from whom they are least expected.
Funny scenes tend to work best when they’re described by someone who wasn’t expecting them.
If you have a joke you want to work in, set a scene up so your character can tell it: At a party, in a bar, at a meeting, in response to something someone else said.
Keep your characters in character
Never go out of character. Keep the humor in line with the character’s image that you’ve built.
If your characters sense of humor develops slowly, ease them into it. Don’t have them all of a sudden throwing out funny responses or cracking jokes.
If your characters are introverted, don’t curse or drink, don’t have them telling sex or bar jokes or jokes with curse words.
If a character is always adding their two cents, use them to throw in funny remarks. This, and responses to them, is a great way to ease humor into your story.
Be tasteful
Remember your characters are people and they have feelings.
Don’t pick on nationalities, personal traits, disabilities or anything else that would embarrass someone.
Don’t ever demean anyone.
Avoid sex jokes; it’s almost impossible to make them tasteful.
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Create your own funny scene whenever you can
That’s our opinion on sex and humor. What’s yours? When it comes to sex, are we too prudish or not prudish enough? On humor, did we miss ways to work it into your story?
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Bob Boze lives in the South Bay area of San Diego and his writing partner, Robyn Bennett, lives in Blenheim on New Zealand’s South Island. Both are published romance and non-fiction authors, editors, speakers and bloggers. Together they have over twelve published works and are collaborating on several more novels, short stories, articles and other works.
Bob and Robyn also offer a variety of writer and business services through their business website, Writing Allsorts. To learn more about them, their published works and the services they offer, go to https://writingallsorts.com/
