tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/bad-sex-in-fiction-award-23147/articlesBad Sex in Fiction Award – The Conversation2017-12-01T10:24:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/883512017-12-01T10:24:15Z2017-12-01T10:24:15ZHow to write a romp that avoids a Bad Sex in Fiction award<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196964/original/file-20171129-29101-xde2al.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">sarkao via Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The annual <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award">Bad Sex in Fiction award</a> is enough to put any writer off writing a sex scene. This year’s examples are as cringeworthy as those of previous years. It’s not that the authors aren’t trying to get it right; a good sex scene is just very difficult to write. Writers often find themselves caught between the cloying pages of a Harlequin romance and the thrust and grind of porn. </p>
<p>Its what lies between these that’s so difficult to capture – those nuanced moments that are funny or silly or tender or playful and deeply personal to the couple involved. But how can those moments translate into well written scenes?</p>
<p>American Christopher Bolland took the honours this year for a paragraph in his novel The Destroyers in which his protagonist compares his genitals to a billiard rack:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>She covers her breasts with her swimsuit. The rest of her remains so delectably exposed. The skin along her arms and shoulders are different shades of tan like water stains in a bathtub. Her face and vagina are competing for my attention, so I glance down at the billiard rack of my penis and testicles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Judges commented that: “They were left unsure as to how many testicles the character in question has.”</p>
<p>Bolland apart, many of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/23/bad-sex-award-judges-admit-this-year-is-quite-good">examples in this year’s shortlist</a> might also cause a few laughs – but there’s something surprisingly “right” about many of them. Sex lends itself to hyperbole, especially those first awkward, hyperventilating moments with someone you really lust after. Real life men and women fall into the exact trap the nominated writers have fallen into. We are dazzled, hungry, we behave unlike ourselves. The moment is electric. We are open in all possible ways to new experience. We are nervous, vulnerable, romantic. We blather about stars and moss and philosophy. Therein lies the problem. Just attempting to describe this very human experience guarantees bad prose.</p>
<p>Examples of bad writing in awards such as this are always highly subjective. I actually thought that some of the scenes were quite clever. Take the example from <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/wilbur-smith/war-cry/">War Cry by Wilbur Smith</a> (with David Churchill). A man on a beach, places his coat on the ground and his girlfriend lies on it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>‘Christ!’ he muttered, placing himself on top of her. ‘It’s bloody cold. I might get frostbite on my cock.’<br>
She gave a low purring laugh. ‘Silly man. Why don’t you put it somewhere hot?’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This, I would argue, is realistic sex – as anyone who has had sex on a beach or in a park or the backseat of a car would attest. Sex outdoors is always uncomfortable and the man is quite right to be worried about frostbite. What makes the scene well-wrought for me is the wit of his companion. Good on her for steering his thoughts away from the chill. It’s funny and sexy and the woman is demonstrating female sexual agency. What’s wrong with that?</p>
<h2>Lie back and think of Kierkegaard</h2>
<p>There are pros and cons to all the other examples, too. Thinking of Socrates or Kierkegaard at a heightened moment might seem sexually inappropriate, but why not? These might be the common thoughts of one of those bearded philosophers you run into in philosophy departments in universities where such places still exist. He’s probably got a mug that says “Philosophers do it better” or “I think therefore I come.” That makes the scene and the inner musings appropriate to character – something we’re always advising emerging writers to do along with “show, don’t tell”.</p>
<p>The awards also don’t take account of the role sex scenes such as these play in adolescent sexual development. As a teenager, I was enthralled by DH Lawrence’s sexual beings – especially in the likes of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/24/lawrence-lady-chatterley-review">Lady Chatterley’s Lover</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/aug/13/classics.fromthearchives">Women in Love</a>. I also learned a lot from Grace Metalious’s novel, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/books/review/whats-it-like-reading-peyton-place-today.html">Peyton Place</a>. As far as sex scenes go, both writers managed to blur the lines between good and bad sex. Today, I’d describe their sex as so bad it’s good. There’s something silly and fragile and exciting and educational in it – and it was especially useful in the days before more open social attitudes.</p>
<h2>A few, err, tips</h2>
<p>So what advice would I give to a budding writer who wants to write about sex but is worried they’ll end up in awards such as this?</p>
<p>First, choose how you want to choreograph your scene. If you don’t feel comfortable about it and it doesn’t come naturally, draw a curtain on the scene and move on to the next day. And if you want to write openly and honestly, go down the path of realism. Why be afraid to call the body parts by their real names? Metaphors and similes have a place but they may leave you open to ridicule.</p>
<p>Remember, humour is good. Good sex is often funny. Humour also offers the reader a lot of a character. Powerful men and women may be decidedly unassertive in their sexual relationships. There’s a lot of comic potential in pet names and hidden peccadilloes.</p>
<p>Sex is also all kinds of other things that don’t always have a lot to do with the sex itself. Great tenderness is shown between people who haven’t seen one another for a long time or who have finally escaped from a squalling child. Relationships surprise and delight, whatever our sexual preferences or partners, and through sexual attraction we see how much we all just want to be loved or just sexually fulfilled, educated, amused.</p>
<p>As Jarett Kobek says in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/nov/05/the-future-wont-be-long-jarett-kobek-review">The Future Won’t Be Long</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We made love and we had sex and we had sex and we made love. But reader, again, I implore. Mistake me not. I am not your Pollyanna, I am not your sweet princess. We fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked, we fucked.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And with that, Charlotte Bronte, eat your heart out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Cole has received funding from various arts organisations and government . She is affiliated with the Labour Party and the National Association of Writers in Education. </span></em></p>A novelist who compared a man’s genitals to a billiard rack has won this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award. But not all entries were that silly.Catherine Cole, Professor in Creative Writing, Liverpool John Moores UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/881932017-11-30T18:15:28Z2017-11-30T18:15:28ZBad sex? I’ve had it – vicariously of course<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197166/original/file-20171130-30923-uheumn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Family TV via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I can still vividly recall my acute embarrassment and anguish when, in 1997, people thought I’d won the <a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/bad-sex-prize-1993-1997/263100?utm_source=bottom_floater&utm_source=bottom_floater&place&id=82">Bad Sex in Fiction award</a>. At first, I had no idea what was going on. Students and colleagues at my university came up to me in the corridor: “I didn’t know you were a pornographer…”; “Congratulations on the bad sex prize…”; “Is it true that you write pornography?” and so on. </p>
<p>They had confused me with my namesake – who had indeed just won the award – for a passage in his novel The Matter of the Heart in which a male character “reached for a condom” and the female “grinned and writhed on the bed, arching her back, making a noise somewhere between a beached seal and a police siren”. </p>
<p>My students and fellow academics thought I’d written that? It was excruciating – both the writing and the confusion of authorial identity. I attempted to clear my name by writing about it in an essay called The Double, later published in my book <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=XkvSWxjrMN8C&pg=PA187&lpg=PA187&dq=nicholas+royle+Bad+Sex+award+in+1997&source=bl&ots=_OXj88tw_y&sig=0HDzIM1a9qp2SBOeU9IqDNJmG2Y&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR7eGnvebXAhWpJcAKHcIRAq8Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=nicholas%20royle%20Bad%20Sex%20award%20in%201997&f=false">The Uncanny</a>. But as I realised at the time (this was part of the anguish), I would never succeed. I continue to get mixed up with the other Nicholas Royle, winner of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. </p>
<h2>Ménage à deux</h2>
<p>Things have become more complicated since I’ve started publishing novels myself. No novelist who is serious about writing, it seems to me, would want to win the Literary Review’s Bad Sex award. But it’s difficult not to be conscious of its existence as you go about the business of writing or redrafting. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1232&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1232&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197164/original/file-20171130-30893-1kyjfgt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1232&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">And the winner is…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“An outstandingly bad scene of sexual description in an otherwise good novel” – the Literary Review rubric certainly haunted me when I was working on my most recent novel, <a href="http://www.myriadeditions.com/books/an-english-guide-to-birdwatching/">An English Guide to Birdwatching</a> – not least because it’s a novel about two people called Nicholas Royle and because it’s very much a novel about sex. </p>
<p>“Sex” is perhaps the most complex and deceptive three-letter word in the English language. It gets up to all sorts of stuff. And it goes all the way down – as in the prepositions we use, such as “up” and “down”. </p>
<p>As the critic Paul de Man <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DrTmLMSWrKsC&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=de+man+%22Words+have+a+way+of+saying+things+which+are+not+at+all+what+you+want+them+to+say.+You+are+writing+a+splendid+and+coherent+philosophical+argument+but,+lo+and+behold,+you+are+describing+sexual+intercourse%22&source=bl&ots=FN_jbnwXBx&sig=XhBvZlzVKBFm_BbRQs1dbEfBLf8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjRjYXXvObXAhVrJ8AKHaewAtkQ6AEIKjAB#v=onepage&q=de%20man%20%22Words%20have%20a%20way%20of%20saying%20things%20which%20are%20not%20at%20all%20what%20you%20want%20them%20to%20say.%20You%20are%20writing%20a%20splendid%20and%20coherent%20philosophical%20argument%20but%2C%20lo%20and%20behold%2C%20you%20are%20describing%20sexual%20intercourse%22&f=false">once remarked</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Words have a way of saying things which are not at all what you want them to say. You are writing a splendid and coherent philosophical argument but, lo and behold, you are describing sexual intercourse.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/197165/original/file-20171130-30890-9am7j7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1159&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Didn’t make the cut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What goes for philosophy goes for other kinds of writing. A good novel will always be about sex – though in ways that may not be obvious, even (or especially) to its author. Shakespeare, for example, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12159454/Shakespeares-lost-puns-and-rude-jokes-revealed-in-new-guide-to-Elizabethan-pronunciation.html">clearly has a fascination</a> with what is rather circumspectly (if not circumsexually) called “bawdy”, and often it is difficult to know where to draw the line or limit of sexual wordplay in his writings.</p>
<p>Thanks to psychoanalysis, we have a deeper appreciation than ever of the extent to which writing and the sexual or erotic are bound up with one another. All creative writing, <a href="https://minerva-access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/34645">Freud suggested</a>, is a kind of foreplay. An English Guide to Birdwatching is about the sexual or erotic tangles not only between people, but also in ornithology and the lives of birds, in the world of what we call our “feathered friends”.</p>
<h2>Coulda been a contender</h2>
<p>There is a key scene in the novel, however, involving a man and two women, and I was quite conscious, as I was writing it, of the phantom eyes of the Bad Sex award judges peering over my shoulder. I needed the scene to be bad – to include cliché and “explicit language”, to have a somewhat embarrassing, stilted and artificial quality. That was part of the metafictional strangeness of the scene, for it involved (without giving too much away here) at least one Nicholas Royle. </p>
<p>But I was also keen to ensure that it was not so bad that I would end up being a contender for the Bad Sex award. Accordingly, I sought to complicate the tone and language in various respects: instead of fellatio, for example, a character speaks of WB Yeats’s “<a href="https://genius.com/William-butler-yeats-leda-and-the-swan-annotated">burning roof and tower</a>” – and there’s evident extravagance in other aspects of the passage. </p>
<p>It was a relief to read the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4343b904-3af2-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec">review in the Financial Times</a>, which described the novel as “Rachel Cusk rewritten by Georges Bataille, full of strange sex, sudden violence and surreal twists”. But it was dismaying to read another review, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/31/an-english-guide-to-birdwatching-by-nicholas-royle-review">in The Guardian</a>, which referenced the clichéd language (“complexioned young beauty”, “pert breasts” and so on) without any ear for the tone and playfulness of the text. </p>
<p>Indeed, it filled me with foreboding: if someone could misread the novel like this, surely I was in danger of being considered for the Bad Sex award? Fortunately, in this respect at least, the novel passed without notice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88193/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Royle does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The author, Nicholas Royle, believes he doesn’t deserve a Bad Sex in Fiction award. It’s just unfortunate his namesake novelist has won one.Nicholas Royle, Professor of English, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/697462016-12-01T14:49:07Z2016-12-01T14:49:07ZItalian author wins Bad Sex Award for genital ballet – but when is written sex ever any good?<p>“It’s terribly British, isn’t it,” said the man next to me at last night’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards ceremony at the (appropriately named) In and Out Club in St James’s. He was referring, of course, to the yearly bash – now in its 24th year – in which the Literary Review magazine nominates half a dozen passages from contemporary fiction seen to represent sex at its most cringeworthy, reads them out to champagne-infused guffaws, and then awards a prize to the author of the worst. </p>
<p>It is a terribly British event, but it also provides a snarky satisfaction that transcends nationality. Because for anyone with the sneaking suspicion that the sexual act is better done or seen than artistically described – that its complex idiosyncrasy is one of the few things that lie outside the remit of the otherwise resourceful English language – the Bad Sex Awards hits its mark. </p>
<p>Yet as the entrants this year make clear, writing about sex with flagrant abominableness is still cheerily far from going out of fashion. Hearty examples were a passage from Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/25/the-butchers-hook-janet-ellis-review">The Butcher’s Hook</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When his hand goes to my breasts, my feet are envious. I slide my hands down his back, all along his spine, rutted with bone like mud ridges in a dry field, to the audacious swell below.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Audacious swell”? Quite.</p>
<p>Then there was the American Gayle Forman’s entry, from <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/gayle-forman/leave-me/">Leave Me</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were in that room, Jason had slammed the door and devoured her with his mouth, his hands, which were everywhere. As if he were ravenous. And she remembered standing in front of him, her dress a puddle on the floor, and how she’d started to shake, her knees knocking together, like she was a virgin, like this was the first time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the gong went to the Italian poet and translator Erri De Luca for <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/culture/books/book-review-the-day-before-happiness-by-erri-de-luca-1-4188440">The Day Before Happiness</a> (de Luca understandably wasn’t present). “My prick was a plank stuck to her stomach,” the Neapolitan was justly rebuked for writing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>With a swerve of her hips, she turned me over and I was on top of her … I was her plaything, which she moved around. Our sexes were ready, poised in expectation, barely touching each other: ballet dancers hovering en pointe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not everyone felt this deserved the award – as an American woman nearby remarked to me, this could clearly be read as satire, plain and simple. Perhaps, but satire doesn’t necessarily get you home dry, especially when it’s ambiguous. After all, the book, a coming of age story, is not particularly comic in the way that, for instance, the early sex-mad tomes of Philip Roth and Martin Amis were. </p>
<p>In fact, the awards were conceived not to discourage writing about sex, but to discourage writing about sex badly. The wording of the original mission statement in 1993 by Auberon Waugh, then editor of the Literary Review, is revealing: the bash was to “draw attention to poorly written, perfunctory or redundant passages of sexual description in modern fiction”. </p>
<p>It would be helpful to have some guidance on what non-redundant, good sex writing looks like, since it’s not entirely clear whether it can exist in a literary form at all. After all, the most sexually charged novels of the last 100 or so years use the rule of thumb that the act is unmentionable, boring, or best only suggested. </p>
<p>The novels of Dickens, Eliot and Trollope are full of sexual yearning, and their emotional and erotic pull are none the worse for the veiled references to kissing and love. Even in 20th century novels with subject matter devoted to romantic entanglements, the sexual act is not necessarily spelled out or even mentioned – Iris Murdoch doesn’t go further than “making love” as an account of the nocturnal activities of her highly sexually charged couple Dora and Paul in <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/book-of-a-lifetime-the-bell-by-iris-murdoch-7573964.html">The Bell</a> (1958). </p>
<p>And while Margaret Drabble’s super-sexy characters Clara and Gabriel get pretty steamy in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/02/jerusalem-golden-margaret-drabble">Jerusalem the Golden</a>, nothing beyond the fact is spelled out. It’s a blessed relief which does nothing to diminish the profoundly saucy atmosphere of the book.</p>
<p>The awards are also a humorous reminder not just of the imaginative power but also of the literary value of discipline and restraint in matters of bonking. A <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n22/bee-wilson/a-little-talk-in-downing-st">recent book</a> about prime minster Herbert Asquith’s passionate attachment to Venetia Stanley tells of his thousands of letters to her, all passionately headed with variants of “my own darling” and “darlingest”. </p>
<p>Asquith’s desperate fixation with Stanley pours out from every page, but had he indulged in anything more sexually explicit than the desire to “go for a little drive, or will you come to Downing St & have a talk”, it would hardly have helped, and probably only hindered, the accumulated intensity of his fixation. Voluble lusters: take note.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Strimpel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Bad Sex Awards are a reminder of the literary value of discipline and restraint in matters of bonking.Zoe Strimpel, PhD Candidate, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/517222015-12-03T06:44:02Z2015-12-03T06:44:02ZSex is neither good nor bad, but writing makes it so<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104218/original/image-20151203-22467-1syh06m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Breasts 'barrel-rolling across Ezra’s howling mouth'? That joke isn't funny anymore. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kandarya Mahadeva Temple, India. David Tubau</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bad sex. Isn’t it enough to have had it without having to read it as well? A poorly written sex scene can be viscerally dreadful. While porn is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/01/real-sex-films-gaspar-noe-love-catastrophe">fundamentally unrealistic</a>, bad sex in prose that’s not explicit can be excruciating.</p>
<p>Yesterday, the British Literary Review shone the spotlight on terrible sex writing when it awarded former Smith’s frontman and debut novelist Morrissey their annual <a href="https://literaryreview.co.uk/bad-sex-in-fiction-award">Bad Sex in Fiction Award</a> for <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26155235-list-of-the-lost">List of the Lost</a> (2015), and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/04/list-of-the-lost-morrissey-review-publishers-ashamed">truly dreadful writing it is</a>. </p>
<p>The passage that won Morrisey the award is not only a pile of clauses heaped together in an attempt to mimic urgency, it is also ungrammatical: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Surely that should be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolling across Ezra’s howling mouth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You can read the rest of the passage – and the other nominees – in a slideshow <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/bad-sex-in-fiction-award-2015-excerpts-morrissey-leads-nominations-with-cringeworthy-list-of-the-a6738201.html#gallery">here</a>. </p>
<p>It is also challenging to follow the action amongst the mixed metaphors. Metaphors can be a real bugger for writers to manage. It’s just too easy to get carried away. Morrisey’s “rollercoaster” might suggest fear and nausea to some readers. </p>
<p>“Coil” naturally brings to mind rope, and snakes; and after seeing the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120737/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Lord of the Rings film series</a>, “barrel-rolling” reminds me either of hobbits bouncing down rapids in beer kegs, or men in long aprons rolling the kegs toward the local pub’s cellar hatch. </p>
<p>So what is it about sex writing that’s so difficult? There are two essential elements to avoiding turning your steamy sex romp into an unintentional tragi-comedy: metaphor and allusion. </p>
<h2>The art of the metaphor</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104220/original/image-20151203-22480-1jao8vt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1266&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Megan Schüirmann</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Metaphors, which are at the crux of bad sex writing, can go so wrong. Literary and spoken metaphors alike, when effective, create a context-specific, momentary likeness by bringing together unexpected and unrelated phenomena or images. </p>
<p>A word that means H is used to suggest X. The effective metaphor strikes a note of unexpected yet immediate recognition for the reader and a pleasing or revealing “truth” about X. A good metaphor enriches the idea of X. </p>
<p>Of course, for the metaphor to work, the reader needs to understand and agree with it to some extent. Much bad sex writing is bad because the metaphors send the wrong message. More than not suggesting anything physically or emotionally erotic and sexy, the metaphors are ludicrous, even nonsensical. </p>
<p>The dead, or over-used and over-familiar, metaphor is responsible for a great deal of bad sex writing. No-one can accuse Morrisey of using “dead metaphors”; they’re startlingly original. Unfortunately, this means there’s no common ground that lets the reader understand what’s happening when:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Eliza and Ezra rolled together into the one giggling snowball of full-figured copulation, screaming and shouting as they playfully bit and pulled at each other in a dangerous and clamorous rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation </p>
</blockquote>
<p>On the other hand, Ben Okri, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/03/ben-okri-wins-bad-sex-award-rocket-the-age-of-magic">2014 Award winner</a>, deployed quite a few dead metaphors in his bad sex writing. You might recognise:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>When his hand brushed her nipple it tripped a switch and she came alight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Notice the try-hard exaggeration. Her nipple isn’t really a switch. She didn’t really come alight. Well, we hope not.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104225/original/image-20151203-22473-17zijxq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Henti Smith</span></span>
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<p>A further element common to bad sex writing, is this tendency to exaggeration and bragging. Not only the hand gestures (just one brush and she’s alight), the adverbs and adjectives strain for effect, as in Christos Tsolkas’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5396496-the-slap">The Slap</a> (2008), nominated in 2010 for the award. The man “crowing out his rapture” tipped that particular passage into hyperbole. </p>
<p>Describing action is also a challenge. How much to leave in, what to leave unsaid? The Slap was criticised for simply having too much <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-slap-up-for-bad-sex-award-20101119-17ztx.html">repetitively explicit sex</a>.</p>
<h2>Alluding to the unmentionable</h2>
<p>What to call those private parts? Bad sex writing makes this other big mistake: the characters are not in character, they are not themselves. They don’t do what they’d normally do, they don’t speak as themselves. </p>
<p>In terms of characterisation, a sex scene should be no different than any other scene that involves action and dialogue, emotion and intellect. </p>
<p>This explains some of the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/21/women-on-the-verge">appeal of Elena Ferrante’s novels</a>: their veracity. In the internationally acclaimed <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/77810.The_Days_of_Abandonment">The Days of Abandonment</a> (2002) there are a few scenes that describe bad sex – but it is very good writing. </p>
<p>Ferrante’s description of the sex that takes place between Olga and her neighbour Cerrano focuses on the small actions that take place, of whose hand does what when, and so forth. This is because Olga is in that frame of mind: she is unhappy and has no particular desire for Cerrano. Cerrano is an experiment. </p>
<p>She notices what he does and what she is doing because she’s not feeling passionate, and is watching herself and him:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cerrano had just raised my skirt and now was caressing the crotch of my underpants with the palm of his hand, and then he ran his fingers over the material pressing, pushing it deep into the fold of my sex.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>British novelist and critic, David Lodge, in <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/david-lodge/the-art-of-fiction-9780099554240.aspx">The Art of Fiction</a> (2011), writes about the importance of implication in narrative, the suggestion of meaning rather than the stating of it. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104224/original/image-20151203-32297-xf9lpl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">xiu xiu</span></span>
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<p>Many of the writers of bad sex could learn from his brief essay which uses as an example a scene from William Cooper’s <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/books/jm-coetzee/scenes-from-provincial-life-9781864712087.aspx">Scenes From Provincial Life</a> (1950), in which a woman gestures to her lover to come closer.</p>
<p>It’s clear enough to an attentive reader with some experience of the world that fellatio takes place, but it’s not explicit. The scene is erotic and playful as the meaning is there in the gaps; it had to get past the censors and could not be graphic. </p>
<p>It’s exactly the kind of writing that frustrates the naive reader. (I remember reading <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56034.The_French_Lieutenant_s_Woman">The French Lieutenant’s Woman</a>, 1969, in my early teens hoping to learn a few things. I did, but not what I was searching for.)</p>
<p>The annual Award isn’t just a bit of a lark. Past nominees and winners such as <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com.au/authors/christos-tsiolkas.aspx">Christos Tsiolkas</a>, <a href="http://richardflanagan.com/">Richard Flanagan</a>, <a href="http://www.michaelcunninghamwriter.com/">Michael Cunningham</a> and <a href="http://benokri.co.uk/">Ben Okri</a> are serious writers, produced by serious publishing houses. </p>
<p>That the writing identified is so very bad tells us something about how uncomfortable our culture is about sexuality, language, and masculinity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/51722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Messer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Yesterday, the British Literary Review awarded the 2015 Bad Sex in Fiction award to Morrissey. So what is it about sex writing that’s so difficult – and what’s the secret of writers who know how to seduce?Jane Messer, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.