Love is in the air at this time of year. Love of all varieties. So the View team gleaned the inside scoop on how to write well about sensuality, romantic love, and sex. Two Loft teaching artists, Ann Rosenquist Fee and Catherine Lundoff, teach the art of erotica. Here are some of their insights.

The View: What makes a good sex scene good? Who do you like to read for their keen ability to get sex on the page?

Ann Rosenquist Fee: My favorite sex scenes are those that aren’t, on the surface, about sex. A participant in “Sex on the Page” [Ann’s Loft class] read a scene from his manuscript in which a character cleans a pool. The narrator described the landscape, the mechanics of pool cleaning, and the woman lying nearby, all with language that was so deliberately sensual and rhythmic, we’d have sworn sex was happening.

Similarly, when actual sex scenes are good, I think it’s due to an element of surprise. Pauline Reage achieves that in "Story of O" by describing violent, passionate acts with pristine and unhurried prose. Gloria Vanderbilt’s new "Obsession: An Erotic Tale" does it, in part, by virtue of the fact that the author is 85. Reviewers don’t love the book, but come on, 85.

Catherine Lundoff: I like a sex scene that is integral to the story—it doesn’t just pop up out of the blue then go nowhere. I want to get an idea of what these characters are about and how they’ll get where they’re going. Donna George Storey, Cecilia Tan, Cheyenne Blue, M. Christian, and Jacqueline Carey are among my favorites. These are writers who write great sex while telling a great story.

What are the challenges not only in getting sex on the page but in capturing sexual chemistry? How much of a sex scene is sex?

AF: The first challenge is knowing what the sex scene is doing for the story. When a writer knows that, he or she has a better shot at knowing what to show and not show on the page. Sometimes it serves the story to show skin on skin; sometimes not. The results can be equally erotic.

CL:  I think it depends on a number of factors, including genre and the audience you’re trying to reach. In erotic short fiction, for example, the sex scene can be used to tell an entire story. For example, a story of lovers growing apart can be told this way. The difference in intimacy remembered as well as present and future intimacy can be used for both character development and plot arc. The sex scene then becomes a vehicle for telling that story to the reader.

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