My Tongue Furiously Worked The Craters

Nothing ruins a good book like bad sex.

Let’s clarify. I’m not talking about the hideous, awkward and violent encounters that form a legitimate part of a story or character. I’m not talking about graphic or ugly sex. I’m talking about badly written sex.

There’s a whole award for this crime, organized by the Literary Review for the last nineteen years. The winner will be unveiled December 6th at a London club called the In and Out.

Don’t look at me like that. I’m not joking.

Amongst the shortlisted authors are the otherwise talented Mr Stephen King and Mr Haruki Murakami, who have taken a vacation from wit and complexity to put heaving bosoms and that sort of thing right in the middle of what could be a perfectly good sex scene.

According to the Telegraph, one of King’s heroines exclaims “Oh dear, oh my dear, oh my dear, dear God, oh sugar!” during what Christos Tsiolkas or Lee Child would probably call the act of love,  copulation, conjugal relations or (if King hadn’t beat them to it) “a horizontal version of the Madison.”

For writers and writers-in-purgatory, I’ve compiled a list of advice for writing about sex without inspiring your readership to take a vow of celibacy.

1. Less is more. If you’ve used more than one or two adjectives and any of them are “bouncing,” “resplendent” or “rock hard,” you need to edit.

2. Sometimes a cock is just a cock.

3. If it can’t be done in real life, don’t do it on the page (unless you’re writing SciFi). Example: it is not possible for two men to anally penetrate one another at the same time.

4. It’s all very well to be politically correct, but in times of lust no one says, “Bearing in mind that we’re equal partners, I’d like to penetrate your vagina as soon as I’ve checked the expiry date on this condom, baby.”

5. For the love of God, don’t compare a vagina to a flower. Any kind of flower. Okay?

6. Likewise, a penis and anything made of steel, iron or wood.

7. Sometimes an asshole is just an asshole.

8. Your mom will probably skim over that part of the book. For the sake of the rest of us, write as if your whole family is illiterate.

9. Women NEVER recollect sex like this: “I stood before him with my 36 DD breasts heaving like glorious melons in the moonlight and my eyes transfixed by his mighty German sausage.”

10. Sometimes a nipple is just a nipple.

The entire shortlist, as reported by the Hindustan Times, is:

–1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
–On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry
–The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey
–Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas
–11.22.63 by Stephen King
–Ed King by David Guterson
–The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M Auel
–The Affair by Lee Child
–Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas
–Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller
–Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
–The Great Night by Chris Adrian

Contact the author here: miriam@morningquickie.com