HOW NOT TO WRITE ABOUT SEX

As there was such a good response to my recent post ‘What’s Wrong With Seniors Writing About Sex?’ I thought I’d carry on with a bit of exploration along that track.

You may not be aware that an annual prize has been awarded since 1993 for the worst description of a sex scene in a novel. It’s the most notorious ‘booby’ prize in the literary world (the worst offenders more often being male writers).

Previous nominees have included a famous horror author (Stephen King), an Oscar-nominated actor (Ethan Hawke), an Ivor Novello award winner (Nick Cave) and - surprisingly - a former Prime Minister (Tony Blair).

I’ve put together a few of the more laughable or cringeworthy examples. Here we go:

‘Victoria was like a deep nocturnal forest that I strode through without knowing where I was going, through woodland, amid ferns, under tall shivering trees, far from any path. There were noises, puddles, odours, dampness, shapes that vanished, treetops overhanging our bodies.’

‘He clung to her, crying, and then made love to her and went far inside her and she begged him to go deeper, and no longer afraid of injuring her, he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection.’

‘I yearned again for the cogs of her Iron Maiden to grind my glans around inside her like an opera singer with a mouth lozenge.’

This last one is more explicit, but it did make me laugh!

‘She felt him aware of his size and weight. His care not to hurt her. She moved to accommodate him and felt the blind probings before he slipped inside her. He was bigger than she had remembered. She tilted her hips and felt the weight of his balls on her... what? Small expanse of skin between vagina and anus. Perineum – was that it? Her mind screamed: Shut up, Lucy! You’re not doing the Cosmopolitan crossword now.’

You can Google the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for more examples. These are just a taster.