How To Write Sex Scenes, By A Thriller Writer

Jon Stock, the author of the spy thriller Dead Spy Running, offers an amusing and interesting piece on how to write sex scenes for the British newspaper the Telegraph.

I’m still not sure how I came to write my one successful sex scene. Sexual encounters are a nightmare to write and rarely work. If you don’t believe me, take a brief look at the ten entries shortlisted for this year’s Bad Sex Awards. “Vertical cleft”, by any stretch of the filthy imagination, is not a great choice of words if you are trying to build up a head of erotic steam, but it didn’t stop Wilbur Smith, the bookies’ favourite. “The tips of her inner lips protruded shyly from the vertical cleft. The sweet dew of feminine arousal glistened upon them…”

As a fellow thriller writer, I’m not going to dwell on Smith’s literary shortcomings as some snobs have done. Highbrow writers are equally bad at sex scenes (Richard Flanagan, this year’s Booker prize winner, is on the list, too, writing about knicker elastic trenches…)
 

What concerns us here is the nitty gritty of writing these things. Do you have to get in the mood? Write them with your partner while on the job?
 

Sadly not. Like any other scene, they have to be worked on in the cold light of day, as you stare at an empty laptop screen and try to hit your daily word count. I did try once to pen a scene late at night, where the only criteria was whether it was turning me on, but the results were disastrous. It’s a bit like trying to write under the “creative” influence of alcohol. You race along, the words seemingly flowing like honey (steady), and then you read it back in the morning, cringe and delete all.    

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/the-filter/11261177/How-to-write-sex-scenes-by-a-thriller-writer.html

You can also read the Telegraph's piece on the Bad Sex Prize via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookprizes/11225846/Booker-winner-Richard-Flanagan-nominated-for-2014-Bad-Sex-Prize.html 

A Delicate Truth: John Le Carre Gets Personal For New Novel

 

Jon Stock in the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on spy thriller writer John le Carre's new novel.

David Cornwell, better known as the spy writer John le Carré, has always enjoyed keeping secrets — the real-life inspiration for spymaster George Smiley, for example, or le Carré’s own role with British Intelligence. Sooner or later he breaks, telling us that Smiley was based on the Rev Vivian Green, his tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford, and that he once worked for MI5 and later MI6, but you can’t help feeling that the information is always extracted under duress.

So it is a pleasant surprise that le Carré has decided to reveal, without the use of electrodes or bright lights, that his much-anticipated 23rd novel is his most autobiographical for years, a book that “comes closer to my skin than any of my more recent novels”. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9972523/John-le-Carre-gets-personal-for-new-novel.html

You can also read my review of John le Carre's previous novel, Our Kind of Traitor, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, via the below link:

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/LeCarreOurKindOfTratiorReview.jpg

And you can read my Crime Beat column on John le Carre and Ian Fleming, Spy Writer vs Spy Writer, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2010/08/spy-writer-vs-spy-writer-john-le-carre.html