The famous Sherlock Holmes fanfiction Two Two One Bravo Baker would be better without the sex scenes.
meh. see, in the first place, i wrote it as pornography, and pornography by definition needs graphic description of sexual activity.
and in the second place, if someone is going to read only the sex OR non-sex parts of ttobb, personally i’d want them to read the sex parts, because to me the MAIN plot is the development of john and sherlock’s very sexually-charged relationship. the entire conspiracy thing is a subplot. its only functions are a) to explain why sherlock’s running around afghanistan in camo at all, and b) to rachet up the physical and emotional stress on sherlock and john enough for their connection to develop and deepen very very quickly.
so, you know, obviously you’d like it better without the sex scenes, but i would have had zero interest in writing it without them, and they are the purpose and (heh heh) meat of the story imo.
You know, the thing is, it says a hell of a lot about your storytelling skills that what you see as the subplot could easily stand on its own as a main plot (and does, for some people, apparently!).
The more I write sex and sex scenes, I’m intrigued at the attitude around them—some people see them as plot-adjacent, just there for the titillation. But what I’m finding more and more is that the writers I come back to over and over again recognize that there’s a hell of a lot more to people getting busy than just orgasms and heavy breathing.
Hear freaking hear. Not only can the sex be integral to the plot, part of the literal cause-and-effect pattern of conflict and character development, but it can also have thematic depth, representing ideas through the figurative tools of motif, symbol, image, etc. For instance, if you’re writing a story whose emotional plot is about two men blending their lives and emotions together, and you’re doing that through a motif of water and blood, then your sex scenes can do gorgeous work with metaphors of water and blood. For me, that’s how a story that looks like PWP can be very rich PWT (porn with theme).
Exactly! I mean, obviously sex is fun to write because, yanno. SEX. But if you can write an entire story that centers around a boy/girl romance, or a mother/daughter relationship, or two co-dependent brothers kicking ass and accidentally destroying the world together, then how is a sexual relationship somehow innately less valuable?
When I write sex, it always ends up accomplishing something. (I say it that way because sometimes I DO set out to write PWP, but it never seems to end up happening. XD) Sex is a form of communication! It’s a form of negotiation, of conflict and power struggle and expression. It can be a form of exploration and discovery, of punishment, argument, intimacy, apology, a resolution, a distraction, an entertainment, a lie, a misdirection. A lot of the communication we do as humans isn’t verbal; sex scenes can express so much that can’t be put into words. It can be more raw, real and to the point than any verbal dialogue ever could be.
And for readers and writers (and sometimes the characters!), it can be a window into parts of our characters that may be inaccessible through any other means.
You wouldn’t label “Without Words” as PWP if they’d been sitting around talking and come to their realization somewhere in the process. Then it would be a ‘character study’ or ‘vignette’ or something. Why should the fact that they have that conversation through sex instead change anything?