Sex Scenes and Immersion — Robyn Ritchie

I did NOT believe I would be back so soon with another write-in, yet here we are! Thanks so much for your questions.

Today’s question comes from Mr. Cheese Deluxe Extravaganza (lmao I’m not lying) and they ask:

Hello Robyn! Hope you're warm and snuggly with a nice cup of hot cocoa and cuddles from your pet! I have 2 questions for ya! :

1. How do you write smut scenes? (Plus highlight stuff you love writing about! ) Any inspo you look at that inspire your work? (Manga,anime,movies etc)

2.How do you get your audience to be immersed in your stories? I love that about your work cuz I get really sucked into your characters and their world.

Thank you!

I AM warm and snuggly, but with coffee. Close enough to hot cocoa! My pet is also nearby, nosing around for snacks.

I think it might surprise you to know that with sex scenes in general, I’m more inspired by music than anything visual. (Although, yes, I’m a big fan of anime and manga.) Since writing these scenes, for me at least, relies on simplicity of emotions, I find that best replicated in music. There’s always a certain tempo for sex and it varies based on the couple and where they’re at in the relationship and how they feel about each other. So a hate sex scene is going to have a different sound to it than, say, a ~*romantic*~ sex scene.

The key to this is that I always have a relative idea of what music/genre/band relates to the story. I use music a lot not just in the sex scenes but it impacts the world of the story itself. My characters usually do have a genre of music they’re into or there is a theme of some music throughout. You can find this to be true in all recent examples: Come, Thou Almighty! had hymns; Little Animals had Riots in Africa; Prothalamion had R&B and rap influences. So these carry over into sex scenes.

Personally, I enjoy the differences in all the sex scenes because their characters and their situations are varied. They don’t always like each other and they don’t always get along. They don’t come from the same places or have the same friends. That’s why all the sex chapters come out so wildly different. If it was just the same two identical people going at it in the same way again and again and again… well, not only does that become predictable, but it’s not impressive.

THIS BRINGS ME TO YOUR SECOND QUESTION.

Immersion happens when the world of the story is a complete bubble — I touched on this briefly yesterday when I talked about time period, setting, but this also includes what I just mentioned about music. Your world has to exist on its own, have its own rules. This has nothing to do with realism — same thing could easily be accomplished in a wild and wacky fantasy, of course, but the key is to make even that world adhere to its own rules.

A lot of readers can get pulled out of the zone with something like wonky dialogue or repetitive and boring prose. Editing is its own savior here because no one is immune from the odd bad line — just edit it out before people see it.

Another thing I would say here is that it’s about command of the language. Readers respond to a storyteller with a firm grasp on what they’re saying, what they know to be true about the story in motion. If you have iffy/waffling language or use only a light touch when handling a bigger story, that’s an innate turn off and the reader may not even know THAT’S why but it is. Confidence is something that comes from doing this a lot and often. My confidence has been built up over years! It certainly wasn’t always this way.

Thanks again so much for writing in and if you would like to ask a question, hit that Contact button.