Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
How to write a sex scene like Tom Barry’s When the Siren Calls
Use hard expletives sparingly
Barry’s first two books: titillating, not heavy porn
“Restless and neglected, Isabel is suffocating in a stagnant marriage. An invitation to visit Jay’s resort in the hills of Tuscany sparks Isabel to imagine a life of freedom and excitement. She abandons herself in a passionate affair, with her controlling lover encouraging Isobel to push beyond her sexual boundaries.”
So begins the description of Tom Barry’s sexy book, When the Siren Calls. And the book itself features convincingly titillating sex scenes.
Barry is in town. My chance to find out: how do you write sex scenes?
Barry is the last person you would guess wrote When the Siren Calls, and its sequel When the Siren Cries. His innocent, gently ironic manner reflects a settled, middle class lifestyle.
We’re meeting in a coffee shop, late morning.
“The thing is,” he says, “you have to make yourself do it. It’s required in the genre. At first, I was very self-conscious about writing a sex scene. I knew everybody would read it. Including my wife and kids.”
Tom Barry: San Diego is his second home
But write it he did. “The first rule is to only write what titillates you personally. You’ve got to be honest with yourself. If you’re just trying to write what you think others want, it won’t work. People will see through you. And also envision your readers: everybody! From young to old, religious to radical, and your majority audience, which is women, especially younger women. They are your more avid readers. Which means you have to be more subtle, more suggestive, and more clever in structuring your scenes. Guys are so much easier to play. They like adventure. And with sex, they just want to get right at it. But you’ve got to work them harder than that. Lots of dangling teases, blind alleys, and setting the scenes in quality context.
If the plot is financial, crime, whatever, you need to work hard to make the story well-researched, and your protagonists rooted in the complexity of their world.”
When the Siren Cries, starts off at the San Diego-Tijuana border. “It’s the details,” he says. “The color of a Mexico City license plate, the customs officer’s cap and badge, the location of the secondary inspection area.”
But don’t overdo stage directions, Barry says. “When you do get to sex, it’s so much more meaningful if your reader is already drawn into a sort of trance. Suggestion is everything. Provoke the reader’s imagination. Use hard expletives sparingly. And in the field I write in, which you might call soft porn, sex should be, as far as possible, consensual, legal, no minors, and have a clear point of view.”
And with today’s women, he says, no more fainting, sighing, submissive broads. “Yes, there’s still ‘Will she, won’t she?’ but with strong female leads. She’s making active decisions. And keep a smattering of humor.”
Does he ever go too far? “It’s the opposite. I go for a meeting with my editor, and she is always pushing me to go further. She’s in the business of selling books. She knows her readers want to be titillated.”
Basically, though, he says it’s simple: “Give them a sex scene every 20-30 pages.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
How to write a sex scene like Tom Barry’s When the Siren Calls
Use hard expletives sparingly
How to write a sex scene like Tom Barry’s When the Siren Calls
Use hard expletives sparingly
Barry’s first two books: titillating, not heavy porn
“Restless and neglected, Isabel is suffocating in a stagnant marriage. An invitation to visit Jay’s resort in the hills of Tuscany sparks Isabel to imagine a life of freedom and excitement. She abandons herself in a passionate affair, with her controlling lover encouraging Isobel to push beyond her sexual boundaries.”
So begins the description of Tom Barry’s sexy book, When the Siren Calls. And the book itself features convincingly titillating sex scenes.
Barry is in town. My chance to find out: how do you write sex scenes?
Barry is the last person you would guess wrote When the Siren Calls, and its sequel When the Siren Cries. His innocent, gently ironic manner reflects a settled, middle class lifestyle.
We’re meeting in a coffee shop, late morning.
“The thing is,” he says, “you have to make yourself do it. It’s required in the genre. At first, I was very self-conscious about writing a sex scene. I knew everybody would read it. Including my wife and kids.”
Tom Barry: San Diego is his second home
But write it he did. “The first rule is to only write what titillates you personally. You’ve got to be honest with yourself. If you’re just trying to write what you think others want, it won’t work. People will see through you. And also envision your readers: everybody! From young to old, religious to radical, and your majority audience, which is women, especially younger women. They are your more avid readers. Which means you have to be more subtle, more suggestive, and more clever in structuring your scenes. Guys are so much easier to play. They like adventure. And with sex, they just want to get right at it. But you’ve got to work them harder than that. Lots of dangling teases, blind alleys, and setting the scenes in quality context.
If the plot is financial, crime, whatever, you need to work hard to make the story well-researched, and your protagonists rooted in the complexity of their world.”
When the Siren Cries, starts off at the San Diego-Tijuana border. “It’s the details,” he says. “The color of a Mexico City license plate, the customs officer’s cap and badge, the location of the secondary inspection area.”
But don’t overdo stage directions, Barry says. “When you do get to sex, it’s so much more meaningful if your reader is already drawn into a sort of trance. Suggestion is everything. Provoke the reader’s imagination. Use hard expletives sparingly. And in the field I write in, which you might call soft porn, sex should be, as far as possible, consensual, legal, no minors, and have a clear point of view.”
And with today’s women, he says, no more fainting, sighing, submissive broads. “Yes, there’s still ‘Will she, won’t she?’ but with strong female leads. She’s making active decisions. And keep a smattering of humor.”
Does he ever go too far? “It’s the opposite. I go for a meeting with my editor, and she is always pushing me to go further. She’s in the business of selling books. She knows her readers want to be titillated.”
Basically, though, he says it’s simple: “Give them a sex scene every 20-30 pages.”
Comments