Okay, I need a glass of wine for this one… right, now I’m good to go. When things are going right, a sex scene just rolls off the keyboard. It’s fun, it’s spontaneous and delicious as a freshly baked cinnamon bun. But when it’s not, it’s just … awkward. Bits going here and there, throw in some panting and sweating, and you have? … something out of a wildlife documentary. It makes you wince and peer through your fingers, feeling embarrassed for anyone having to read it. The problem is that what people (women mainly) like to read isn’t the factual, anatomically correct sex that’s easy to describe. Nothing brought this home more than today’s research – I thought I’d check out some porn and see if there were any good ideas.

Yes, you’re right, there weren’t a whole lot good translatable ideas. Frankly most of it looked painful and not all that enjoyable, for either, or should I say, any of the parties involved. It could have just been that all their sex faces looked a lot like their unhappy, I-just-dropped-my-new-iphone faces, but I’m sceptical. That’s not to say that I didn’t find some people who were having a genuinely good time, but they were the minority.

Size of the male appendage seems to be one of the issues. I had to do a bit of research on this for my last book and can now quote a range of interesting trivia after an enlightening google search. I think we can all agree that professional porn doesn’t represent the average man (or woman), so what exactly does it offer the average writer? More than you’d think. We’ve all read scenes where our suspension of disbelief has been popped like a bubble by the fantastic bendiness/feats of strength/endurance of the protagonists. I read one highly improbable scene recently and got completely side-tracked by whether or not it was actually physically  possible and the book lost a whole lot of traction with me. Porn is so prolific and easily available now that you can just search for your scenario and the odds are good that you could find someone who has already filmed it. There really are only so many permutations after all. If it’s not there, then odds are good that it isn’t, in fact, possible. If you still want to use the scene though, never fear, just make one of them an alien or a yeti. Voila!