Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Thoughts on Sensual Prose

Thoughts on Writing Good Sensual Prose

This week I am judging for the Sensual Moments II contest. When I judge I ask some of my friends to help me out by rank ordering the submissions. and then I do the “Obligatory Review.” Here at WDC it seems to me that sensual prose is used more as an end than a means. By this I mean the main judging criteria is the “Excitement” the submission generates. I don’t subscribe to this and see the sensual prose as a means to an end and not an end in itself. To me the sexual experience is of relatively short duration relative to everything else that is happening in the day. What are we talking about….thirty minutes on average? I’m not denigrating the act because it is satisfying and important, not to mention a necessary function, however, it is not the single focus of most people’s lives. Without trying to beat a dead horse, this is the Percy Goodfellow take on writing good sensual prose.

Sex without mood is obscenity. What makes writing about sex pornographic is not the level of language, or the graphic nature of the words, but the physicality of the sex act not tempered by mood and emotion. What happens in lovemaking is a growing emotional as well as physical attraction. This is the seduction. This is when lovers work themselves into a lather that makes the flesh slapping less carnal and more euphoric. They are put in the mood to where both the physical and emotional compulsion go hand in hand towards a fulfilling sensual experience. As a writer you have to show this happening. In the Weekly Quickie where the word limit is below 900 words this is almost asking the impossible. In Sensual Moments II with a 3K ceiling there is a greater opportunity to get it right.

If I were to teach a sensual prose class....(I teach Drama and Exploratory Writing at New Horizon's Academy at WDC) I would suggest the writer devote time to the setting, story line and the wants, needs and desires of the characters. Then show how the seduction is working in getting from the world at large into the nest. Then I would show the physical aspects revealed as they explore one another’s body, then the building emotional attraction. Gradually, make your words transition from graphic description to aid the reader in forming images, to the emotional euphoria that takes the human body from the gross to the sublime. When this is done well you can almost see a shifting of gears from clinical description to poetic expression. This is a combination of physical need and the emotional desire that builds to climax as the lovers come to experience an orgasmic moment.

Then, don't forget the aftermath as lovers return from the high and reenter the world of reality. How do they feel afterwards about what they have done and where is their life leading now that they have been intimate?