Offers writers advice on handling human sexuality in their fiction, tells how to write about specific situations, and shares examples of good writing. Even though writing about sex probably ranks on the joy scale somewhere between reading about it and having it, Elizabeth Benedict feels that many writers don't do justice to the act. So she has developed a novel idea: a guide book for fiction writers seeking to create better sex scenes. Benedict, a teacher in Princeton University's Creative Writing Program, doesn't concern herself with pornography but rather with a contention that sex scenes are pivotal in carrying the plot, story and character of some novels. Her point is emphasized through many interviews she conducted with authors on their experience with and views on writing about sex. Now, if she would only visit the film industry. Convert currency.

The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers
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Joy of Writing Sex. Why, asks Elizabeth Benedict, is it so difficult to write about sex? You put this in there, describe the reaction, and hey, there you go! Was it good for you too? Out in the real world, fictional or otherwise, sex is beset by contradictory attitudes and a host of different values. What words are you going to use to describe … the Act?
By Elizabeth Benedict. Twelve years after it was first published, The Joy of Writing Sex remains the classic writer's resource on creating compelling sex scenes. Elizabeth Benedict covers all the issues, from the first time, to married sex and adultery, to sex in the age of AIDS. Her instruction, supported with examples from the works of today's most respected writers—among them, Dorothy Allison, Russell Banks, Alan Hollinghurst, Joyce Carol Oates, Carol Shields, and John Updike—focuses on crafting believable sex scenes that hinge on freshness of character, dialogue, mood, and plot. In this revised edition, Benedict addresses the latest sexual revolution, intimacy on the Internet; adds new interviews with Edmund White, Darren Strauss, Stephen McCauley, and other writers; and updates her selections to include examples from the best fiction of the past few years. In the six years since I wrote the original Joy of Writing Sex, in , the extent to which it matters in real life, in our private and public lives, has been proven more often than necessary to make the point. For many of us individually and for the culture as a whole, each of these phenomena has altered the ways we define, communicate, negotiate, and even experience sex, so much so that the editors and I felt it was time to take a fresh look at how these changes have filtered down into the fiction we read and write. Flirtation, romantic connections, and sexual stimulation are familiar cyber-occurrences in literature, as in life. In our long association with AIDS, it has now become routine for even the most bourgeois heterosexual fictional characters to carry condoms and to have the talk before falling into bed together, a pronounced change from the fiction I read six and seven years ago, where the subject was more often ignored.