There is always the problem of whether there should be a fight scene or a sex scene and how to describe it. I will be giving my perspective based on the six books I have already published.
Fight Scenes
I have published three books relating to fight scenes. I have found that I cannot write about karate kicks or kung fu. Now fight scenes can be anything from throwing a person into a pain of glass to kicking someone off a cliff. It does not have to be about punching someone in the head or stomach.
It can be anything from rolling down a mountain to crashing through scaffolding. Let your imagination go beyond punching, kicking, and pulling hair. My fight scenes include smashing a vase over someone’s head, slamming them in a coffee table, and stomping on their knee.
You also have to consider the character as well as the story plot. You are not going to have ‘Mary Poppin’ throwing a woman through a glass window. At the same time, ‘‘The Hulk’ is not going to pulling hair. So you have to consider where the story is going and if it warrants a fight scene.
People love your story, not favour a chapter because there was a fight.
Romance Scenes
I know this is hard to write and the fact that your friends and family will read what you have depicted in your mind. But it is your story. I worried about that at first. My wife and family will not read my books. Our friends have raised eyebrows wondering what I do in my spare time. My nephew cannot see me in the same way
Reality check, fiction is what it is. It is not a memoir or an autobiography of a footballer and how many he bed or how many she bed.
Now that is out of the way, lets to get the nitty gritty of how I go about adding a sex scene and when.
A love scene is based on how you have written a romance novel, action and adventure novel, a thriller novel and so on. You will not write a Sharon Stone scene if your novel is about true love or finding love for the first time. At the same time you are not going to have a Walt Disney sex scene in a sex driven crime scene.
Using one of my books as an example, I will explain how I managed to depict how I wanted my readers to see two of my characters.
I wrote a book called ‘Blind Love’. The story is about a millionaire writer who only wrote about love and never experienced it. He falls in love with a female character that has lived life. The love scenes depict his feelings and experience. For her, to find out what making love is when that person loves you back.
You can also use sex scenes to help understand the character’s alter ego or villainess. So in my Jane Knight books, I wrote the villains as having an unhealthy relationship to sex. Therefore the scenes were not lovey-dovey or respecting each other. It helps the reader to loathe the villain and make the character more believable. You would not have ‘Jaws’ in James Bond making love under and stars and whispering sweet nothing.
Finally, the reader prefers to use their imagination when describing the fight scene or sex scene. Therefore do not write it like a manual or instruction. Here is an example.
Fight Scene
When he hits me, I crash into a table and chairs. Before I have a chance to get up and fight back, he grabs me. Before I realise, I find myself crashing through a pane of glass.
As you can see, there are no detail of how he was punched or how he was picked him and hurtled into the glass.
Romance Scene
We look into each others eyes. As he enters, I suddenly remember what it feels like and I lose myself. He is so affectionate.
Now I did not mention any explicit detail or offensive description. The reader is fitting their interpretation of what is happening. i could have been writing about him walking through the door. Then he hugs her.
You do not have to resort to Fifty Shades of I have forgotten the story plot or think that you have to make it obvious what is happening. It is all down to subtlety.
If your preference is to be very detailed with no imagination, then that is how your story is being written. So the scenes marry up with your story, as I said previously.