The Agony and the Ecstasy

Welp, that was torture.

I have just written a sex scene which has been a long time coming. (Ha! I said coming.) It is technically a sex chapter. It’s the only chapter with a single scene. This is not the first sex depicted in the book, but it will be the last. It serves to end the middle section of the book and start the conclusion. My protagonist and his love interest have been engaged in a gay as hell slow burn of a romance and they have now, at long last, done the deed.

The other sex came easily. (Came!) Some of it was not particularly sexy because of a foul personality involved. Some of it was quite hot, but that was the extent of it. No deeper meaning propelled the encounters. Do I sound like a puritan? I’m not and neither are the characters, for that matter. Sex for the sake of sex is just fine. Rather fun, in fact, but this latest scene was…not that.

I agonized over every sentence. I’m not sure why, as I will be gleefully shredding this draft in editing when it is complete. Perhaps it’s because I care for the characters and wanted them to connect and have fun. Maybe I was scared to pop the tension. I think that explanation has some heat for me. And not just because the build-up was a blast to write. What’s better than teasing readers to the point of frustration? No. On the other side of that release, I have to break the lovers’ hearts. It’s unavoidable. The whole story pivots on a coming tragedy.

Their fucking was not even in my initial outline. I was going to craft the events of the plot to keep them apart during this section, believing they would get their rocks off at a later date. They wouldn’t have, of course, because…well, I already mentioned the tragedy ahead of us. I decided to let them light some candles and knock boots out of empathy. For them and for the reader. (Also, I think it might make the terrible news really stab. I’m not a nice man. Never said I was.)

I hope I did what their feelings justice. I love them as much as they love one another. I certainly worked hard. (Hard!) I need a cigarette.

PHOTO: Thanks to WikiImages at Pixabay.

PROGRESS REPORT: Oh, about 105,000 words and counting. First love. Now war. This is gonna get ugly.