London’s “Literary Review” has just announced its winners for the 2013 Bad Sex Award—Britain’s most dreaded literary prize.
The prize is meant to “draw attention to the crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel and to discourage it.”
This year the nominees included author Amy Tan’s, “The Valley of Amazement,” for this line: “He flayed against me, until our bodies were slapping, and he took me into the typhoon and geologic disaster.”
But Tan shouldn’t feel too bad. Previous nominees have included some of the most famous writers in America, including Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer and John Updike.
To see the full list of nominees and more hilarious examples of what can get you on this list, read the entire Washington Post article by Ron Charles.
To make sure you don’t end up on a list like this or turn off your readers when you should be turning them on, check out this post by Elissa Wald, “The Do’s and Dont’s of Writing Erotic Fiction.” Even if you don’t write erotica, these are excellent tips for writing any sex scene!
Tagged: sex, sex scenes, writing about sex, writing sex scenes, writing tips
