I Give You My Body: How I Write Sex Scenes

Helpful look at how Diana Gabaldon writes love scenes using all the senses to make the scene compelling. Definitely worth a look for any writer.

You will probably only want to read this book if you are planning to write a good old bodice-ripper and want stylized guidelines...of if you are just a fan of Diana Gabaldon's writing style.

The sex scenes she writes are honest and intimate. I didn't know what to expect from her writing of such scenes but I have grown to be a fan because she writes them realistically, and with feeling, and not in the way that a bawdy romance novel is written.

I think I was about twelve when I read my first sex scene. So, that means it's been forty years of these scenes. I'm not an especially analytical reader in this situation, other than the occasional, "Ewwww" or "Mmmmm." I just let the moment take me, so to speak.

Diana Gabaldon teaches this content at writer's workshops and this is definitely an analytical approach. It's fascinating to see how a writer builds a sex scene in layers of underpainting and then painting the scene with words. If I was a writer, I'd use some of her suggestions for any scene particularly one with sensual or evocative details.

She covers all kinds of scenes from suggestion but no specifics to quite specific, including non consensual sex and rape (trigger show more warning). She also discusses what it was like for her to shift from writing the heterosexual scenes of Jamie and Claire Fraser to the homosexual scenes of Lord John Grey and his partners.

Having heard her speak in December, I see the humor and particular speech patterns she uses. And, by the way, I've never heard anyone talk faster than she does!

This was a fun book to balance some of the serious reading in my life, and life itself. 3 stars simply because it was primarily instructional. show less

I've never read any of the author's other books - I came to this one particularly because my next novel will include "naughty bits." This book quite rightly pointed out that focusing on the emotion rather than the physical blow-by-blow (pun intended) will help such scenes avoid being cringe-worthy...but I was hoping for more than that. While I appreciated the extensive examples, most of them (like the rapes) were simply not what I was looking for.

Gabaldon thoughtfully writes her intimate scenes and I was interested to hear her take on it. But most of this book was a repetition of some short aspect explained or advice given- and then a long excerpt from one of her books. I've already read those books, and though I can see the benefit of giving examples, they smothered the new information here. If you removed them you might be left with not much more than a pamphlet. Not everyone who reads this book will have read her previous work of course (though I would guess quite a few have!), but if they simply hadn't *yet*, there would be quite a few spoilers for them here. So I'm not sure this tack really suits many readers well. Despite there being bits of good insight, overall I was show more disappointed. show less

If you're not a writer, I'm not sure you'd get much out of this, but if you ARE a writer, this is well worth a read. A lot of the advice can be applied to writing overall. I bought the ebook, but now I wish I had a print copy, to make it easier to go back and flick through to certain points. Some of the excerpts she uses as examples seemed a bit long, but they do demonstrate her points well. I'll definitely be looking at my writing differently now.

Very useful information focussing on emotion rather than action, which emphasises the sensuality of an encounter not the sticky mechanics. Certainly the right way for me to write sex scenes to avoid cliche and really nasty descriptions. I wish more people would use this method.