Quick Fix: Writing a Great Sex Scene
How To! with Mike Pesca
Peach Fish Projects
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this Slate Plus episode, Carvell Wallace continues his conversation with award-winning author and memoirist Melissa Febos. They discuss the "unrules" of writing about sex—and Melissa shares advice for new writers on how to make a sex scene come alive.
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The show is produced by Rosemary Belson, with Kevin Bendis. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob and our supervising producer is Joel Meyer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, I'm Susie Weiss, and I've noticed there's just simply not enough podcasts in the world. So I'm launching my own. Let's go. Let's go, baby. Second Thought is a weekly show about pop culture. The stuff everyone's been binging, arguing about, obsessing over. Here's the thing about heated rivalry. I mean, even the most devoted swifties, I think we can agree, not our best work. We'll be hosting thoughtful conversations with culture's most important figures. Talk about genius. |
| 0:22.6 | Talk about generational talent. |
| 0:23.7 | Coming to headphones near you on |
| 0:25.0 | April 17th with a first guest you won't want to miss. Available wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:32.5 | Hello and welcome to's QuickFix. I'm Courtney Martin. QuickFix is how to's exclusive offering |
| 0:39.8 | to Slate Plus members, and today we're going to bring you more from our episode, How to Write |
| 0:44.6 | Your Memoir. Specifically, we're going to take a look at the potentially saucier side of things, |
| 0:51.3 | writing sex scenes. That's right. Most everyone likes to hear or read about sex, |
| 0:58.0 | even if the very same people are afraid to talk about it or put it down on the page. We treat the |
| 1:02.9 | sex scene as though it's something different, something that requires its own set of rules. |
| 1:08.4 | Yet, as author Melissa Fibos puts it in her book, Bodywork, in order to write well about |
| 1:14.1 | sex, we must write our whole selves into it. We must place our characters at the center of their |
| 1:20.3 | own stories. This is an issue of craft, but it is also about joy, the joy of awakening to the |
| 1:26.7 | full range of human experience, |
| 1:28.4 | in all its ecstatic, uncomfortable, freaky, transcendent, holy realness. |
| 1:34.9 | So, how can a writer put their whole self into a sex scene? |
| 1:39.1 | More now from Melissa Fibos and my co-host, Carvel Wallace. |
| 1:52.4 | You have written extensively about sex and you've also written extensively about how to write about sex. And I'm curious what, tell me a little bit about your journey in writing |
| 1:57.8 | sex scenes, how they have gotten better and what you've learned and a little |
| 2:01.3 | bit about why it's so hard for people to write about sex? |
| 2:04.8 | Sure. |
| 2:05.5 | Yeah. |
... |
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