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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/14117
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

To clarify on the alternative method that the others have posted: instead of writing the erotic scene, build up to it and fade to black just before it starts. Leave the act itself to the imagination of the reader.

The problem with erotic scenes is that it's easy to write a scene, but it's hard to write it well, and it's even harder to write it so that it fits the overall theme of the book and the style of the writer. There is a reason that there are multiple "worst sex scene in literature" awards handed out every year, with winners often being so badly written that readers often just laugh at scenes like female genitals being ripped out (one of the top 3 laureates in a contest last decade), even when they're intended for drama and seriousness.

Another problem is that people often read books on public transport (train, bus, metro), and some people rather would rather not read erotic scenes on such transport.

The concern is also that, if the book is in a series, there are often fans who form personal "ideal pairings", or "Shippings", as they're called. These often even involve slash-shipping, with people of the same gender. Fans can get heavily disappointed, sometimes even upset, if their favorite shipping doesn't actually happen. Of course, this also happens with the fade-to-method I described above, but people can always imagine that something got in-between at the last moment, like a prophylactic that didn't cooperate or a sudden emergency.

Related to shipping: it might actually be advantageous to just not have sex happen at all, not even allusions to the act. Often, people really quickly figure out that there's sexual tension between characters, or it's blindingly obvious that 2 characters are intended to get it on. If you then subvert that, by keeping the tension unresolved (or not acting on it until the end of the book), the book becomes less clichéd.

Original score: 4