I write a lot of fic. I used to write fic in a fandom with a lot of young readers who wanted to avoid sex scenes, and so if I wrote a story with sex scenes, I would often make the sex scene a chapter all on its own, and I would warn young readers to skip the next chapter, and then I would summarize any emotional or plot development from the sex scene chapter at the start of the next chapter so those readers wouldn’t really miss anything.
I identify as asexual. Most of my stories aren’t about sex, but some are. Yes, I do occasionally write sex scenes ... sometimes rather explicit ones. Interesting fact: all aces are not the same. I can enjoy writing (or reading) a story about two characters having wild monkey sex without actually wanting to have any sex myself.
But today it occurred to me that I’ve been ignoring the fact that it isn’t only young readers who may want to avoid sex scenes. Unlike me, some aces prefer to avoid reading sex scenes and so avoid fics that contain smut, anything rated M or E, in any fandom.
So I wondered if there might be an audience out there of aces (and/or young readers) who would appreciate me doing the same thing I used to do in that other fandom. Basically, when I’m writing a longer story that just has one sex scene in it ... write the same story, with the same plot and character development, but just isolate the sex scene(s) so that those who want to can skip them without missing any of the necessary story content.
The reason I’m thinking about this is because I’m currently working on a story which will have a sex scene in it, but the story very definitely isn’t about sex. The point of the sex scene is really primarily about emotional connection ... and so someone who doesn’t want to read a sex scene could happily read the rest of the story and just have the emotional impact of that one scene just summarized for them. Which I would be glad to do.
If there’s an audience out there that would appreciate that courtesy, I’ll find a way to start doing it in my fics.
