I’m a little late for Wicked Wednesday (it’s just after noon on Thursday here in Singapore, but it’s still Wednesday in many parts of the world), but I still want to talk about threesomes.

The first time I remember imagining a threesome, I was still a teenager. I was really into Nelson (the band with the twin brothers fronting it) years after they were a mainstream success. Much as teens today are #teamwhoever in a YA love triangle, I found myself struggling to figure out which of the twins I liked more, basing my opinion of the day on whatever teen magazine I read.

It was the first time I thought “maybe I don’t have to choose,” and proceeded to make out with my pillow (as one does) pretending it was one and then the other or not caring which one I was kissing. I didn’t have the language to say I was fantasizing about a threesome because the pre-Internet world was a very different world.

With twenty-odd years of experience, I can see the evolution of my interest in threesomes as well as my understanding of all the various permutations of acts and bodies. However, I’ve yet to incorporate one into a story since making the shift to professional author, and that’s because it’s very hard to write a good threesome.

When you write an m/f sex scene you can use their names or the pronouns he/she to make it clear who is doing what at any given moment.

Things get a little more tricky when you’re writing a 2 person sex scene with people who identify as the same gender. Pronouns are much less useful–which s/he? Body parts become ambiguous–who’s dick is that? In writing Love is a Virus I learned that you end up using character names in same-sex erotica a lot more frequently than in m/f sex scenes.

Threesomes take the difficulty of writing a same-sex erotic scene and dial it up a notch. Either two or three of the participants will identify as the same gender. You now have three mouths, six hands, six nipples (and possibly some number of breasts) and three sets of genitalia. It is a delicate balancing act to ensure that the reader is keeping track of the participants, even if the characters themselves are not.

Is your threesome your character and their partner with a “guest star,” or are you writing a polyamorous relationship, or a triad? This affects the chemistry and the interaction each person has with the others.

Writing erotic romance with two characters is hard, but with three you have to contend with issues of jealousy, whether someone’s family can know about the relationship, the relationship dynamics of three people, and so forth.

One of the authors I’ve seen execute this well is Alisha Rai in Glutton for Pleasure (which also features male twins).

This is not to discourage you from writing threesomes–people enjoy them in life and in fantasy–but rather to get you thinking about how to write a threesome scene that works on all the levels.

Filed under: process, Wicked Wednesday, Writing | Tagged: delilah night, Threesomes, Wicked Wednesday, writing |