“Aaaah”
“What! You have to be kidding. We haven’t even started.”

As for a question of orientation/what turns you on vs what turns readers on, I’d recommend trying to get out of the headspace of what turns *you* on, by focusing on what turns the POV character on in any given scene. Because, in the end, if the reader’s going to be turned on by a scene, it’s going to be because they’re identifying with the POV character, not you. And the more you can step out of your own ego/turn-ons/squicks and assume the role of the hero/heroine, get in touch with *their* arousal, you’re going to make the choices that resonate better with that, and in turn resonate better w/ the reader. A sex scene that turns you on isn’t necessarily going to turn the reader on. A sex scene that clearly turns your character on has got a better chance of doing that.

As for the naming of the parts, I agree with one of the above commenters, good old fashion c0ck and/or d!ck work fine, IMHO, but whatever your POV character would call it is usually the best bet. However, you can get away without naming the thing a lot more than you think. You can write “She squeezed his erection through the front of his jeans, pulled it out, then started to stroke his cock.” Equally sexy/clear (IMHO), though, is “She squeezed the front of his jeans, and God, he was hard. She got his jeans open, underwear down and wrapped her fingers around all that smooth, hot skin and began to stroke.” Focusing on the sensations and making your choreography clear and you really don’t have to say c0ck or pu$$y that often.

As for choreography, sometimes - to get things straight in my head logistically - I’ll let myself do a just-for-me, bare bones, blow by (heh) choreography run. “He kisses her for a while, then picks her up, puts her on the table, spreads her legs. Goes down on her until she’s yanking on his hair, then he climbs on top of her, d!ck goes in, faster than is comfortable, some thrusting, he comes first, then goes down on her again. She’s squicked by the mess, he doesn’t care, at the end she refuses to kiss him and they argue about that”

the actual scene might run three pages, be from either POV, scary or sexy or whatever, but once you’ve got the … bare bones porno choreography for the thing clear in your head (with the basic points laid out, when does he get hard, when does she know this, what clothing comes off when, what goes in where when, who comes when) what you do with that particular act could go any number of ways, but at least you’ve got the action of the scene blocked out then.

And a sex scene, really, is just another sort of action scene (IMHO.)

Also, IMHO, what makes a sex scene is the orgasms (or at least the concerted effort to reach them), not whether his throbbing member is inserted into his love canal.

Just my two cents.

I agree, sex scenes should reveal something about the character. Otherwise I find them boring and tend to skip them (as if they were long descriptions which I also tend to skip). Once they no longer help with character development I think they should no longer be in the story.

Then again, I neither read nor write romance. So I can’t really speak for people who do.

Funny you should bring this up; the other day I was talking to some acquaintances about the difference between Annie Proulx and Laurell Hamilton. Proulx wrote “Brokeback Mountain,” and the sex scene in there is incredibly well-written, straightforward and (surprising for a story targeted at the New Yorker) blatant in its use of non-euphemisms. The scene has one metaphor: when Ennis grabs Jack’s hand and leads it to his crotch, it’s like Jack “touched fire,” and the scene proceeds from there with no euphemism or romanticism. On the other hand, Hamilton’s stuff has gotten more outrageous over the years in its metaphors and similes, it’s overwritten euphemisms, and so forth.

So here’s my advice: if you find yourself waxing lyrical in a sex scene, it’s because you’ve lost interest in what the characters are doing. Euphemism, metaphor, and simile have their place, but if you find yourself struggling for a way to describe something so fundamental and human, it’s because you don’t have anything to say about how the characters feel, what they think, or what this scene means to the rest of the story, and instead you’re trying to distract your readers by wowing them with style.

Granted, writing in the romance category requires some scenes involving sex, but I think it is important to not write erotica when you want romance.

When Nora Roberts writes as J. D. Robb, she tends to place the characters together in an intimate situation (often the big, bouncy bed in Roake’s mansion), has one partner admire some aspect of the other (mouth, muscles, breasts, etc.) and then uses the dialog between the partners to carry the scene. No need to mention ‘throbbing anythings’ (although I am getting more than a bit tired of Roake’s one word of Gaelic and the ‘I want all of you/take me’ lines.)

Do you really need to be explicit? I find the level of detail in, say, Laurel K. Hamilton’s works to be too much. Not that I am prudish about them but that they do not add anything to the story or the dimension of the characters. I find I become bored and flip to the end of the chapter so that I can get back to the real action (i.e. the story).

I view sex scenes in the same light as nude scenes in a film. If the sex scene is required because some aspect of the story depends upon it, then you will need to be explicit enough to make your point, otherwise, the detail may just look like prurient fluff added to pad the word count.

Crusie gets more into the details - her genre demands it - but she still avoids the specific terms in favor of overall sensations and discoveries.