As Ms. Bear points out, a sex scene is like any other: it has to “feel real” and the reader has to “be there,” thoroughly engrossed. On a good day or night, that involves some sort of turn-on. But not all sex is a turn-on. So however the scene plays out, it needs to hum with vivid emotional, physical, and psychological detail, not unlike any other part of the narrative, si?

If it doesn’t, that’s just bad writing.

Thanks for the example. I haven’t seen King Kong, but that makes sense to me. As a reader, I’m too OCD to skip anything; if it’s not good, I’ll just read it and get annoyed. *grin* I think Bear’s point and your point indicate a larger issue: everything in a story should change something or reveal something. I’ve read–and written *wince*–plenty of scenes that are just brain candy, just there because “Wouldn’t this be cool?”

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I think that the assumption that fight scenes have inherent conflict is actually part of why some readers (And movie-watchers) skip them. because if a source of conflict, character, and plot is assumed, then there’s no attempt on the writer’s part to actually integrate or illuminate plot or character or theme in the process.

The most obvious examples come out of the film industry. There are, for instance, several quite extended fight scenes in King Kong where you can ask yourself afterwards: How did that advance the plot? Did it tell us a single thing we didn’t already know about the fighters or the witnesses? Did it highlight a theme or a hitherto unknown aspect of the world?

And the answer is, quite often, not much. The woman is still running away from the ape and/or clinging to him as her protector. The dinosaurs are still horribly dangerous. The filmmaker is still an egotistical grandstander. The island doesn’t look any different. The plot stops dead for spider pit and/or tyrannosaurus. Whoop-de-do. If you like them for themselves, that’s fine, too, I suppose, but being stuck watching bits of it again on a long plane trip, I was struck by how little story there is between fights.

Or, of course, almost any car chase ever.

And yes, I can think of umpteen counterexamples where fights do matter and are interesting; but I would guess fewer readers skip those, because they aren’t set aside with a big marker saying “Look! Obligatory scene of battle!”