Did you know writing a romance scene is the hardest thing ever?
I had gotten within a few thousand words of my 70,000 mark when it happened. My hero and heroine were in a dark room with a dying fire, hormones blazing, chests heaving...and I panicked.
Confession: I've never written a sex scene before.
I started to write it. The kissing was pretty easy; I've written that before. Even the beginning of the foreplay flowed naturally.
But then the clothes started coming off. And the panic started. The scene started to read more like a medical manual or a maintenance how-to; "Insert Thing 1 into..."
How did authors write red-hot romance scenes? And how did I avoid writing the overly long or awkward scenes that I as a reader skipped over.
My first stop: my critique group. What did they do to overcome the romance hurdle?
Some of the best pieces of advice I got:
- Create a sexy playlist. The author who suggested this reminded me to keep in mind what kind of scene it was when finding songs. Was it hot and heavy? Erotic? Or more sensual?
- Watch sexy movies. Some suggestions: Pretty Woman, TheNotebook, Phantom of the Opera (the Gerard Butler version), An Affair to Remember, Shakespeare in Love, Romancing the Stone and Dirty Dancing.
- Wine. Drink it.
- Read your favorite authors. The other three suggestions worked well, but this one worked the best. Just reading some of my favorite authors and their romance scenes, noting the language that was appropriate for the time period and how they led up to the main event, was a huge help. Just maintain an awareness when you go to write that you're not letting some of your muse's work bleed into yours.
These suggestions helped quite a bit. But I still struggled when I went back to add in detail or expand on some of the scenes.
Enter Laurel Clarke, my saving grace when it came to synonyms and suggestions. Her first thesaurus included synonyms for anatomical parts of both the hero and the heroine, and the second thesaurus provided an excellent overview of words to use for lovemaking:
The Lady Parts & Man Bits Thesaurus: https://laurelclarke.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/sexy-thesaurus-romance-erotica-words/
The Doing It Dictionary & Thesaurus: https://laurelclarke.wordpress.com/2015/07/18/the-sexy-thesaurus-list-action-words-to-use-in-your-romance-novel/
The "Twenty Steps to Writing Great Love Scenes" from Karen Wiesner was also a huge help: http://www.writing-world.com/romance/love.shtml. Not only does she give great advice based on what you're comfortable with as an author, but she also constantly reminds you to keep the details of your story in mind, from what your characters would be comfortable with to what type of language you'd use. The two best pieces of advice I took from her article?
Sometimes a very short scene can sum up an erotic encounter better than two to five pages of graphic detail can.
Your book won't be seamless if you don't chronologically. It'll sound like the author (the characters, too?) is on acid. Keep in mind that each sensual scene should be an outreach, a layering of the characters, showing their growth towards each other.
The last one resonated with me because I desperately wanted to skip the sex scenes and come back to them. For some this may work great, but powering through it I was able to hang on to the anger, the disappointment, the hopelessness that brought the characters to that moment. If I would have come back to it later, I don't know if I could have captured that same emotion.
The romance scene is still in progress. My first draft made me want throw down my pen and give up. The second draft made me feel a smidgen better. It will probably be another five to six drafts and countless edits from my critique group before I feel confident enough to submit.
But it's there. On paper. And I'm 5,000 words from typing...
THE END
