On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [79]
LOVE SCENES
It's important to understand that a love scene isn't the same as a sex scene; a love scene in the romance novel can be any physical expression of affection between the main characters. A kiss, a hug, a touch between hero and heroine are all love scenes on a smaller scale. Even a look can sizzle with sensuality, and a foot massage—if well written—can be as arousing for the readers as a sex act.
Relatively speaking, sex is a very small part of love, and romance novels—even those toward the erotic end of the spectrum—are love stories, not sex stories.
While it's hard to picture two people falling in love without displaying any physical affection at all, a romance novel might include nothing more than a touch of the hand here and there, and a single chaste kiss on the last page. Or it may include mind-bending and intimately described oral, vaginal, and even anal sex in every chapter.
Physical attraction between the characters is important, of course, but when their attraction is deeply emotional as well, the love scene will be far more involving for the readers.
To be effective, love scenes have to fit into the course of the story and heighten the tension and conflict. Even if the actual love scene is a calm interlude in the conflict between the two main characters, the act of loving should lead to increased difficulties later. Every love scene should have a purpose in the development of the overall story, not just be there to titillate the readers. If the love scene can be removed without destroying the story, it shouldn't be there in the first place.
Two people who have slept together are going to behave differently afterward. They will not hop out of bed the next morning acting as if nothing happened the night before. Their actions have changed them and the situation—and, inevitably, the rest of the story. Once your lovers have kissed, touched, or made love, they may try to pretend it never happened—but they, and the readers, can't forget.
In many beginning writers' stories, love scenes are like frosting on a cake. Frosting is applied to the surface, and it adds nicely to the taste. But essentially it changes nothing—the cake is still the same underneath. A good love scene is more like applying heat to the cake batter—once it has started to bake, the cake gets a lot tastier, and there's no way to reverse the process.
Sexual Tension
The most sensual romances aren't necessarily those in which there's a lot of sex, but those in which there is a high level of sexual tension. Beginning writers often mistakenly consider foreplay synonymous with sexual tension. The characters do not need to be touching in order to create sexual tension; they certainly do not need to be kissing or in other intimate contact.
Sexual tension is the unsatisfied attraction of the hero and heroine for each other. The key word here is unsatisfied. Why can't they act on their attraction to each other? What's keeping them from getting together? The stronger the reason, the more emotionally involving the story will be.
Sexual tension begins at the moment the main characters meet, with their first awareness of each other. They might be angry, interested, wary, or tense, but their heightened sense of awareness of the other person provides the first stirrings of sexual tension.
In her sweet traditional The Billionaire Takes a Bride, Liz Fielding uses the conflict between the characters—and a slow cleaning of a pair of glasses—to increase the sexual tension:
Rich forgot all about the fact that Ginny Lautour was ransacking his wardrobe looking for a spare key to his desk and instead found himself wondering what she'd do with her hands if she didn't have her spectacles as a prop. If she didn't have them to hide behind. And what were they hiding? ...
He removed them—ignoring her gasp of outrage—and held them up out of her reach, checking them against the light, reassuring himself that they weren't just that—a prop, a disguise.
They were real enough, he discovered ... he opened a drawer, took out a clean handkerchief