Friday 22 June 2012

In search of good (romantic) sex


I’m teaching a one day Crash Course on Writing Romance on Saturday, so spent yesterday going through my notes from last year.  (Funny how no matter how often you think: that went pretty well, I’ll just do that again next year, you always end up rewriting and changing things around.  The couple of hours I’d planned on preparation stretched to the whole day in the end.)

The focus of the course is on emotional tension, which I firmly believe is the key to any successful romance.  If you don’t have that, no amount of good writing will stop your story from sagging.  But of course a romance is more than just structure too.  The problem with a crash course is that we just don’t have time to do everything.  And in my case, when it comes to writing about sex, this is probably just as well. 

I have to hold my hand up and say that I’m not good at sex scenes.  Sexual tension, yes, I can offer advice on that, but the business itself … not so much.  Which is a shame, as when it’s done well, scenes which show that the hero and heroine are sexually as well as emotionally compatible are central to many romances. 

It’s a great skill, I think, to keep the reader engaged with the characters and what they are feeling when they make love.  Too often I’m pulled out of a story by icky descriptions or euphemisms that make me squirm.  The most memorable was one I read nearly 30 years ago: “With gentle, hurting care he stormed the furled portals of her womanhood”.  Eeeuuwww.

Luckily for me I write for Harlequin Romance, a line in which we “close the bedroom door” (a pretty icky euphemism in itself!) but when it comes to teaching a course like tomorrow’s, the best I can do is to tell participants to read those authors who write about sex really well. 

It’s almost impossible to give an excerpt, as it never works out of context.  The emotional tension in the story is the foreplay that makes these scenes truly satisfying, and that takes time to build up.  The reader needs to know the characters, to have shared their growing awareness of each other and to understand why they are feeling what they do. 




Loretta Chase, Jenny Crusie Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Nora Roberts, Kelly Hunter … all these authors write brilliant sex scenes and I’ll send everyone on the course away with recommendations to read them, but I’m always looking for new authors to recommend. Who do you think does sex really well??

Oh, nearly forgot!  The winner of this week's competition is Natalija ... Natalija, do you want to email your address to leah@leah-ashton.com and she'll put a copy of SECRETS AND SPEED DATING in the post to you - enjoy!   

10 comments:

  1. I've got two for you Molly O'Keefe (writes Superromance -- not sure the U.K. line) and also just published amazing single titles. The other is a book by Lisa Cach, Great-Aunt Sohphia's Lessons for Bombshells (you will never think about manual transmissions the same way again)!

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  2. Good luck with the course! Was temped to sign up for a refresher but thought that came perilously close to stalking!

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    1. You'll always be welcome ... but I think you know it all now anyway!

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  3. I'm super excited about winning. Thanks! I'll write to Leah ASAP. In my opinion, Linda Howard writes very hot scenes (especially I like the ones in "After the Night"). Nancy Warren is great. She writes funny contemporaries & has a couple of Blaze titles as well.

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  4. Thank you for these recommendations ... Great Aunt Sophia's Lessons for Bombshells is on its way to my Kindle even as I type, and I've managed to get a second hand edition of Nancy Warren's Drive Me Crazy. Looking forward to trying these new (to me) authors - and hopefully picking up some tips while I'm at it!

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  6. Coming in a little late but I'm still gagging over the "furled portals" line - hilarious!!!!!

    Am sure the course went super well :) Any chance you can come back out to Melbourne, Australia again? :D

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    1. Am thinking seriously of the conference in Fremantle, Joanne, and if I can make it happen I'll be doing a tour ... Depends on new contract, of course, so still in fantasy territory - but the fantasy gets more detailed every day!

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  7. I always recommend reading Diana Gabaldon's sex scenes. More than any other author I can think of, her sex scenes really do further the plot and characterisation. She writes sex that is comfort, hurt, delight, celebration, fear, possessiveness, and much more. It's never just sex, it's always sex that shows how the characters are feeling, what they want, how they show their love and so on.

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    1. Thanks for this recommendation, Ros. I haven't read any Diana Gabaldon, but I keep hearing her name, so I think I'd better try her. I can feel another visit to Amazon coming on ...

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