When I first started writing romance back a few years ago, one of my primary fears was whether or not I’d be able to write good love scenes. I certainly loved reading sexy romances, but could I render heat on the page?
Then one year I was participating in my very first NaNoWriMo. I’m generally a pantster, so I went into the process with just an idea for a story & two characters. As I plowed through the month, I encountered various times when I got stuck, plot-wise, as to how I wanted to move forward. The first time I thought, I’ll just write a love scene! It seemed like a good time for my characters to get hot & heavy (this was before I’d really gotten a grip on the concept that love scenes should flow organically from the plot, and have a real purpose to them!). I penned one fairly painlessly, and the next time I had a block? Another love scene! I got to the end of the challenge with a completed novel that pretty much was some chit chat in between love scenes. And hot? Ooh, baby. What started out fairly generic ended up being all dominance and submission all over the place with lots of naughty words in place of those vague euphemisms.
Longer and hotter love scenes one after the other.
Who knew?!
So here I am today, with my very first published piece and it is, not surprisingly to me now, an erotic romance short story. Ménage a Quatre, to be exact. Short, hot, and a terrific 4-way HEA. What could be better?
As with any other aspect of my craft, I’ve come to understand the point of love scenes in a romance, and I’ve come to understand that I write stories with an incendiary heat level. No closed bedroom door. No vanilla M/F. I populate my stories with BDSM elements, ménage and kink upon kink. And I love it!
Just as I learned how to perfect dialogue, to create effective description, to lose the back story, and develop realistic, but heroic characters, I have honed the craft of writing sex. Making it hot, but still pertinent to the story. Involving my heroine and, in this case, heroes, in exceedingly graphic and edgy scenes, while striving too to convey their humanity, their psychology and their emotions. I hope that my combustible love scenes offer eroticism as well as great romance to my readers.
An excerpt gives you an idea of just what fun my heroine & her boys get up to:
“My mind flew back to the wild, uninhibited fantasy I’d spilled into my journal, the book I knew Jake read. Had I been trying to tell him something? Trying to relay a desire that I couldn’t voice? The things I’d said in the journal made me blush. I knew immediately why the scene had played out. Because I’d wanted it. I’d said I wanted to be used. Used over and over until I couldn’t walk.”
And for anyone out there who hesitates to try their hand at writing steamy love scenes? My advice – just this once, close the bedroom (or study) door. Turn on music that makes you yearn. Light some sexy incense, put on an outfit that makes you feel wanton, picture your perfect hero – and fire up that computer.
You never know. You may discover that you’ve got the knack. Just make sure you’ve got the fire extinguisher handy.
“Share and Share Alike” is my story in the new Ravenous Romance digital anthology, “My First Threesome”, edited by F. Leonora Solomon.
