Edith here. I had a hot, er, I mean, hard, er, um, let's say, difficult week. I recently was stopped cold, mid-way through a book I was writing. Sort of like a centipede hustling along until it wondered which foot should come next.
It was a love scene. An ultimate, longed-for, much awaited sex scene, in fact.
And then it occured to me: How can I make this one different from any other I've written? How can I make it intense, without makiing it porn.
And I stopped writing. I was puzzled. After all, I've written many, many romances. How many ways can Part A fit into Slot B?
Lots of ways, I suppose, but I wasn't writing the Kama Sutra; I was writing a regency-set love story. No ropes and pulleys involved. I want to convey love and ecstacy, not physical fitness.
Ah, no, I don't think so...
In fact, I remembered one romance I read that set me giggling because the author definitely had accessed a sex manual. The gymnastics pullled me right out of the story.
Yikes! No no no!
I didn't want to emply euphemisms either, because they can sound childish. Nor did I want to use Latin terms. These are lovers, loving at last, not scholars.
"Wha? Layton doesn't think we're sexy?! Boo hiss!"
You can't do the asterisk anymore. Nor will a simple and heartfelt: "Reader, I married him," do. Forget about the fade-out after Rhett carried Scarlet up those stairs.
Modern readers want to be in on the love. They deserve to be, after all. They yearned through the story too, if you wrote it right.
But how to make the scene both loving and steamy, real and fulfilling for everyone, reader included? And how not to feel like a voyeur while doing it?
I stopped, and mulled.
And then, one morning as I was staring at the empty screen, it came to me.
I was the one thinking too much about the parts involved. That wasn't the point. As every character is different, and every love story is different, so then the perceptions of the characters is different. Just as sex is different for every person, and different every time for every person, so too, the act itself is always different.
The solution?
I went with the characters and their emotions. I wrote a love scene as I thought the characers felt it, and it was hot, although not too hot for the characters, and so it couldn't be for me, or for my readers.
Porn is simply Part A and Slot B.
Romance is love. Love between lovers shows itself in sex. In touches and kisses as well as parts. Let the characters find love, and let the parts fit where they may.
And they did!
But what about you, Gentle Reader?
Want more desciption? Less? In Latin terms? Euphemisms? *** Asterisks***?
Enquiring minds would like to know.