So, the topic of this post presented itself during a chat session I had this afternoon with Erica and Darcy. (All the Manuscript Mavens are supposed to chat once a week, but we rarely manage to confine ourselves to that! In fact, I still have a chat window open, just in case someone should come back and want to talk.)
The thing is, I've been reading Annie Dean's Average Girl's Guide to Getting Laid (which I purchased hot off the presses yesterday) and feeling woefully inadequate in the hot love scene department. (Ladies and gentlemen, this book is smokin' hot. And I'm not sure that even comes close to describing it! And yes, this is a rec, peeps. Go buy!) And since I left off yesterday at a moment in Going Greek that wasn't as scorching as I'd like and came back into Lady Libertine this morning at a supposed-to-be racy moment, the last thing I needed was another kick in the inadequacy department, but I got one anyway when Lacey sent out her incredibly hot, emotionally textured, totally kick-ass love scene from If You Asked the Devil to Dance. Yow, having her own place to hunker down and write has turned up her mojo big time!
/Me considers wisdom of running away from home and decides against. Drat!
Now, Darcy and Erica were quick to reassure me that my love scenes are plenty steamy and I don't need any help in that department, but once you're bitten by that bug of doubt, the drug seeps through your veins, whether it's about your love scenes or any other part of your manuscript.
But Lacey, bless her, had some great advice, which I should have remembered from writing Carnally Ever After, which was (I paraphrase) let your inhibitions go when you write a love scene. Get whatever's in your head out on the paper and worry about whether people are going to think you're a freak later. And I definitely didn't think Lacey was a freak after reading her scene and apparently, no one who read Carnally Ever After thought I was a freak (or if they did, they thought I was a hot freak, which is okay), so it's obviously the right way to fly.
But what does all this have to do with the title of this post, you ask?
Well, we started discussing the relative ease or difficulty of letting all those inhibitions go and one thing that we all agreed makes it harder is when you're writing a heroine who's a virgin. Which, let's face it, is the pretty typical setup in a historical, and we've all at one time or another written a historical. Lacey's love scene came from her hero's point of view, so that made it a bit easier, but her heroine is also pretty atypical (she's a Shawano warrier transplanted into England) and therefore has a lot fewer inhibitions than your average upper class English rose.
As you know, the heroine of Lady Libertine is also atypical in this regard. To put it bluntly, she's a slut *g. (And what's wrong with that?) But I've realized it does make it easier to let go and write her sex scenes. She has the vocabulary. She has the experience. She knows where she's going and what she wants. Erica's been writing paranormal contemporaries lately, so she isn't experiencing the virginal heroine problem. Darcy, on the other hand, has nothing but virgins. We all agreed, she needs a slut. But where to find one for her? Write if you have suggestions!
Today's question: What helps you let go and write a steamy love scene? Do you love writing them or hate it with the fire of a thousand suns? Or a little of both? (I vote for the a little of both. Maybe I'll blog about that some other day!)
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10 comments:
Carrie pointed me over here and...wow!
"Ladies and gentlemen, this book is smokin' hot. And I'm not sure that even comes close to describing it!"
It's really cool to read that, Jac. See, I didn't go the m/f/m/m/f/m way, no threesomes, and I didn't even include the obligatory anal sex scene. So I'm jazzed to hear readers can find one man, one woman, getting down, "smokin' hot" to quote you. Thank you!
Jacq: I, for one, do consider you a hot freak. ;)
In other news, it's not just historicals who have the problem. My original conception of DATD had Dorinda being a little... well, not prudish, but definitely not slutty. Partly that was because her sole sexual experience was her (late) husband. But then I thought about the troubles my CPs were having with their virginal heroines, and I realized that one lover did not a prude make. So now, even though Dorinda only has one notch on her bed post, she's the aggressor, and Gabe (whose bedpost splintered and fell long ago from his notches) is the pursued. The dynamic is much, much better this way.
I'm not really sure that answers Jacq's question. I actually forgot the question. I gotta go.
*g
This topic is very timely for me. I'm finishing up a pair of very difficult love scenes. I wrote the scene up until the point where they fall in bed, didn't feel it, skipped it, wrote [sex scene here] and then zoomed through the bracketing scene on the other side.
Then I went back in to fill in the blanks. Description. He did this. She did that. She screamed with pleasure. Yawn.
It took me a while to realize that I had balked because I hadn't really gotten the emotion of the scene into my skin yet. How were these two supposed to make love? What was the underlying emotion? What made them different? How could I make this scene about them and not just about the act?
I discovered that if I wrote two sentences (yes, two) in a row that were purely descriptive, it was usually because I'd lost touch with my characters, and I needed to go back.
Once I did that--once I figured out what the underlying dynamic was, the scene wrote. Every little movement, every kiss, every little thing existed to drive that dynamic. It worked.
Annie, believe me, I think one-on-one's plenty hot. Don't need that extra kinky action at ALL, unless it fits the characters/plot/etc. You definitely didn't need any of it in Guide.
Erica, you know I'll take hot freak any day, or even humble slut (sorry folks, inside joke!).
And CM, that's a great observation. A good love scene isn't about stage direction, but about the emotion that underlies the interaction. And that's a good reminder for me as I've been given some bonus writing time this evening, courtesy of the spouse's need for a haircut.
I usually eke out the sex scenes a lot more slowly than other scenes. Dunno why. Because I want them to be intense and heartfelt even though I'm crabby and devoid of libido? :)
Hey Jody!
Whatever you're doing works *g. I have _Birthday_ in my possession and read it in one sitting the day after it arrived from Amazon. Yowza! Intense and heartfelt and HAWT! (I think reading that actually got my sex scene insecurity started. Annie's followed by Lacey's just pushed me over the edge. Hmmm, maybe I should revise my post to mention that!)
No inadequacies! We all right differently, for one. As you said, our heroines are different. Even though they're both experienced, they're not the same. Our heroes are different. Remy is as experienced as Amelia (maybe more so). What I tried to convey in this scene was Jonathan's innocence vs. Kitha's aggressive dominance. That's why it's written from the hero's perspective, though it did allow me to use stronger language, too.
But that's why I was so careful to emotionally texture the scene, as you called it. I wanted to give the reader his side of the story, his interpretation of the act, and show how poignantly he feels about his loss of his virginity, even though I never straight out say he's losing it. That's for the reader to decide.
The heroine, on the other hand, is &*$@ing his brains out. I hope the reader can see the truth in her actions even though they also buy in to the hero's concept of the act as an admittance of their deep emotional connection.
Anyway, that's not nec. going to be the case with yours and hey, I might never write another story with that conflict. But I sure did enjoy writing this one. I just closed my eyes and let my fingers walk.
And then I polished it for about five hours and chewed my nails down waiting for you guys to read it :-)
I like to read poetry to get in the mood. An Indian poet, Tagore, author of The Lover of God is one of my favorites.
"Spring at last! The amuyas flare,
half-opened, trembling with bees.
A river of shadow flows through
the grove.
I'm thrilled, dear trusted friend,
shocked by this pleasure-flame-
am I not a flame in his eyes?
... love blooms, and then spring
blows the petals from the world.
In my heart's grove the cuckoos
pour out
a bewlidering fountain of pleasure-
drops,
jewels of the universe."
OMG, I wrote "right." Well, that tells you what kind of day today has been!
That is so kind of you! I just sent my first giveaway copy, but other than that I haven't had a lot of feedback. You imagine when you actually get pubbed by someone with measurable distribution that you're gonna hear *something*.... well, not so much :).
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