In the most recent of her always interesting posts on History Hoydens, my friend Pam Rosenthal talked about writing a seduction scene. Which got me to thinking about writing love scenes. Or to be more accurate, sex scenes, as there are certainly love scenes that don’t involve sex, except as subtext.
When I first began co-writing Regency romances with my mom, under the name Anthea Malcolm, my friends teased me that our books started very chaste and slowly got more explicit. In our first book, The Widow’s Gambit, the characters barely embraced. In the second, The Courting of Philippa, there were more detailed kisses. In the third, Frivolous Pretence, which focused on an estranged married couple, there was an actual sex scene, though it faded to black. Our fifth book, A Touch of Scandal, had ex-lovers who resumed an illicit affair. Sex scenes were part of the story. I told my mom she had to write them. Our sixth book, An Improper Proposal, was a marriage of convenience story. My mom said, “You have to write one of the sex scenes this time.” I wrote my first draft of the scene on a day when my mom was out shopping. And (this is true, thought it sounds so funny now), I turned down the screen on my computer, so I couldn’t look at the words as I typed them. When my mom got home that night, I said, “Okay, I wrote the scene. Go look at it and tell me what you think. But I don’t want to be there when you read it.”
Oddly enough, after that first scene I stopped being embarrassed about writing sex scenes. I got to find them quite a fun challenge, especially trying to make each one true to those particular characters and that stage in their relationship. But when I wrote Secrets of a Lady, it was quite obvious to me that after the opening interrupted sex scene, Charles and Mélanie were too focused on finding the Carevalo Ring and getting their son back to be stop to have sex. On top of the fact that their relationship is so strained that Charles finds it difficult even to look Mel in the face let alone make love to her. In fact one of the reasons I had Mélanie be attacked fairly early in the story is to break through some of the distance between them so that Charles at least touches her. If you examine the book, their physical contact slowly increased through their desperate adventures in search of the ring and Colin.
In Beneath a Silent Moon, (which thematically is in many ways all about sex), Charles and Mélanie do make love fairly early in the story. When I wrote the scene, I automatically faded to black without thinking about it. I did the same with a later sex scene in the book. I’ve come full circle, in a way, from from being embarrassed to write sex scenes to enjoying writing them to liking the mystery of not showing everything. Of hinting at exactly who does what and how and what it means to them but leaving a great deal up to the reader’s imagination.
How do you feel about sex scenes in the books you read? What makes them work or not? How detailed do you like them to be? Writers, how do you approach writing sex scenes? Do you enjoy writing them or find them a chore? How much detail do you go into? Has your approach to them changed through the years or with the type of books you write?
This week’s Fraser Correspondence addition is Mélanie’s reply to Isobel Lydgate’s letter from a few weeks ago about David and Simon.
September 21, 2009 at 1:18 am
One of my favourites is Laurie R King’s Russell, who writes throwaway lines like: “And then my husband came in looking very handsome in his suit and one thing led to another and we never got around to talking about X until morning. (Forgive my paraphrasing, I don’t have my books handy.) It so wonderfully suits the characters of Russell and Holmes.
I find lines like that almost more entertaining than fully-described scenes. Just so delightfully understated — and I can imagine as much or as little as I wish to on my own. I tend to write scene like this for my own characters, but not always.
September 21, 2009 at 1:55 am
This subject is always thought provoking. I love writing sex scenes, but I find the longer I spend creating them the less effective they are. I think it has everything to do with my understanding of the characters sexuality which I have to admit I do not always know as well as I know other aspects of their lives.
Tracy, I envy your contiuing series where you get to know Charles and Mel better with each book and likewise how they respond to each other.
September 21, 2009 at 4:32 am
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Cate and Mary! (It’s so fun to put up a post and come home to comments :-)).
Cate, I totally agree about Laurie King. She does this beautifully. It is wonderfully understated and leaves a great deal to the imagination. It can either be witty as in the example you quoted or quite emotionally powerful (as in a later scene from MOOR where Russell is upset–understandably–after having just viewed a dead body and Holmes comes in and holds her (“Holmes was always very satisfactory at determining, with a minimum of clues, what in a given situation was the required course of action.”). I also love that if you read King closely you can often figure out the physicality of scene (say how Russell and Holmes are lying in bed) without her overtly describing it.
Mary, I do think writing effective sex scenes has to do with really understanding the characters and in a very intimate manner. If you think about it, one can know a person very well without knowing about that aspect of their life. I also think it’s a challenge to continue to make them fresh and interesting without just making them different for the sake of being different. It is a treat to write about the same characters over numerous books. You get to know them in ways I never quite did writing about characters in a single book and you get to show how they are their relationship evolve. I think it makes it easier to write all their interactions, including the intimate ones.
September 28, 2009 at 7:14 am
[…] Mélanie and Charles Fraser, Raoul O'Roarke, Tracy Grant Leave a Comment Last week I blogged about writing sex scenes. As I mentioned, I write them much less often and more sparingly now that my books are suspense […]