Adding Steam to Your Love Scenes – Lesson #5

This week we’re talking about the details that every love scene needs to have to be great. All the senses need to be put into play as well as having a good setting. This is where we start putting it all together. Enjoy!

Details are everything.

If a character is fantasying about a certain body part, can you imagine what happens when they actually get that body part? Let your imagination run wild! If your heroine is fantasizing about touch the hero on the penis, make sure that you record every detail: the texture of his skin, the temperature of the room, is his hot or cold, or is he warm and inviting. There is nothing more exciting than when the characters are exploring each other for the first time. Here’s an example from my short story, Shopping Spree, and this is when she first touches him:

He didn’t have to wait long for ‘this’ as she crossed the short distance between them, the silk fluttering from the movement as she pushed them out of the dressing room.

“I saw you when I came in and decided that I just had to have you. But a girl has certain criteria, you know?” Running her hands up his chest, she reached his neck and pulled him forward.

“Really? Hey,” Jonas started to protest but was drowned out by her lips. She ran her tongue along his mouth and nipped at his lips before covering them with her own. Her tongue snaked out and began to war with his in a dance as ancient as time.

“You taste good,” she murmured, looking up at him. Pulling him to her yet again, her limber tongue caressed the inside of his mouth making him wonder what it would feel like on his cock. Reaching down, she ran her fingers along his bulge, grabbing him and pressing into him, making him yearn for so much more.

“You feel good down there too,” she said and pushed against him even more, making an already strained situation even more painful.

If he weren’t careful, he would lose his load before he even began.

“Ah, you might want to slow it down a little…I don’t even…” He groaned as she pulled his shirt from his pants and snaked her hands up his bare chest to tweak his nipples. God, this feels so good! he thought as he arched into her hands, allowing them to continue their play.

Leisurely, as if it were an erotic dance, she began to unbutton his shirt, placing light kisses along the way. At his nipples, she stopped and sucked until they were hot, tight peaks before continuing on down his body. Laving his belly button, she got on her knees and looked up at him, going even further, gently biting the front of his crotch.

And now, he first touches her:

Lying on his side next to her, he gasped as she continued to deep throat as much of him as she could. Realizing he wasn’t yet fulfilling his end of the bargain, Jonas urged her knee up and ran his fingers over her slick slit, looking at her very pink and pretty cunt. Gently, he spread her lower lips and gazed at the small nub he found there. Holding her apart, he leaned over and laved her top to bottom, careful to avoid her clit.

“Dammit…I want to be touched…there,” she whispered, and wiggled her crotch in his face. “I know you know where there is.”

“All’s fair in love and …teasing,” he answered, smiling against her, certain she could feel the movement.

“Arghhhh…not fair.”

Once again, he licked her and avoided the area of her hottest desire, making her moan loudly. Sliding two fingers in her, he took his thumb and firmly pressed against her clit in order to make her pleasure even more profound. Slowly, he began flicking his tongue over her pussy, paying special attention to her hard nub. Soon, she was bucking against his probing tongue as he moved it in and out of her.

“Deeper. Harder.”

“I’ve got just the thing.” He rose in one fluid motion and pulled her with him not even noticing he still had his clothes half on and half off.

“Hey…” she began. “I didn’t say to stop.”

“Don’t worry. It will be worth it.” He moved her to the bench next to the wall. “Sit down and scoot your ass to the edge.”

“Well…what about you?” she asked, confusion plainly written on her face.

“Right now, baby, it’s all about you. It’ll be about me soon enough.”

He could see her swallow hard as if contemplating whether this was exactly what she wanted or not. Suddenly, the control was in his hands and not hers.

“Sure…but if I don’t like it…I’ll tell you.”

“You’ll like it alright.” He smiled at her and forced her backside down on the bench. “Let’s turn up the heat a few notches.”

Notice that I give you a lot of detail. I give you every lick, nip and breath taken while these two are on their sexual journey. I use all the senses of touch, smell, sight, hearing, and tasting when doing a love scene. No detail is to be left untouched. If you want to see the whole story, just email me privately at lynncrain@cox.net and I will send you a free copy of this story because you’re attending this workshop.

Here are just some of the details that you shouldn’t forget.
1. Know the temperature of their skin – hot, cold, clammy or warm and inviting.
2. Know how the characters should look when making love – pink cheeks, rosy lips, closed eyes, opened eyes.
3. Know the texture of their skin – rough, smooth, slick
4. Know if their eyes darken when sexually aroused
5. Know how their breathing is effected when making love – do they seem as if they’ve run a marathon
6. Know the details of where they are making love – is it inside or outside, in the shower or in the bed

One big thing to avoid in any love scene is what is known as wandering body parts. Now these are easy to spot: her eyes fell out of their head, her legs jumped for joy, his mouth fell to the floor. If her eyes fell out of her head, how could they see that his eyes were blue? If her legs jumped for joy, what was happening to the rest of her body? If his mouth fell to the floor, how could he kiss her? Body parts need to stay in the correct positions at all times.

Exercise

1. Take three of the five senses and write a sentence using that sense.
2. Show me the room where your characters will make love for the first time.
3. Write me a love scene from her point of view. Now reverse it and make it from his.

Remember, you can post your exercise here for everyone to see, or you can send it to me privately at lynncrain@cox.net. Please leave me a comment so I know you’ve been here to visit. And have fun!

Until next week…

Lynn

Adding Steam to Your Love Scenes – Lesson #4

One cannot write a good story without some good research or some first hand knowledge. This week we go over some books that a writer needs in their bookshelf for writing great love scenes.

Get some good research material.

It is always important for a writer to know where to get good research material. And the best place to start doing your research today would be the internet. It is an invaluable resource that you can use from the privacy of your own home. I can tell you that I would have been mortified at first when I started doing research for erotic romance. But being able to look for books on line was a different matter.

The first thing to do is to know what you are trying to research. Once you have honed in on a subject the next thing would be to compile a list of websites and from those websites a list of books.

Good research books are invaluable.

There are certain books that a writer must always keep on hand. Find yourself a good English rule book. I personally use Diana Hacker’s A Writer’s Reference. She also has an electronic version. She continually updates the book and makes it better each time it comes out. I have a very old version.

Another book to have is The Chicago Manual of Style. While this many be more geared toward the college student, one can always find something of interest in this books. What the first book doesn’t have, this one will.

If you are writing for a specific genre, there will be a ton of genre related books on the subject. Writer’s Digest books have some of the best known genre books out there and their Writer’s Basic Bookshelf is a must for any beginner.

Another two books I have on my shelves are The Romance Writer’s Phrase Book and The Millennium Phase Book. These books are great when you are stuck and can’t think of a term you need. They also help when you need a little push in the right direction but just can’t put the words together.

Now for writing love scenes, there are some very special books to look for which will help add steam to your scenes. One would such book is the Sexicon. It is the end all book on sexual terms. It has everything you’ve ever thought of and many of those things you haven’t.

For writing tamer scenes, The Idiot’s Guide to Getting Your Romance Published and Writing Romance are the best two I’ve read in recent years. I don’t know if any of you have ever purchased the Idiot books and I have to admit at first I was reluctant, after all who wants to be viewed as an idiot? BUT I found some new information in there and was really surprised when I got this book.

Now one thing I think important on any sensuality level are picture books. The three books I have on my desk, and yes they are in plain sight, are the Kama Sutra, Ultimate Sex and The Better Sex Guide. These will help you visualize if a position is even possible and they will help overcome any fear you have about writing physical contact scenes. First, I didn’t know that there is a name for every sexual position and I’ll bet you didn’t either. The rest of the world does not view sex the same way we do in America. Part of what we have to do is to get over any of our inhibitions regarding the sexual act. These books will help you do that because these are not porn books but are books where the sex act is brought to life in a positive, loving way. If an author feels that sex is dirty, it will show in their writing. Sex always, no matter at what level, needs to be portrayed in a positive manner.

All these books are easily found on Amazon by just typing the name in their search engine.

Exercise

1. Pick a research topic and give five website references concerning that topic.
2. Give me a list of ten research books. Pick five and tell me why they would be good research books in your opinion.

You can post your exercise here for everyone to see, or you can send it to me privately at lynncrain@cox.net. Please leave me a comment so I know you’ve been here to visit. And have fun!

Until next week…

Lynn

Adding Steam to Your Love Scenes – Lesson #2

We’re in week #2 of our free workshop. In this one, we’ll be exploring just how you can use your own experiences to enhance any love scene. And since I told you last week to use visual stimulation, I thought I would add a little with some pictures I downloaded from istockphoto or canstockphoto.

Use your own experiences

I’m sure at this moment, you are wondering just what am I talking about. Your own personal experiences can’t be what people want to really see. Well, I’m here to tell you that they do. People must relate to your characters; they must find some common ground or your characters will be meaningless to them.

Have you ever caught yourself while reading a book saying some thing to the effect of, ‘I can see myself doing that’ and know you mean it?

And I don’t mean using the experiences literally…you all remember that blush first being in love…use it, use it to your best advantage because people like to read about other people. How many of you are sick of the heroine or hero always being perfect? I know that I am. Why? Because people are flawed, even the really great people have flaws. They put their pants on the same way we do. They wear underwear, they shower, they go to the bathroom and for heaven sakes’ most of them fart too.

But the point is that you know and can relate to all those things. Use what you know. There is an old saying ‘Write what you know’ and the reason is that if you write about what you are good at, it comes more naturally.

If you are writing romance, there are some things that only women know. Most women remember their ‘first time,’ so use it. You can remember what it was like seeing your spouse for the first time. I do. I thought he was crazy because it was freezing and he was wearing shorts. I also remembering me thinking he wasn’t bad looking and maybe I should get to know him. I’ve used different version of this again and again.

Another one, most women remember the first ‘real’ date they were on, so use it. My husband and I didn’t date at first, we gang dated meaning we went out with a group of people. And we always seemed to pair up differently. Sometimes I look at my husband and don’t know how I ended up married to him. But I do know I worked my butt off to get him. This is something I can use.

The same can be said for men. When I decided to write from a man’s point of view, I realized I was out of my depth. I don’t know what a man feels during sex. But I do know my husband and trust his judgment. When I’m writing from the male point of view, he reads everything. He tells me things like ‘a guy wouldn’t think that emotionally about this’ or ‘no way would a guy do that.’ To be accurate, you have to have resources you can fall back on.

You can use anything you have experienced to make your writing richer and fuller. Everything you do in this mode just makes it so a reader can more readily identify with your characters. If the reader can’t identify with your characters, they won’t finish the book or maybe they won’t even pick it up.

Exercise

1. List ten experiences that you can use in a novel, be it romance, erotic romance, sensual romance or just a regular book.
2. Take one of those experiences and write me a whole paragraph about one of your characters doing the same thing.
3. What did you get out of the experience? Can you apply this to your writing.
4. List one outside resource you can use when you need it. It can be a person, a book, a library or even a place on the internet. The point here is to get you thinking about how you can find out the information you really need.

You can post it here for everyone to see, or you can send it to me privately at lynncrain@cox.net. Please leave me a comment so I know you’ve been to visit. And have fun!

Until next week…

Lynn

Adding Steam to Your Love Scenes – Free Workshop

I have been asked recently by more and more people just how I add steam to my many love scenes. In the course of a few years, I have put together what works for me. I’m hoping to share those ideas with you all over the next few weeks in this free workshop. So please, pass the word around to all your friends. We’ll have fun!

Here’s what we’ll be covering with each week building on the previous one:

Set the mood for both you and your characters.
- Read books the day before in the genre for which your writing.
- Listen to music while you write that all important scene.
- Look at phrase books.
- Look at sexy pictures.

Use your own experiences
- I don’t mean literally…you all remember that blush first being in love…use it.
- Most women remember their ‘first time,’ so use it.
- Most women remember the first ‘real’ date they were on, so use it.

Add love scenes when the characters want to make love, not when you want them to make love.
- I’m a pantser and all of my stories are character driven.
- What is right for the characters needs to be right for you as the writer.
- Listen to your characters as they will tell you what they need.

Get some good research material.
- Good research books are invaluable.
- For erotic, books like the Kama Sutra are a must.

Details are everything.
- If a character is fantasying about a certain body part, can you imagine what happens when they actually get that body part?
- Know the temperature of their skin – hot, cold, clammy or warm and inviting.
- Know how the characters should look when making love – pink cheeks, rosy lips, closed eyes, opened eyes.
- No wandering body parts.

Don’t ever write sex to fill up pages.
- Sex needs to happen when it needs to happen and not before.
- Readers can tell when a writer has had to ‘force’ a love scene.

Remember that as a an erotic romance writer you are writing hot, sizzling love scenes and not just sex. Same goes for sensual romance.

Sometimes less is more.

Make each love scene emotional.
- At least one of the two characters has to have some sort of emotional attachment to the reason they are having sex.
- It’s not always who you think it should be and it doesn’t need to be revealed right away.

Take note of the anatomical details.
- Characters have to be anatomically compatible.
- Huge men will never fit into a small, child-like woman. Not happening.
- Know what is and isn’t humanly possible.

I hope to see you all next week when we begin setting the mood!

Until then…

Lynn

The Sexual Revolution

I thought I would talk about sex through the ages today. I am following the History Channel which is airing this subject all week long. Irony? It seems our ancients were just as willing and promiscuous as our present society is today.

Back in the days of Pompeii they had prostitutes. They were singled out by the way they coiffed their hair. The top would be neatly placed while the back would be displayed down along their backs. The Romans were openly sexual. They would display lust within the public eye without shame. Strange I see couples doing that very same thing today...

Society as a whole expects us to have morals and respect for the opposite sex, but there are many different kinds of relationships. Back in Rome they did have gay, and lesbian relationships. It was huge in Roman royalty just as adultry and incest was.

Society expects us to behave in public and behind closed doors yet they can't conceive the idea and the nature of what our ancestors did throughout the years.

Take the Regency period, there was more open sex then there is today. The roaring 30's brought in the Flappers, cigarettes, and sex...the 60's brought in flower power, Woodstock, drugs, heavy metal music, free love and SEX!

So what's so different about today's society? "Prudes." The part of society who would love to re-write the bible and make it law. The old farts who will continuously remind us all that sex is a bad thing, that it's a sin to lust for another person other then for the simple act of procreation.

Give me a break! Sex is what it is. It isn't something taboo or dirty. It is a normal physical act that was embedded in our brains for the sake of showing love for each other. And heck let's face it...it's fun!

So the next time your feeling lust for your special someone think back to what was done centuries ago...we are no different today then they were...

Happy New Year,

AP Miller

Erotic Romance, Writing and the Dixie Chicks

Growing up a kid’s life is usually defined by their parents. Well, mine were very country. I can remember being on my Daddy’s shoulders during some of the greatest singers in the genre at the Grand Ole Opery in Bainbridge, Ohio. Some of those old melodies that I heard then can still waft through my house especially when I write. There’s nothing like those good old country songs to get one in the mood.

Sometimes.

Tonight, I fell asleep in front of the TV as I commonly do when I’m on a writing spree. I’ll work and work then take a break when before I know it, I’m stumbling to bed again because I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’ve always been a late night person and while it doesn’t surprise me it is sometimes disconcerting. This time though, instead of dragging myself up, I was riveted to what was on the TV. I had apparently fallen asleep to some documentary that I was watching on historical political events. What I woke up to was something totally different. You’d think I’d have something better to sink my teeth into. LOL!

Still, this one completely captured my attention. While I no longer listen to country music any more unless I’m nostalgic or just really can’t get into the mood, I do listen to singers like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Shedaisy and the Dixie Chicks. What I was seeing on my big screen was a documentary about three women and something that because known as ‘the incident’ to them and the rest of the world. An incident that everyone by now realize should never have been blown out of proportion because what was said has been found to be relatively true in the years since it has happened.

And while I don’t want this blog to turn into a political forum at all, it made me wonder about my own chosen career and just how it can hinge on the whims of the reading public just like theirs hung on the whims of a listening public. There have been times when I tell people I write erotic romance and something between horror and disbelief cross their face. When that happens I have to grit my teeth sometimes and just smile because when all is said and done, I will write what I write for a variety of reasons.

Now some of you may ask ‘How can you love smut?’ to which I would reply ‘How can I not?’ I mean everyone has a different perception of what porn is, what smut is and what romance is. Mine just happens to be a little bit broader than most. But here’s the key to the whole thing and it something most of you don’t know. I write just as much non-erotic stuff as I do the erotic venture. Yup, you heard me right. Again, I can hear you say ‘Huh? What are you talking about?’

What, indeed. The bottom line is that I write what I love at that moment. Some days it’s just as hard for me to get into a sex scene as it is the writer who has never written one. I truly understand that as I write, I am not the one in control but my characters are. If they don’t want to have sex, they won’t. If they want to shoot someone, they will. And if they need to defend themselves against the next wave of alien bloodsuckers, they will do it superbly.

I write what is in my heart at the very moment I put the words onto the page and not a second before I’m supposed to. I’m one of the few writers who won’t write to a market because it’s popular nor will I be swayed against finishing something that isn’t the latest trend or fashion. I need to be passionate about what I write and if I can’t be, the piece may never get started or even finished for that matter.

At a talk I gave this past week, one of the topics I spoke to was career. I’ve been around a long time in the romance field and I have always written the ‘hot’ stuff long before it was in vogue. I can remember the very first time that Sandra brown put in the words ‘tongue f**k’ and that book hit the best seller list. And the very first BDSM book I ever read was in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s by a science fiction author named Sharon Green and the book was ‘The Mind Guest’ another one who made it to the NY Times bestseller list. The moment I finished the book I told my husband that someday I would write a book just like it. And I did in my own way.

I used to tell people to write what they know until I was corrected by a bestselling author who told me to write what I could imagine. I’ll take it one step even further and say one should write what they know along with what they can imagine. Only then will you get the full effect and range of your writing.

I’ll end this by saying thank you to the Dixie Chicks for giving me this blog idea. I was always on their side about ‘the incident. They’re good at what they do and they won’t comprise who they are to get it done their way.

Just like me. I will always write what I love no matter what genre.

Later…

Lynn