Writing Tips: Romance

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When it comes to fiction, I don't like bogging my readers down with long narratives. (Non-fiction, that's another matter!) It's a case where I write what I know and let my readers fill in the rest with their imagination. Take the kiss for example, I add in tiny details like instead of saying:

They kissed.

Well that is just plain dull. I'd say:

They kissed under the willow tree.

or

He kissed her passionately.

or

They kissed under the willow tree. It was her first kiss. It seemed to last forever.

I only added one or two little words. That's it. But it changed the whole picture in the readers head. Nothing big. Just little things.




I think a lot of people get caught up in the mechanics of kiss/love scenes, when the mechanics aren't really what we want to read. I mean, yeah, okay, we want that, but what we REALLY want is the emotion. The feeling. The passion. Character thoughts and emotions draw the reader in better than any amount of writing a kissing how to ever could.

Another thing that goes over well with readers is to get inside the character's head. Show don't tell.

They stopped under the willow tree. He pulled her close and kissed her long and hard. She felt the world disappear around her. Nothing else mattered. No one else existed. It was just the two of them alone in the universe. He had kissed her. Her first kiss. She hardly believe it. She wondered now if it had only been a dream.
It's short. It's quick. It's simple. It doesn't stop the flow of the story. It doesn't describe the kiss. It doesn't tell. It describes how she felt as she was being kissed. It shows.

Whatever you do, keep it short, keep it simple, keep it familiar, let the reader interpret the minor details themselves, and you'll write a book that's easy to read and seems familiar to your readers and your readers well love you for it.

That said; (coming from a girl's PoV) being kissed can be the most amazing feeling in the world, if the guy is "the one" and not "just some guy". Soft lips, wet tongue, warm skin, the smell of perfumed skin, the tingle down your spine, the light headed feeling, the feeling that you could walk on air. French kissing is better in my opinion. If you haven't been kissed, than just imagine that you are experiencing the most amazing wonderful feeling possible and go with it, write how you imagine it would be like. Write what you know and bluff the rest. Chances are your readers well never know you've never been kissed... they'll be to busy imagining their first kiss- past or future.

A good kiss is one that sends everything else around you packing. The world fades away, you lose your train of thought, your worries and concerns evaporate, nothing else exists except you and the other person.

Hope this helps.

A real fight only lasts a few seconds (even though it may seem like hours). I figure it should take the reader no more than 5 seconds to read the fight. Thus my fight scenes tend to be quick and short.

Regardless of how many people are fighting, (even if it's a big battle) I pick out only two fighters, and focus on them. I describe the actual action between the two fighters, focusing more on the inner emotional response of the one that is losing, (even if they are not a MC) thus making the winning fighter seem much more fierce. Usually I focus more on the pain from the blow, than the actual blow itself.

Generally my fight scenes are less than three paragraphs long. I use short sentences (Less than seven words each). I use simple small words. I let it flow past the reader quickly, giving them the illusion that they are being pulled through the action at the same break neck speed in which the action takes place.

In romance fight scenes vary greatly. It can be as simple as a quick lovers spat that is forgotten and forgiven an hour later. It could be a bitter quarrel over something petty, and result in them not speaking to each other for a day or two. It could be a scream and throw things fight, where they yell and threaten each other, but never actually hurt each other. Or it could be a full blown battle, with one or both characters becoming violent and hitting the other one.

How they fight will be determined by how they act otherwise. Think about the things they do and say normally, and remember that you can usually tell how violent a person may or may not be, by little signs they give off in their daily life.

Women throw things. Cliche, yes, but it's true. When women get mad, they grab the closest thing and throw it, usually in the direction of the man they are angry with. Women are also likely to start crying hysterically or screaming at the top of their lungs (depending on if they are the type to back down or fight back.)

Men are prone to shaking their fist in your face, and a more violent man is not above punching the women in the face or shoving her down the stairs. Again, cliche, but, still true. It happens in real life, and if you want your story to seem real, than it's something you should consider writing into the fight scenes.

When writing romance the most common question a writer faces seems to be: should I add sex scenes or not?

Going back once again to my own books, The Twighlight Manor series includes a very detailed look at everything, literally everything, the main characters do. Yep, you don't spend 30 years writing about the same characters and not eventually start tearing apart their daily lives. Of course this means their sex lives have shown up in the stories as well. The main character being a siren, means that sex pretty much is the only thing on his mind at any given moment, and thus greatly effects the stories. Oddly, outside of *Love, Lust, Madness* there is no actual sex in any of my stories at all. The implication is there, but the sex itself is never written.

Okay, so I'm not a romance writer, per say. Horror-fantasy-sci-fi is more my cup of tea. Most everything I write has romance in it even if it's not romance genre. And you know what? In 28 years only ONE ever had any actual sex in it! I always do the whole *fade into black* thing instead of writing on scene sex. I prefer (to write and read) stories that hits that sex is going to happen, but than leaves and goes to something else. Let the reader imagine what they will.

For the sake of your first draft I say: write your story as it comes to you, if sex happens than it happens; if not there's no reason to add it, just for the sake of adding it.

Once you move on to the editing stage, than you'll have to ask questions like: What do my readers read, what do publishers want to publish, etc. What you keep in and what you cut out will be determined by your answers.