Mary-Sue: Who is She?

She Banged the Love Shebang: Part 2 - How to Write Love Scenes

I normally don't write author notes on Wattpad, but please, if any part of this is guide breaks any of Wattpad's rules, let me know.  I have looked through the rules and the Terms of Service, but there are some things I miss.  I try writing these guides in a way that so can post them on multiple sites without breaking any rules, but if I have with this guide, please let me know so I can change it.  Other than that, I hope you enjoy reading this, and I hope you find it useful.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Love scenes, whether it be kissing or sex, can be difficult to write; although not much harder than writing action scenes.  They are quite similar.  The main difference between the two is that with love scenes, you have to ask yourself a different set of questions along with a few extra things to keep in mind, but they are ultimately quite similar.

These are tips and by no means iron-clad laws when writing love scenes.  Every writer is different, therefore preferences will be different.  You can find a hundred different sets of guidelines for writing love scenes, and you'll find a hundred different opinions.  Nevertheless, this will also help in creating that sexual tension between characters whether the romance aspect of your story will have love scenes or not.  So just use these as a starter point to create your own style.

The Author's Decision

First off, for you, the author, if you don't want to write a sex scene, you don't have to.  You're the author, and the story is yours; therefore, you don't have to write anything you don't want to.  If reading or writing about sex, or even kissing, makes you uncomfortable, but you feel it's still important, there are ways around it, especially if the genre and rating system doesn't allow you to be explicit.  

If you do want to write these scenes, don't just stick kissing or sex scenes in just to fill the pages or to give the readers what they keep asking for (especially if you think it's too soon).  Some publishers make authors keep an outline, stating when certain scenes should happen by what page, so if it's for professionals, that's an exception, but amateurs have their own schedule.  Even if the readers end up unhappy, if you have a good reason for making them wait, make them wait because you know your story and characters best.

Whether you do or don't want to write love scenes, find out what you're comfortable with.  I love Harlequin romance and Cassie Edwards, along with a few other authors, but I'm not into erotica, so the chances are that I wouldn't write in the erotica genre anytime soon, which is fine.  I also love young adult and teen books too where there are hardly any indecent scenes, and those can provide some scenes that can just splinter my heart to pieces!  I'll admit, The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) made me cry so many times, and the little romance bits in there made me genuinely crack up, not in a bad way.  After you've experimented with a few or more books, and maybe practice writing a few vignettes or scenes, think about whether you want your story idea to have a sex scene in it at all, or whether if you only want to hint at it.  It's better to decide early, but you can still think about it during the writing of your story, so don't sweat it right away.  For now, for the sake of this guide, let's assume that you do want to write the scenes.

When you get to the part where there would be a love scene, write it.  It's better to write it then and there than save it until you finish the rest of the story so you can go through it and just add in the scenes after.  You'll lose the emotion, and your scenes will look too similar because you wrote them all at once.  Write everything chronologically.  And it's OK to get aroused writing your story, it's almost kind of required if you want to connect with your readers in that way.  It's not sick or perverted.  If you want your readers to laugh or cry, you give them comedy or tragedy.