No Sex Please (Photo credit: Michael Jessen)
I write romance. Many, if not most, books have some kind of romance in their plotline, whether it be a small or large part. Overall, romance is probably one of the most overused types of plots in fiction.
The thing is, of course, that when you write romance, or at least romance between adults, then invariably sex comes into play in one form or another. And that’s where (excuse the pun) things can get sticky.
Nearly every author of romance asks themselves at one time or another, how far do I go? Do you leave it at “they closed the door behind them” or go into full, Fifty Shades of Grey detail? And this is something that a lot of people have worried about for a long time.
Me, I’ve had this conversation with myself a number of times. I have a novel up on another site, under another name, which has very strict rules about how explicit one can be, and the story I wrote had to be tempered to fit those guidelines. Some scenes never made it on there at all, as it was just too hard to tone them down enough. And to be honest, I surprised myself with how far I was willing to go with my writing. I dare say the cover of anonymity had an effect, as I didn’t have to worry about what people I knew would think when they read it, but still it was a bit of an eye-opener. The more I wrote (and the better I knew my characters), the more explicit the scenes.
With my current project, I had a few scenes that I really ummed and ahhed over. Should I include them or not? Were they too steamy? Did they fit the rest of the novel? And that was when I realised that I really had to sit down and make some decisions. What exactly was I writing? I’ve been telling people it’s chick-lit, romantic comedy, but some of the words coming from my fingers were more in the hard-core romance realm. Therefore, a line had to be drawn so I stayed consistent and kept to genre.
Eventually, I found a point I was comfortable with, which I felt kept to my stated genre yet didn’t compromise my writing at all. And what was that line? Anything I was comfortable with my dad reading, knowing I was the author, was acceptable. Anything more than that wasn’t. A simple rule, yet one that I am sure I will have no trouble keeping to.
With that in mind, my question to you all today is this: Have you ever had this conversation with yourself? If you have, how did you decide where to draw the line? And have you ever regretted that decision? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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This is tricky, not least because I suspect it’s highly subjective.
I wonder if it might be possible to derive some guidelines by analogy with other activities. How much detail should one include of a car chase? …of a fist-fight? I think we could come up with criteria for what constitutes inadequate versus excessively-detailed description in those cases; it would be interesting to then apply them to the subject at hand.
Another way to approach it would be to consider the preferences of the readers you’re targetting. This is the obverse of considering what the writer is comfortable with, although one hopes they’re similar!
My ‘problem’ is a bit different since I write YA. A well-known YA editor said that *ALL* YA must feature romance/attraction/love-interest because YA ‘are raging with hormones’. I didn’t want to fall into that stereotype (as you stated, it’s overused), so I initially eschewed the topic altogether. However, that raised unasked questions about the MC’s orientation and I didn’t want that to be an issue either. You can’t win!
Yes, the whole what-the-readers-want thing is paramount, which I tried to cover when I said I was questioning what genre I was writing. There are expectations within each, and I needed to make sure that what I was comfortable with as a middle ground still fit the genre I said I was writing in. If it didn’t, I’d have to switch genres, and that might change the book considerably.
I like your fist fight / car chase analogy. There probably are guidelines, but then again it always depends on your readership, doesn’t it?
As for YA, well I thought your protagonist was probably a bit young for too much romance. Then again, like you said it can raise questions about orientation, so you can’t win. Maybe you’ll have to deal with that in your next book.
Good luck!
Yes, I have been there too. As a romance writer, i did have to ask myself how far could I go, especially with one of my beta-readers being an ordained minister. In the end, I allowed my characters to be true to themselves, to a degree, and kept the sex scenes as clean as possible. I can’t write erotica, not on purpose, but if I do, I always go back and tame the scenes. I can’t help myself on that.
) Great post, by the way.
Thanks! And I can well imagine the internal pressure you feel with one of your betas being a priest. Wow, there’s a tough test. And I was worried about what my dad would think, hahaha. I’m with you, though, in that erotica per se doesn’t come naturally, but there is still a lot of leeway in the romance genre before you get to that point. Thanks for the comment!
You are so right. I’m glad my Minister family member is open-minded. Very supportive of me too. And you are welcome. Always happy to connect with new friends.
)
Well there is Romance and then there is Erotica. Is the line defined by the genre. I loved how you discovered that under a pseudonym you could explore greater freedom, something I have often toyed with
Great post Emily.
I think that there is a line defined by genre, but the leeway in romance itself is still pretty big before that line gets crossed. My problem was where that line should be in my own work, because I think that once you establish that then there is an expectation of consistency. As for the pseudonym, well to be honest it’s extremely freeing … but only if the people you don’t want to know about it (family, friends, acquaintances, whoever) never find out it’s you. If you publish under a pseudonym then it could become known that it’s you and then the point of the pseudonym is lost; however, if it’s just on an online fiction site (as my other novel is) then I see no reason why it should come out if you don’t want it to.