Wednesday Wisdom - Writing Sex Scenes with Nicole Murphy

Writing sex scenes – when you should, and when you shouldn’t.

We all know that we romance writers are tarred with the brush of being all about the raunch. Our books are cover-to-cover sex, with those poor little housewives getting all hot and bothered.

And what the hell is wrong with a housewife – any woman, for that matter – enjoying something that she finds arousing?

But that isn’t the topic of today’s discussion. No, today’s is about the sex scene.

A big problem with the above statement is that sometimes they are absolutely right. Sometimes, romance books are full of sex scenes that just shouldn’t be there.

It seems that writers think that in order to be sexy, to show sexual arousal between a couple, that they have to write a sex scene. Not the case. One of my favourite sexy scenes is written by Keri Arthur in her book ‘The Darkest Kiss’. The moment Riley and Quinn see each other is electrifying, and the next couple of pages hot enough to make you fan yourself and yet they never even touch.

So if you don’t HAVE to write a sex scene to show passion, arousal, heat between a couple, when should you write it?

I have a theory and that is that a sex scene needs to follow the same rules of any other scene. In order to hold its place in the story, it needs to achieve at LEAST one of these three things:

• Reveal character
• Develop setting/world building
• Move the plot along

If it’s not going to do at least one of those, I put it to you that it shouldn’t be in the book. A good scene does two. A truly great scene – for example the first sex scene in Jennifer Cruisie’s ‘Welcome to Temptation’ – does all three.

For me a great example of this was Patricia Briggs’ ‘River Marked’ (part of the Mercy Thompson series). In the books preceding, there had been some hot, hot sex. In ‘River Marked’ however, there was none – not detailed anyway. Sure, the characters were having HEAPS of sex but we saw none of it. And why? Because it would have done nothing for the story in terms of character, plot or setting. It just would have been superfluous.

Sure, it would have been GOOD – Patricia Briggs is very good at writing sex scenes. But the scenes in this book would have felt not as hot as in the previous books, because they didn’t belong here.

Knowing it worked for Patricia Briggs meant it would work for me, so in my latest release ‘Arranged to Love’ (Escape Publishing), my h/h have sex three times but I only wrote two sex scenes.

Interestingly, the one I skipped was the very first one. I thought about it, but then discarded it. It wasn’t necessary – the first time they make love is part of the a flashback that sets up the rest of the story and spending pages showing that passion wouldn’t have made the story any better and in fact would have delayed getting to the real action.

I did, however, put a lot of effort into ensuring the passion between them was obvious from the start and that the sex scenes I did write were smoking. So far, readers are happy.

Hope you will be too.

Nicole Murphy has been a primary school teacher, bookstore owner, journalist and checkout chick. She grew up reading Tolkien, Lewis and Le Guin; spent her twenties discovering Quick, Lindsey and Deveraux and lives her love of science fiction and fantasy through her involvement with the Conflux science fiction conventions. As Nicoel Murphy (speculative fiction) she’s had more than two dozen short stories published and her urban fantasy trilogy Dream of Asarlai is published by HarperVoyager.

As Elizabeth Dunk (contemporary romance), she’s had two short stories published and her debut contemporary romance ‘Arranged to Love’ is out now via Escape Publishing. She lives with her husband in Queanbeyan, NSW. Visit her website http://nicolermurphy.com

 

THURSDAY TEASER - Nicole Murphy

Not all of us are looking for that perfect man. Taylor Wilson certainly isn’t. Her job is everything to her. But this is a romance and that means Taylor’s world is about to be turned upside down.

The Right Connection is my self-published fantasy romance novella. It’s a story that’s been with me for a long time, and I’m really happy to finally give Taylor and Roden their moment in the sun.

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The Right Connection – blurb

Time after time, the missions to retrieve the stolen children have failed. This time, rules will be broken in a last-ditch attempt.

Taylor Wilson is a respected soldier in the Land Corps with a terrible past that has scarred her. When she’s offered the opportunity to work on the mission to save the children taken by the socolapede, Taylor’s ready to jump at the chance until she finds it means she has to connect with a man.

At first, Roden is everything she feared—brash, overbearing, uncompromising. But as she comes to learn of his honour and strength, Taylor not only loses the fight against connection, she loses her heart too.

Can she form a connection with Roden strong enough to save the children? And if they succeed, do the two of them have a future together?

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Excerpt

The room was plainly furnished, but not with anything professional—instead what sat before her was a steel table, with two padded chairs on a brown rug. Two servings of a hearty meal of meat and potato sat on the table—real food, not the Land Corps rations that was served in the cafeteria.

“All for us. Special, aren’t we?”

Taylor spun around and could barely see a figure standing in the shadows. Whoever it was, they had the advantage over her for they could see her clearly.

“Buttering us up. Nice.” The man moved from the shadows into the dancing light provided by the candles.

Taylor hoped her face remained expressionless. This must be Roden. He was huge; a head taller than any man Taylor had ever known and heavily muscled. There was not an ounce of fat on him, as evidenced by the leanness of his cheeks. His face with its pointed nose and grey eyes reminded her of a wolf; strong and unwavering in his confidence. His head was bare of hair and the skin of his scalp was criss-crossed with scars. Looking over his uncovered arms, she saw more scars. He had not survived his fights unscathed.

Taylor was suddenly aware that his success as a fighter owed as much to his physical intimidation as to his skills. She looked again into his eyes and saw the determination there, and also a certain aloofness. She was supposed to control this man? Better luck controlling the stars.

“What do you mean?”

A small crease appeared between Roden’s eyes. “The meal.” He gestured to the table and she turned to look at it. “Trying to get us on side early, so we won’t automatically reject each other.”

“What?” Not incredibly intelligent, but Taylor couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“As they’re seemingly so concerned about this, let’s get a few things straight right now.” As Roden spoke, he crossed his arms across his chest.

Taylor was flummoxed by his easy confidence. “What things?”

“About how this is going to work. Particularly as you’ve never connected with a man since the—let’s call it the incident, shall we?”

Taylor wasn’t sure what shocked her more—that he knew about it or that he called it what she did.

Roden took advantage of her speechlessness to continue. “I’m sure that means that you really don’t trust men when it comes to connections and you’re intending to control me like a puppet, while you keep yourself to yourself.”

How had he known what she was thinking?

Roden wasn’t finished talking. “Now I want to tell you how things will really be. I need you to complete the mission but you will never control me. Be prepared to work with me as a partner and we’ll get through this. Try to be my boss and I’ll do it by myself.”

Taylor blinked several times to assure herself that she really was awake and that she had in fact heard the words just spoken. “And how do you as a fighter plan to go ahead in a mission without a soldier?”

His next words had her wishing she had studied him as thoroughly as he had her. “I trained as a soldier, went to within a month of graduating. I may not be as good as you, but I can send my mind if I need to. I can get by without you. I can just do it better with you, which is why I agreed to this connection. So that’s the way it’s going to be, soldier. We’ll develop a close enough connection to do this, but it will be on my terms or it won’t happen at all.”

Without waiting for Taylor’s reply, he sat down and began to eat. Taylor stared at the back of his head. She could not believe a fighter had spoken to a soldier like that. She could not believe a fighter had gone within a month of graduation as a soldier. She could not believe she would not be the one in control of this connection.
She wondered what to do, how to handle the situation. Training had never taught them how to deal with a fighter that wasn’t open to connection. It just wasn’t thought possible.

Taylor marched around the table so she was looking at Roden, but did not sit down. “I don’t believe you.”

Buy from SMASHWORDS
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You can win a free copy of The Right Connection (your choice of electronic format) by commenting below. Best of luck!


Nicole Murphy has been a primary school teacher, bookstore owner, journalist and checkout chick. She grew up reading Tolkien, Lewis and Le Guin; spent her twenties discovering Quick, Lindsey and Deveraux and lives her love of science fiction and fantasy through her involvement with the Conflux science fiction conventions. Her urban fantasy trilogy Dream of Asarlai is published in Australia/NZ by HarperVoyager. She’s just commenced a new venture, In fabula-divinos which is aimed at mentoring up-and-coming writers. She lives with her husband in Queanbeyan, NSW. Visit her website 

Where can you win a copy of Nicole's new book? You can win a free copy of The Right Connection (your choice of electronic format) by commenting below. Best of luck!

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Thanks so much for dropping by today Nicole! I love the sound of your new book..congratulations!

Monday Magic - Nicole R Murphy

Writing sexually active women

In 2003, when I decided that I was fooling myself if I thought I was anything but a romance author, I started thinking long and hard about the type of romance author I wanted to be.

I love romance – have from the moment as a teenager I discovered the towers of Mills and Boons in my grandmother’s cupboard. Later on, some friends showed me into the single title world and I found folks like Amanda Quick and Joanna Lindsey.

But there was one thing about romance that was starting to bug me – the virgin heroine.

I know that there are women who are virgins for some time – I was one myself. I know there are women who have only slept with the one man and have made quite a happy life for themselves in the doing so.

But as I read book after book with virgin heroine, and at times saw the authors do INCREDIBLE things to maintain the heroine’s virginity until she met the hero, I started to wonder what was this saying about women’s sexuality.

We all know that there are a lot of women, probably the majority nowadays, that have more than one sexual partner. There are some women that never settle down with just one person. There were open relationships, and couples that swung and so on.

Because these women had a different sexuality, did that mean they were incapable of recognising true love? Was that the message all the virgin heroines were sending me?

So when I sat down to write the initial drafts of the books that would become the Dream of Asarlai trilogy, I had just one message I wanted to send – that sexually active women could find happiness with their perfect man too.

To make my point as firmly as I could, the very first sex scene in the first book was not with the hero. My heroine, excited by having achieved an ambition and wanting to celebrate, finds a cute guy at the local nightclub and takes him home.

It doesn’t work out – he’s too selfish to be a good lover. It provided me with a perfect counterpoint to the heroine’s first encounter with the hero – his utter selflessness in wanting her to experience pleasure proves that he’s a much better choice.

In the second book, I’ve got a heroine who’s a single mother. Her son is her first priority, and so she steers clear of dating when he’s around. The moment he goes to stay with his grandparents – she’s over the nearest guy she sees. Luckily for our hero.

In the third book, our heroine actively sets out to seduce the hero – at first for nefarious reasons, but then because she just wants him.

In each of them, the woman is actually more confident, more secure, even more experienced than the man is.

I loved it.

And I’m not done in my quest to show non-virginal women finding true love. I’m writing the sequel trilogy to Dream of Asarlai at the moment and I’m having fun with a girl who is not a virgin but is sexually inexperienced finding herself; with a woman in her 50s who finally gets the raunchy romance she deserves; and with a woman who doesn’t actually believe in love, but doesn’t see anything wrong with dating multiple men :-)

In a world where the word ‘slut’ is still too powerful, I’m pleased that I get to combat it in such a fun way.


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Thanks so much for visiting me today Nicole.  I love this series!  I can recommend it to everyone who loves great characters with a lot of sexy romance. 

Nicole has a copy of her third book in the Dream of Arsalai series - Rogue Gadda to give away!  It's easy to win...

So leave a comment (including your email address) for Nicole and you'll go into the draw to win!  Good luck!

You can find Nicole at http://nicolermurphy.com/