Back in May, Gina Leigh Maxwell invited me to do a guest post on her blog, and this is what I came up with. Thought I’d repost today, just to have something fun up over the weekend.
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Theres this scene in When Harry Met Sally where Harry and Sally are strolling in Central Park and talking about fantasies. Sally confesses to Harry shes had a recurring dream ever since she was twelve, but its too embarrassing to tell him about. Then she tells him.
Okay, theres this guy, she admits.
Whats he look like? Harry wants to know.
I dont know, hes just kind of faceless, she says.
Faceless guy. Okay, then what?
He rips off my clothes.
Then what happens?
Thats it.
Harry is flabbergasted.
Thats it? A faceless guy rips off your clothes, and thats the sex fantasy youve been having since you were twelve. Exactly the same.
Sometimes I vary it a little.
Which part?
What Im wearing.
*insert rimshot here*
I love this scene. I love it because Harry finds the dream fantasy so disappointing, and I love it because Sally doesnt.
I love it because it perfectly captures the way real-life fantasies often consist of very little — just one detail, one image or action that makes us go Unh, or Ooh, or whatever internal brain-noise you make when you see something or read something or think something that revs your engine.
And I love it because it also perfectly captures that when you have an audience, just describing the Unh moment will never cut it. The scene reminds me that as a writer of erotic romance, I not only have to provide the Unh moment, I also have to furnish the rest of the fantasy, or Harry will be disappointed.
The mechanics of writing sex scenes, or at least sexy ones, have been on my mind lately as Ive been revising an 800-word sex scene from my second manuscript into a 2,700-word one. I tend to write short and then layer up later on. The dialogue comes first, and the actions, but when Im deep in the first draft I have a hard time remembering to consider what the characters are thinking, and even more so what they are experiencing — the sights, sounds, smells, tastes. My writing brain wants to skitter right over those details, because thinking them up, those just-so descriptions, is really hard work. And yet those are the details that so often matter in a novel. Those are the details that make the reader go Unh.
Take smell. In romance novels, smell is sexy. Women like the way men smell, and vice versa. So how do you write it? How does your hero smell?
He smells good.
Well, yeah. But nobodys going to go Unh over that line.
He smells fantastic.
Keep trying.
Heres where a lot of authors default to cologne, aftershave, or perfume:
She caught the scent of his cologne, and it made her pulse race.
The light scent of her perfume drove him wild.
Okay, fine, were getting somewhere, but not anywhere especially original or interesting. What does his cologne smell like? As a reader, I refuse to be titillated by such vague description, so as an author I try to do better.
Also, heres where I confess that I cant stand any artificial scents, so I find references to cologne and perfume and aftershave mildly repulsive. Im constitutionally incapable of writing heroes and heroines who repulse me, so I have to seek alternative smells.
There are two directions to go from here: get more specific, or find an analogy/ simile/ synecdoche to do the work for you.
Getting more specific requires thought, but it can be worth the trouble. You can try pinpointing actual, recognizable scents from the fragrance panoply. Sandalwood (not my favorite, but very popular). Lemons. Mint. Pine. Wintergreen. Whatever floats your boat, really.
I think it works better, though, to look for smells that link to your character. What does your hero do? What is he like? Would it make a difference to how he smells? Karen Foley has a novel for Harlequin Blaze, Flyboy, in which the hero is an Air Force jet pilot. He comes home from work reeking of jet fuel, and the heroine practically passes out with lust. I loved that detail. It made me go Unh. It made me want to find a jet-fuel-smelling man and sniff him.
It also reminds me that smells dont have to be exotic to be sexy. The smell of sawdust from fresh-cut lumber is one of my favorites. Find me a hero who smells like sawdust, piney and resinous, and I will melt for the guy. You can make him a handyman or a lumberyard foreman or a construction worker or whatever you want. Just make him smell good. (And give him a toolbelt while youre at it.)
Also, you dont always have to tell the truth. Ranchers probably smell like sweat and animals, dirt and manure. But if you want to get my attention, find me a rancher who smells like leather work gloves and rust. Sage crushed under a boot heel. Sun-warmed denim. Paint me a picture of the way he smells that tells me who he is, what he is, and why the heroine wants him.
Or give me somebody more ordinary. Give me an office guy in a suit who smells like coffee and clean cotton, like photocopier toner and the peppermints he keeps in a jar on his desk. Give me a painter who smells like linseed oil and turpentine. Now Im paying attention.
You can even get fancy if you want to, take the reader on a little sense journey. I wrote this the other day:
He smelled like his soap, spicy and exotic, bringing to mind peppercorns and trade voyages and the mysteries of the East. But beneath that he smelled like a man, like himself, and she buried her nose in the crook of his neck and inhaled, wanting to taste him on the back of her tongue. Wanting to memorize this indelible marker of who he was.
Im not claiming its poetry — its actually still a little sneaky and vague — but at least its not He smelled great. At least its not He rips off my clothes.
Of course, smell is just one sense. Weve got a bunch of other ones. Guidelines for writing a good sexy scene often say you have to bring as many senses into the scene as possible, and its great advice. But I try to take it one step further and submit my descriptions to the Harry test. If Harry is disappointed, I figure my (future, theoretical) readers will be too.