On day four of the tour we talked about our love scenes and how the right amount of show can make a scene shine.

Day four - Reading Between the Wines

The skill of writing good narrative is as important as the skill of "showing" the reader the scene, making the reader feel the emotions the character is feeling at that moment, smell, taste, hear what's around the character so one can close his or her eyes and imagine oneself in the character's skin.

The balance between show and narrative needs to be right. Not too much of either and a balanced scene will pull the reader into it without asking first, holding on to one's attention until the very last twist and turn of events.

Writing action packed scenes with that in mind can leave us, the writers, breathless, heart pumping, frustrated, angry, because we feel what we write. Each show, whether is from a fight scene or a simple conversation, should draw emotions from the reader the way they evoke emotions from us while we write them.

The same concept applies to love scenes but on a much higher level. The majority of the love scenes we have on our books were role played by Cecilia and I. This means we wrote those scenes while playing Trevor and Cassandra, while in their "skins". We do that often for fun, but we also do it to gauge the experience the readers will have while in the scene, the moment. To give the best display of what the scene "feels" like. What makes them different is that they are a true manifestation of Trevor and Cassandra's emotions and experiences evoked in us when we used ourselves as "guinea pigs" of sorts to write them. The end result is that the reader experiences their love, arousal, and emotions during their moments together in its entirety and from both sides.

In love scenes, the intent is to make the reader feel each stroke, each touch, smell the scent of arousal in the air, hear the sounds of accelerated breathing, of skin against skin, to feel the twinge of desire at the same time as the character does, to want to be the one under or on top.

I have a little saying we use often. As Erotic Romance writers, if what we write do not arouse us, makes us squirm in our seats, makes us sweat, we are doing it wrong. We rewrite. Because of the use of our Role Play experience, rewriting doesn't happen often and there have been plenty of days where we have taken breaks in editing because the scenes were quite intense.

We hope you feel the intensity of the scenes the same way when you read our stories and that you do enjoy experiencing them as they develop.

Sláinte!

Chris