And don't sweat the mushy stuff

(Gentlemen, you may want to change the channel)

 
A member of my local writing group has amazed us all with the suspense novel she is crafting. She is kind and quiet and a devoted Christian, but she writes so convincingly for the maniac killer in her story that we find ourselves eying her suspiciously. Recently she put out an e-mail call for help to critique her most recent efforts. I wondered if she had finally hit a block in the make-your-skin-crawl department. “This time it's really dicey,” she said. “This time it's ... the mushy stuff.”

Right away I knew exactly what she meant. Many a potential (female?) author gushes at the prospect of penning breath-taking love scenes. These are some of the most pleasurable scenarios of adult life, after all. To fabricate such fantasies in fiction ought to be nearly as good as the real thing. Right?

Wrong. I maintain that love scenes some of the more difficult aspects of fiction writing. You start with something that is, by nature, spontaneous, but you have to script it and choreograph it and then turn it back into something that you hope is spontaneous. Again. Real-life romance is all entertainment and emotion (with some physical thrown in if you get lucky). But writing romance is intellectual and it is work.

Then you worry: Will I embarrass my family? Will I shock my co-workers? (I work at a parochial school) And will I face the question, “Is this based on real life (wink-wink)?”

When the TV movie The Thornbirds came out, female viewers just melted over the steamy bits. However, Richard Chamberlain insisted in an interview that love scenes are difficult for actors as well, partly for the reasons I listed above. As an author, I'm glad that I at least don't have to worry about wig and costume malfunctions, and I don't have to personally, physically bring my story to life in front of a viewing audience.

The happy news is that with fictional romance, as with real world romance, when it's good, it's really good.