Yet another reason we love to read! In an interview with Australia’s Brisbane Times, romance novel author Jennifer St George reveals her literary secrets for making sex in her books so much better than anything you can get in real life.
Description, she says, is key:
In my romance novels, the heroine reaches that climactic high and the sex is great, mind-blowingly great. This, after all, is supposed to be escapist entertainment – and ecstatic sex is part of the fantasy.
The sex scene is a place to use all the senses. How does he smell? Like spice and vanilla? How does he taste? Of salt and sweat? What does he say and how does he say it? How does the heroine feel when she runs her hands down his back for the first time? Where are they? Is it all silk sheets and scented candles, or fast and furious against a graffiti-covered brick wall down a dark alley in the rain?
And how about those rakish heroes that we love to hate at first, and then eventually fall head over heels for? There’s a method to the apparent madness, St George says.
The hero must be heroic. Readers won’t easily forgive a cruel, lazy or brutal man, and be aware the hero can’t just stride around being arrogant, wealthy and entitled. If he is behaving badly, there must be a very strong and justified motivation for his actions, most likely something in his past that has defined the man he is today. For example, one of my heroes used work and sex to help him forget about his tragic past, which made him appear remote and unfeeling.
Sounds like shades of Christian Grey. Now we’re craving a good book and a nice quiet place to enjoy it. Here’s to escapism!
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