Love Scenes by Gayle Callen

So...did I hook you? Of course, I did!

We're lovers of romance. One of the reasons we enjoy romance novels is seeing how the characters fall in love and what goes on between them when they're alone.

Authors can handle love scenes several ways, of course, from “closing the bedroom door” to graphically writing so much we get flushed just reading it. But, frankly, it's a very difficult thing to write--and not just because we have to forget that our moms will be reading it!

We have to be very careful that our characters aren't too happy immediately after making love. Of course, we know that the sex was good. They're our hero and heroine! But we always have to make sure there's a lot going on emotionally and within the external plot, so that by the next morning, they're rethinking what they did, or seeing it in a different light, and perhaps telling themselves it won't happen again.

Unless it's the end of the book, they can't be happy and in love, or all the tension goes out of the plot. Yet, an author has to be so careful that there's a good reason the characters retreat from each other, not just, “Gee, I shouldn't have done that.”

In my newest book, NEVER TRUST A SCOUNDREL, there's a wager between Daniel and Grace that he can't seduce her; all she has to do is resist for two weeks. During this time, Grace goes from wanting to defeat him to wanting to reform his rakish ways to wanting him to fall in love with her.

When she gives in to his seduction at last, she has the terrible fear that now he will tire of her; that maybe she was just a challenge to him all along, that she was the only one falling in love. I played up her trepidation throughout the story, so that, hopefully, the reader will worry right along with Grace and pray that Daniel doesn't disappoint her.

So...are you happy with the way authors handle plotting their love scenes? If sometimes you're disappointed, tell me why!