30 Days Writing Meme -- Question Sixteen

16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how "far" are you willing to go in your writing? ;)

Heh heh… Okay, I’ll assume you’ve just stumbled onto my blog, and have little to zero idea of what I write. Yes, yes I do. I do okay, thanks, and as to how far, uh… pretty far.

In all seriousness though, how far I go depends entirely on the characters and the story. If I worked it out, I think the percentage of sex/explicitness in the stories overall would be less than you’d imagine. Yeah, what’s there might be pretty hot, but it’s there for a reason. I can’t stand pointless, endless sex scenes, either as a reader or (hopefully!) a writer. I skim over them in books I read, and most of the time I don’t even feel like I’ve missed anything. I think the best sex scenes a) fit the story and the point in the plot at which they’re included, and b) reveal something about the characters. Mostly b), honestly – for the most part I can suspend disbelief over "we’re running for our lives but still pausing to smex each other up!" as long as it fits the characters’ personalities to be doing that at such an inopportune time.

Writing "Human Nature", for example, which is an m/m/m ménage and features a fair bit of hotter scenes, I wanted each scene to reveal something deeper about how each character related to each other, both in their initial twosomes and then the threesome. I’d like to think that, in skimming those scenes, the reader might not get a full picture of the characters’ thought processes, their motivations, their reasons for the things they do/feel. I’m also weak-kneed for UST, and sexual tension generally, so dragging it out till we’re all yelling "do it already!" – reader, writer and characters – sounds good to me!