“His shirt was dirty, the sleeves rolled up to reveal strong sinewy forearms … His cheeks were hollow, and he had a sharp nose and wide-set, ice blue eyes. He was half a foot taller than she was, lean at the hip, but with broad, powerful shoulders. He made her body come alive just looking at him … .”
Joan Johnston was reading a steamy sex scene from one of her 30-plus romance novels — a scene in which 18-year-old Hope was attempting to seduce Jake, a hired hand on her father’s ranch and a man twice her age.
It wasn’t, however, a dramatic reading. Johnston’s delivery was matter-of-fact, and she constantly undercut the flow of the story by stopping to make a point.
None of the 100 women in the rapt audience minded.
They were there in a crowded, hot hotel meeting room last week not to hear a sexy story but to learn how to write one. All were would-be romance writers, or published writers seeking to hone their craft.
And Johnston was ready with advice.
For example, she explained, her description of Jake — his dirty shirt, his sharp nose, his icy eyes — wasn’t the result of a whim, but rather was designed to give him an air of mystery and even danger and infuse the scene that would follow with a certain level of emotional intensity. And it was important to describe how Hope felt in Jake’s smoldering presence and how his appearance turned her on.
“This is what happens to her,” Johnston said, “and, hopefully, this is what happens to the reader.”
The workshop, called “Tight Fittin’ Jeans, or How to Create Sexual Tension,” was one of several delving into the techniques of steamy writing at the 19th annual conference of the Romance Writers of America, held at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers. Others included “Writing Hot: Sensuality for the Series Writer,” “History of Sex — with Slides” and “Brazen Women: Creating the Adventurous Heroine.”
The conference itself, which attracted nearly 2,000 novelists, aspiring novelists, editors and agents, was more than anything a four-day writing school, stressing the techniques and background information most useful to romance novelists.
For those who specialize in historical works, there was a session on dances from medieval times to the 19th Century; another about the English climate, geography and culture; a third about nautical life in the 1800s; and a fourth on the history of women’s underwear (“our stock-in-trade,” according to a handout) over the last 500 years.
Workshops for writers of stories with more modern settings included a talk by a coroner on death investigations; a two-hour presentation by eight female agents of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and a discussion of the methods of committing murder in a novel.
But, really, the subject on everyone’s minds was sex.
Except, in romance novels, sex isn’t just sex.
“Feeling sexual excitement is not about mechanics. It’s about romance,” Johnston said in an interview.
“They’re not having sex in these books. They’re making love.”
– – –
She was shocked by his brutally frank speech, by the rough sound of his voice, by his plain intention of taking what she seemed to be offering without any pretense of romance. This wasn’t how she had imagined things happening between them . . . .
Most men would be surprised at how sexually explicit romance novels can be. (Few men read the genre — even though it accounts for about half of all mass-market paperbacks each year and is a nearly $1 billion industry.)
True, some publishers want nothing to do with sex. Such as Multnomah in Sisters, Oregon, which instructed potential authors to “aim for passionate, yet chaste relationships . . . . Even married couples’ most intimate scenes are to be left to the reader’s imagination.”
Most, however, are much less restrained.
Red Sage Publishing Co. of Seminole, Fla., for example, handed out writing guidelines at the conference announcing that it was looking for “sensuous, bold, spicy, untamed, hot, and sometimes politically incorrect” stories. “We want to push the envelope beyond the normal romance novel,” the editors wrote. “Be kinky, be wild, go far beyond spicy, but always write romance.”
At times, the emphasis on sex can be mildly embarrassing, even for the most brazen of writers.
Consider Elizabeth Boyle, author of “Brazen Angel” and two follow-ups, “Brazen Heiress” and “Brazen Temptress.”
Not surprisingly, she ran the “Brazen Women” workshop during which she discussed the shameless, impudent, fearless heroines at the heart of romance novels.
“We live very ordinary lives. This is my brazen life,” she said. “This is my adventure. That’s why we read romances. We want to live out this incredible fantasy. We don’t want the miss who follows the rules of society. We want the miss who breaks them.”
Examples of brazen women, she told women at the workshop, include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Scarlett O’Hara and Mae West. “I want to read about women who are out there conquering the world,” said Boyle, who has a newborn son at home. “I don’t want to read about women with spit-up on their shoes. I know about that.”
But brazenness in a romance novel heroine doesn’t equal wantonness, Boyle said. “She’s definitely outside society’s boundaries. But she’s got her own code of ethics.”
Usually, the heroine has some goal she’s trying to accomplish, such as saving the family estate, as in “Gone With the Wind.” In addition, she’s searching for her true love.
That’s what makes a romance novel a romance novel — the searching for and finding of the true love. A romance is always about the love of a man and a woman, and it always always has a happy ending.
And, often, sex is a big part of the happiness of searching and finding. Sex in bed, sex in the fields, sex . . . well, almost anywhere.
“When I wrote my first book,” Boyle told her audience, “there was one sex scene I’d probably blush if I told you about it.”
“Was it the one in the graveyard?” an audience member asked.
“Yes,” Boyle said.
And she blushed.
– – –
…His eyes had a dangerous, feral look, his jaw was clenched tight, and his hands had balled into fists. He looked distant, unapproachable, but she forced herself to walk up to him, to slide her hands around his neck, to lift up on tiptoe to press her lips against his . . . .
“Women have the romance novels, and men have Playboy,” said Elda Minger whose latest novel “Sizzle” was recently published by Harlequin Temptation. “Women want romance within a context.”
In an interview, Minger, who led the “Writing Hot” workshop, noted that romance novels are stories of courtship, and that’s why women read them. “It’s a wonderful time in most people’s lives — that courtship,” she said. “Readers are not living in a fantasy land. They just want to revisit that time in their lives.”
According to Harlequin, which has been in the romance business for half a century, more than 180 romance novels are purchased each year, with Harlequin itself selling, on average, 5 1/2 books per second.
Indeed, Harlequin estimates that over the last four decades, characters in its books have kissed more than 20,000 times, hugged about 30,000 times and gotten married at least 7,000 times.
Yet, romance is often denigrated by outsiders as a formulaic genre — moreso than murder mysteries or science fiction.
“It’s not a formula. It’s a structure. It’s a structure, the same way plays are structured with three acts,” said Minger, who has published 26 novels since 1982.
“There’s a misconception that romance writers are not real writers. It’s a craft. You don’t just throw in a sex scene in a book. You set up the conditions. You face the same good dramatic questions that any writer has to face about their work.
“It’s much harder than people think.”
– – –
She hadn’t gotten what she’d expected when she’d come in here with Jake. But she’d gotten what she wanted. Proof that he desired her. Proof that if she pushed long enough and hard enough, she just might convince him that she was what he needed.
(from “Hawk’s Way: The Substitute Groom” by Joan Johnston (Island/Dell)
Hope’s attempted seduction of Jake didn’t work, but, as Joan Johnston pointed out to her audience, “I’m telegraphing to the reader: These people are going to meet again.”
And so they did, much later in the book, in a scene that Johnston also read. Unfortunately, for Hope and Jake — and, apparently, many readers — they were minor characters in the book, and, except for sharing a quick passionate kiss and embrace in the front seat of a truck, they never came close to consummating their love. Indeed, Jake, believing himself too old for Hope, got himself engaged to the local school teacher.
But romance readers know that minor characters in one book often become major ones in another, and they’ve been badgering Johnston.
“People are still waiting for me to write Jake and Hope’s story,” she said.
They’re looking for another courtship to celebrate.
And perhaps some steamy reading.
