How to Write A Kiss

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"My book is in a different genre, not romance, but there is a romantic angle. While I have read books with a kiss at the end, I have no idea how to write it. what should a writer do when they have to write a kissing scene yet they have never yet been kissed? I figured people who are writing in this genre might be able to help so I'm asking you. Plus I'm not sure about writing sex scenes. My friend says if there's kissing there should be sex but I'm not sure I want to be writing sex. I've never done it before and my book isn't romance. Should a story with a romance in it include sex scenes? "

Never done it before. You know, because you wrote this in a grammatical ambiguous (and incorrect) way, you leave it open to interpretation. Are you saying that you've never had sex before and therefor do not know how to write sex because of it? Or are you saying you've never written sex before? While you always need to check your grammar, romance is a genre where you doubly need to be on your toes. Misplaced words can lead to hilarious situations. But anyways, as you said you've never been kissed, or at least implied you have never been kissed, I'm going to assume you also meant to say you've never had sex thus don't know if you'd be able to write it.

In any case it sounds to me like you are uncomfortable about the idea of writing sex and therefor you should not feel obligated to do so. No, sex is not required for romance. Shocker, but about 62% of romance novels DO NOT have a single sex scene in them.

Quick Facts About Sex Scenes:

  • Most romance books written before the 1980′s didn’t have sex in them at all, it wasn’t common to put sex in a romance story until just that last 20 years or so and the romance genre has been around over 100 years now.
  • Sex scenes were rarely more than "fade in black" before the 1990s. The mid-1990s saw the first vividly described sex scenes in main steam novels. Prior to the 1990s if you wanted "hard core sex" you had to read underground grind-house novels which are very obscure and not sold in bookstores.
  • While erotica is gaining popularity as a main stream genre since the release of 50 Shades of Gray in 2012, it is still a very small and not well accepted genre
  • Sex-free (and often also kiss-free) romance genres such as Regency Romance, Christian Romance, Sweet Romance, Inspirational Romance, and YA Romance still way outsell Bodice Rippers, Historicals, Spicy Contemporaries, and Erotica combined.

So don't go thinking you have to put sex in your story.

Outside of the Twighlight Manor series, I tend to avoid sex scenes. Inside of the Twighlight Manor series you'd think it was perpetual Ratzin mating season. I'm told I'm very good at writing sex scenes. I’m also told I'm pretty good with the kissing scenes too, though they are rare in the Twighlight Manor series.

I've written many stories (yes even Twighlight Manor ones) which never even mentioned sex at all. The closest I ever came to writing sex into my sex-free stories was saying something like: “…and she spent the night at his house.”

I never said which room she slept in. She could have slept on the couch or they could have had sex. I never said they did, but I never said they didn’t either. I left it up to the reader to decide if they had had sex or not. I feel it’s better to leave things like sex to the readers imagination. This is what is known as "fade into black". It's when two characters are left alone and the author leaves it up to the reader's imagination whether anything happened between them or not. If you don't want to write sex, but you feel you should imply sex happened, than "fade in black" is the way to go.

Okay, so sex out of the way, let's get on with the kissing stuff, shall we?

How to write a kiss scene in your not-quite-romance story?

When it comes to kisses I don’t like bogging my readers down with long narratives (I do enough of that in my non-fiction articles!) It’s a case where I write what I know and let my readers fill in the rest with their imagination. When writing a kiss scene, I add in tiny details like instead of saying:

They kissed.

I’d say:

They kissed under the willow tree.

or

He kissed her passionately.

or

They kissed under the willow tree. It was her first kiss. It seemed to last forever.

I only added one or two little words to each sentence. That’s it. But it changed the whole picture in the readers head. Nothing big. Just little things.

Another thing that goes over well with readers is to get inside the character’s head. Show don’t tell.

They stopped under the willow tree. Esmerald pulled Pippi close and kissed her long and hard. She felt the world disappear around her. Nothing else mattered. No one else existed. It was just the two of them alone in the universe. He had kissed her. Her first kiss. She hardly believe it. Pippi wondered now if it had only been a dream.

~From: The Ruby Hummingbird

(Twighlight Manor series 2007)

It’s short. It’s quick. It’s simple. It doesn’t stop the flow of the story. It doesn’t describe the kiss. It doesn’t tell. It describes how she felt as she was being kissed. It shows.

Whatever you do, keep it short, keep it simple, keep it familiar, let the reader interpret the minor details themselves, and you’ll write a book that’s easy to read and seems familiar to your readers and your readers will love you for it.

Remember that mood is important when you write a kiss scene. Before you write a kiss you first want to build up atmosphere. Talk about the cool gentle breeze, the soft twinkling stars above, pink dolphins flying overhead ... wait, what? Pink dolphins you say! Quick! Quick! Somebody stop them before they reach the portal! Hmmmm.... too late, they're gone. Where was I?

That said; being kissed can be the most amazing feeling in the world, if the guy it “the one” and not “just some guy”. Soft lips, wet tongue, warm skin, the smell of perfumed hair, the tingle down your spine, the light headed feeling, the feeling that you could walk on air.

French kissing is better in my opinion.

If you haven’t been kissed, then just imagine that you are experiencing the most amazing wonderful feeling possible and go with it, write how you imagine it would be like.

Write a kiss scene by writing what you know and bluff the rest. Chances are your readers will never know you’ve never been kissed, because they’ll be too busy imagining their first kiss, past or future.











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