Love scene epiphanies

I love this blog. I love my writing group. I love watching our friendships develop along with our craft. One of the beautiful things about this blog is that it gives our unique voices an opportunity to shine.

We blogged about our favorite love scenes a week and a half ago. Very interesting stuff. The more we blog, the more I see our voices emerge. I was particularly intrigued by the love scene entries. Actually, writing mine and then reading the others gave me insight into my own voice.

Since I write romance, understanding what I like in a love scene might be important. Here are some things I came up with:

1. I'm captivated by scenes where the lovers exhibit reckless abandon, where they make those kinds of decisions that you can't make with your head, but only with your heart. I believe that the heart is a better decision maker than the head. This, mind you, is coming from a girl that allowed her head to make most of her choices through her teenage years and early twenties. Fear drives the head to take over, to protect, but when you actually let your heart make your decisions, that frees up the passion and soulfulness in life. Actually, I think it's the heartbreak that inevitably follows if one makes heart-based decisions that creates a soulfulness that always resides afterwards. Regardless, I love to see characters take that leap based on the desires of their hearts despite the pragmatism of their heads.

2. When lovers make those decisions that are so good for their hearts but so bad for their circumstances, I can't help but keep reading to see if there is any way they manage to achieve happily ever after. I mentioned the Anita Blake Series by Laurell K. Hamilton. When Anita races to Jean Claude after witnessing her other boyfriend, werewolf Richard, eat someone, she makes a decision that is very good for her heart. Jean Claude loves her as is. Richard loves the idea of her, and her of him. Giving herself to Jean Claude doesn't make her life any easier, however. It damn near kills her.

3. I love intensity. Sweet love scenes are good and fine, but I want to the book to sizzle. I want to say, "Thank God," when they finally kiss or touch. Not all the scenes about which I blogged last week involved consummation, but some do. However, most of the time it isn't the love making that makes the scene, it's one little part, one moment of intense passion. Take the scene from Top Gun where Tom Cruise's character goes chasing after his flight instructor. He's already come on to her several times. They've had dinner, but she's played out his advances using her head up to this point. She's pointed out that he's reckless. When he ignores her, she tears after him in her car. Instead of being calm, sane, and rational, she listens to the blaring anger and desire in her heart and recklessly chases him. You can feel the adrenaline coming of the screen. It isn't their kiss or their love-making that gets me. It's their argument beforehand. You can only argue like that when your heart is invested. It's the first chance we get to see just how much both their hearts are invested. I love intense passion like that.


4. I love that first loss of control, that kiss that shouldn't happen but does. Both parties get a taste of the desire pent up in each other, but fight it – with their head, of course – and pull back. But, for a moment, they experienced the real deal, the passionate release, the admission of longing. Many times the lovers are taboo. They shouldn't be together. But soul mates are soul mates, and true north is hard to deny.

5. I also love a good self-sacrifice. The stories that end with those aren't quite as fulfilling to me. I really want people, even the make-believe ones, to get their happily ever after. But, the passion and heartbreak and declaration of love that self-sacrifice embodies is a different sort of love scene altogether. Think Bridges of Madison County. Think Finding Neverland. Think Braveheart.

What is it really about a good love scene? To me, it isn't about endearing love, although that's great, too. It's about that adrenaline rush that screams, "I'm alive. I feel. I choose. I am."

So, am I a true romantic at heart? I don't know. I think that rush that occurs when you live life heart first is what I seek. It's what I want to write. It's the soulful, pure, open, real, intense rush that I want to convey. It's how I feel about life, how I see the world. Now, I just have to get it on paper.

Macy