Nora Roberts: Writing a love scene takes the same skill, time, effort as writing any other scene. And for me, goes right back to character. Who these people are, what they think, feel, want helps set the tone, just like the circumstances of the plot.
Betina Krahn: If you've done your character development well, sensuality is an integral part of their natures and flows naturally from their interactions. However, sometimes you're not in a good personal place to write a steamy love scene... which, let's face it, do require a certain sensual energy from the writer... a certain level of mental and emotional indulgence.
Susan Wiggs: Just like real sex: it's easy and it's difficult. The thing that's easy is that the situation is inherently interesting and lends itself to imagination and fantasy. The lovers have expectations, and the unexpected is bound to happen, and they're going to be changed by the experience. What's difficult is to be honest without being boring, romantic without being saccharine. The love scenes in my books seem to concentrate on what's at stake for the characters - what can be gained or lost, what the consequences will be. Those choices are not always simply ones, story wise. This is one thing I definitely do NOT research on the Internet!
Kat Martin: The level truth is, writing sex scenes can really be fun. Some authors hate doing them. I love doing them. I like the challenge of trying to make each one different and special and fit the tone of where the relationship is at that particular time in the book.
Shana Abe: It's rather a lot like the real thing: either you're in the mood for it or you aren't. When inspiration strikes, writing a love scene can be scorching fun. But when you just have get it done, and the phone's ringing, and the kids are screeching, and you have no idea what to make for supper but you know if you order pizza one more time this week there might be bloodshed - then it's difficult.
Still, I usually enjoy it. Shut the office door, get into the characters, get into the mood, and let the sparks fly.
Donna Kauffman: For me, the love scenes are just like any other scene, in the sense that they must have some relevance to furthering the plot and moving the story forward. The very fact that such a scene usually requires one or both of my characters to be in an emotionally vulnerable situation ups the ante a great deal. I'm generally much more concerned with what's going on in their minds and what they are revealing to each other emotionally, than necessarily what is happening physically. But one can and does enhance the other. Because the story is focused on the romantic relationship between the characters, these scenes are often pivotal. Therefore I enjoy the challenge inherent in bringing them through such a moment successfully. And at times, creatively. :)
Amanda Scott: Honestly, it's not my favorite part of writing, because no matter how creative an author is, such scenes begin to feel and sound repetitive, but the ease or difficulty of each love scene depends entirely upon whether I've created a storyline that makes love and sex integral to the story and whether the scene fits the story without slowing its pace. If a sex scene seems gratuitous or too long, I'll cut it. If it's right for its time and place in the story, it practically writes itself.
Of course, answering this question also depends on whether the question really means "love" scenes or specifically means "sex" scenes, because I don't think they are the same, and I'm assuming the question deals with the latter. I include a lot of sensuality, and I don't think there's ever any doubt that my primary characters are falling in love, but I don't include a lot of graphic sex. I like strong, intelligent characters and a fast pace. Since I set my stories in times and places when casual sex was okay for the men (as long as it was with lower-class women or married women) but not for the unmarried women of any class, and since I don't want every book I write to be about the problems a woman of the period faced if she did have casual sex, I have a choice. I can do as many authors do, and make my period characters behave as modern women might behave instead of the way they were more likely to behave, or I can take a modern woman back to the period and make her feel at home there. I aim for the latter.
Jacquie D'Alessandro: For me, it tends to be more difficult than writing a "lighter" scene because in my books, the love scene is one of the most pivotal and emotional. Writing the physical aspects of the scene is easy compared to conveying the emotional impact on the characters.
Madeline Hunter: They have always been hard to write. In my books the love scenes are crucial turning points both in the relationship and in the secondary, external plot. That makes them very important to the overall structure of the story, so a lot is riding on them. As far as writing about sex, that was hard the first time, got easier for several books, then got more difficult again.
Brenda Joyce: Terribly difficult - been there, done that - unless the scene involves Calder Hart. He is the sexiest, to die for hero ever! Hart is also the sexiest hero that I have ever created! I am head over heels for him, and he only has to enter the room in one of my scenes to make me - and Francesca and every other woman - go nuts.
Sharon Robinson: Writing love scenes are difficult, especially the first one. I remember calling my agent totally frustrated at how difficult it was to write a sex scene. She laughed and told me to forget that my mother was going to read my book, put on some good music and just write the scene. That loosened me up.
Glenna McReynolds: Very difficult...very. There's a lot going on in a love scene, a lot of physical movement, a lot of emotional response, physical response. It's very complex, and I want so desperately for it to be good for my hero and heroine. This is their sex life I'm dealing with here! I want it to be wonderful, incredible. I want their love making to make them fall even more deeply in love, and make the reader fall even more in love with them. I repeat - very difficult. I think the reason so many romance authors went over to suspense was so they didn't have to write such complex love scenes!
Sue-Ellen Welfonder: Once I got past the urge to fling myself across the computer screen if my husband breezed in here when I was writing one of those scenes, it became pretty easy. Writers have vivid imaginations, after all. Plus, I have a very handsome husband who swept me off my feet twenty years ago and still charms the socks off me. Everyone makes love -- if they didn't none of us would be here. So I combine my own vivid imagination with, yes, my own life experiences and fantasies, mix it all up, and hope to find the right combination to suit my hero and heroine. Ultimately, they dictate the tone, but I thoroughly enjoy writing these scenes. It's good healthy fun.
Lauren Bach: For me, it's extremely easy. Love scenes are my favorite scenes to write, and not for the reasons most people think. (Okay, well, maybe just a little...) Honestly, the most difficult part is the stuff that comes "before." All the story foreplay. The dance, the tension building, establishing stakes, the push, the pull, the emotional commitment, the denial. This is, of course, in addition to the other internal/external conflicts our couple faces throughout the story.
The best, fully consummated, love scenes are the ones that come after the reader has grown attached to the characters and watched them battle an overwhelming attraction, chapter after chapter. A great love scene should have a feeling of inevitability and should explode off the page because the pressure simply can't build any further. That's when the writer slows down, takes a deep breath, and narrows the focus until there's only two hearts...and one pen.
Elizabeth Thornton: Love scenes are easy. Sex scenes - those are the most difficult scenes to write, especially after twenty books! It's not the mechanics that matter, but the emotions involved. There are only two kinds of sex scenes I think are worth writing, funny sex or tense sex, and they take me forever to get right.
I think the trend now is to cut back on the sex scenes unless an author has moved over to erotica.
Sherri Browning: Writing love scenes used to be very difficult for me. After I got over my initial shyness, my biggest concern became word choice and trying to avoid awkward euphemisms. Now I enjoy writing love scenes, but creating a decent love scene is always a challenge.
