How Do You Wrap Up Your Love Scenes?

by Leslie Kelly (aka Leslie Parrish)

Probably like most people, whenever I hear the term “wrapping things up” I think of finishing something. Bringing it to a close. But despite the title of this blog, I’m not here to talk about how to put the finishing touches on a steamy sex scene.

Actually, I’m talking more about the paper, ribbons and bows kind of wrapping.

Believe me, I don’t consider writing love scenes a gift. They’re among the hardest scenes in any book, and the more I’ve written, the more difficult they’ve become. That said, I do think of those scenes as being wrapped up in something, in this case, the trappings of the story. For me, those trappings set the tone for every love scene and also dictate when they take place, what the mood will be like, and how far I’ll take them.

I’ve written a lot of funny, sexy contemporary romance novels for some of Harlequin’s steamiest lines. In most of those stories, the sexy scenes come wrapped up with brightly-colored, happy paper or, just as often, with sultry, red-satin bows. In other words, they come after a lot of back-and-forth banter, serious innuendo, flirting, and a slow, steady rise of pure heat that commences from the moment the hero and heroine first meet. I had no problem writing sex scenes based on all the other fun, sexy things in which they are wrapped.

That was my process, it always worked for me, and it served me well for a whole lot of books. Then something changed. After the ups and downs in the contemporary market, I decided to play around with my writing and try to delve a little deeper into my other literary love—thrillers. I wanted to blend the dark stuff with the character based romances I so enjoy. To my delight, I was able to sell a romantic-thriller trilogy to NAL.

The wrapping changed. The flirting, laugh-out-loud moments, double entendres and innuendo were nearly nonexistent. Instead, there was darkness and fear. Brilliant FBI agents against ruthless killers. Twists lurking on every page. Oh, don’t get me wrong—my writing voice would never allow me to write an entire novel without any lighter moments or flirtation. But there aren’t many. Certainly not enough to change the fact that these books are wrapped in danger and tension.

So the love scenes had to be, too.

As I really delved into the books, I had to stop and think about how to wrap the love scenes without those red satin bows or effervescent, sparkly paper. The sex was no longer the explosive culmination of chapters of sexual tension, in fact, it usually came at the climax of a story arc filled with harrowing tension or drama. And I really wasn’t sure it was working. Changing gears mid-career is hard enough, I suddenly found myself wondering if I could trust my own judgment about something as monumental as the love scene in a romance novel.

Then it hit me. I realized that despite the outer layers, the most basic, elemental wrapping of all my love scenes was exactly the same, no matter what I was writing. In these new books, just like in my previous ones, all the love scenes are wrapped up in emotion. For all the laughter and the brightly colored moments in my romantic comedies, and the darkness and twisty danger in the romantic thrillers, there is always, at the very core, a deep well of emotion between the characters when they make love. No matter how I package it, that emotional connection between two people is always going to be the innermost layer—the tissue paper, if you will—of the wrap job.

Whew. Once I’d reached that realization, the rest of the love scenes in the series were so much easier to write.

I did, however, have one more bit of wrapping I needed to work on with the new books. It sounds silly, but I had to really think about that “To/From” tag. How could I present a reader with a dark, dangerous thrill ride with a “From Leslie Kelly” tag on the front cover?

Answer? I couldn’t. Which is why the from tag has a completely different name on it: Leslie Parrish. Hopefully readers will still like everything inside, but at least this way I know nobody’s opening the package looking for Leslie Kelly sexy humor and instead getting serial killers and a high body count.

Oh, by the way, if you happen to open up one of those “packages” I do hope you’ll enjoy it—and will let me know if the wrapping worked for you!

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