So once again, the topic of sex scenes in a romance came up a while back while I was talking to someone. It made me analyze a subject I haven’t thought about in a long time. I believe it was back in 2009 when I was at a crossroads in what to do with my romances. I had just started writing romances, and I had to decide what kind of romance writer would I be? Would I be the traditional Christian romance writer who did the “squeaky clean” policy, or would I veer off into a path that very few Christian romances writers would pursue? Originally, I did write them without the sex scenes. The problem was that the stories felt incomplete to me.
Eye of the Beholder was the book that convinced me to add them in. I tried writing that book without those scenes, and it just wasn’t working. There was a void in the story. The love scenes between Dave and Mary needed to be there in order to understand how his love made her feel beautiful. She needed to be desired on an intimate level. And I had to show it in order for that to come across. After Eye of the Beholder, I wrote His Redeeming Bride, and that also needed those scenes to show how healing intimate moments were for Neil and Sarah. I could have “told” you it brought them closer together, but showing it added a lawyer of depth that made the story stronger.
Since then, I have realized that I learned a lot about the characters by the way they treat each other in the bedroom. Sometimes I realize they learn something about the other they didn’t before. At other times, I learn something about the character through the scene. For example, in The Convenient Mail Order Bride, I wrote, “He’d never felt so close to another person. For the first time in his life, he was whole. All along, a part of him had been missing and he didn’t know it until now.” The truth is, I didn’t know that about him, either, until that moment, and I never would have known it if I hadn’t written the intimate scene that accompanied those sentences. My point is that writing those scenes are important to the story because they add a layer to the characters I can’t otherwise show (or even learn from). Those layers aren’t always serious. Sometimes they are lighthearted, like in Taming the Viscountess. I write them for what is right for the characters in the story.
This is where I went off-tangent for a bit, but I think this should be addressed, so I left this in my blog post:
It’s sad that in the Christian sphere, people have taken something beautiful that God created and decided it’s wrong to write about it. I also think a lot of Christian writers should add more depth to the thrillers and horror stories they write. They don’t go dark enough for the story lines they are using. Life can get dark. There’s no sense in avoiding it. If you are going to reach deep into the human experience and make a story about it, then it needs to resonate on the written page. In my opinion, Christian fiction would be a lot more interesting if Christians weren’t afraid to address mature themes. Regardless of the genre, I like to see Christians taking a story and diving deep into it instead of brushing over it with a “Pollyanna” approach. I’d love to consume more Christian content that wasn’t watered down. Watered-down stuff is boring. Boring is forgettable.
Back to the subject of the actual post:
I understand if a writer decides to leave sex scenes out. I have no problem with that. But I don’t understand why those people think all Christian writers need to approach their romances the same way. I’m not writing these scenes to arouse. I’m writing them to advance the story. I realize that they can arouse simply by the nature of the subject, but then, I think about other subjects a person can write in their books and how those subjects also bring forth some response within us.
I spent a couple of chapters writing Loving Eliza and feeling hungry because she hadn’t had a full stomach in for days. I would even eat a full meal before writing those scenes and would feel like hungry. To this day, I still think that’s the strangest thing I ever experienced as a writer. I remember being really angry after writing scenes in The Fugitive’s Bride because Wade was so mad at Charles. After writing those scenes, I had to stop myself from banging doors or snapping at my family. It took effort to separate out what my character felt from my own personal life. (I was actually happy so it was weird how writing changed that.) The same is true for depression. When a character is sad, I’ll cry and be all melancholy. I was relieved when Amanda finally started feeling like it was okay for her to accept Richard’s love in Wagon Trail Bride. That meant I no longer had to feel so depressed. My husband thought I was crazy. He never understood why I was moping around the house during that time. When I wrote Return of the Aliens, I spent weeks nearly jumping out of my skin because the characters were so spooked, especially Alex who had those episodes of terror. My point in this rambling is that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. If a writer is fully emerged in the story, the writer will experience every single thing the characters do. That’s what makes for good writing. It’s a plus if the writer can make the reader feel that way, too.
So I write sex scenes for that reason. I feel the stories are more complete when I add them to the book. If that’s not your cup of tea, you don’t have to read them. There are a ton of romances out there without sex scenes in them. But I find very few Christian romance writers who do add them in. It makes it hard to cross promote when you don’t find others like you. It’s unfortunate that Rose Gordon stopped writing because she was one who did. I don’t know of any others. If anyone does, I would love to find their books. Hopefully, they will be on audiobook so I can listen to their work.
Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog 
I would like to write more sex scenes into my stories. The problem is, the scene needs to fit for me to write that. Otherwise, I just glance over it or hint at it, and leave the rest up to reader imagination. Lately, there haven’t been many stories where I felt like writing a sex scene, but I’ll keep an eye out in case such an opportunity presents itself.
And about your tangent: yeah, a lot of the major religions’ attitudes towards mature themes are weird. Especially sex, which is something God put in us as part of the design. I sometimes think religion gets all twisted up about sex less because of holiness or whatever and more because of how property used to be divided between heirs and how sex could throw a wrench in the normal process. Maybe priests felt the need to give a holy reason to stay chaste to cut down on legal cases involving property.
But that’s just my uninformed opinion. Feel free to ignore it if you want.
Oh, I agree. The sex scene needs to be necessary or else there’s no point in adding it. I have a couple of romances that don’t have more than a kiss in them.
I don’t understand how religion looks at sex. I’m glad to hear it’s not just the Christian one. I know about other religions on paper, like what they believe about God and salvation, but I don’t really know what it’s like to live in that faith. There could be something about property division that has led to how they view sex. I never considered it from that angle, but it makes sense.
I find a lot of things make more sense when you look at things like money and power structures.
They do. I think the motive behind just about everything can be seen through that lens.
Agreed.
I enjoyed this blog today, that there are authors who know sex, love, is necessary in a romance story. It does not need to be explicit , and go into the nitty gritty details. We humans want to be touched, hugged, hear words of endearment, from someone we love. It is a basic human need, and has been going on in one way or another since time began.
And even as a Christian I know without sex, I would not be here.
I had wonderful parents, they were open and truthful to my questions.
What really annoys me is that contemporary novels go a bit off the rail. It takes 3
chapters just to get the deed done. I flip a lot of pages.
I enjoy the “John Pickett Mysteries” by Sherry Cobb South :
Callie Hutton’s series the “Victorian Book Club Mysteries.”
and Ashley Gardner’s “Captain Lacey Series ”
I have often wondered where Rose Gordon has disappeared to. I miss her books
and I still have many of them in my computer library. I thought perhaps she is
writing under a different name.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for beautifully presenting the reason why love and sex go hand-in-hand.
I will check those books out. Thank you for the recommendations!
I miss Rose Gordon, too. I have no idea what she’s doing these days. Sometimes I miss her. She has a lot of talent. The romance community is worse off without her.
I totally agree with your reasoning. I also think the books are more complete with the love scenes. The couples are married and making love is one of the best parts of marriage. I enjoy the characters and their stories, and I enjoy reading about them having that close and special connection. They grow in confidence. Their relationships feel more complete. I think it’s beautiful.
I’ve read books where the story ends right when the couple gets together and I feel cheated that I didn’t get to enjoy more of their growing relationship as a team.
I like your way best. Thanks for writing.
Your reply made it, but it showed up in the spam folder. I’m surprised since that hasn’t happened before. I wonder what changes WordPress is making behind the scenes. If I didn’t get so much actual spam (one had a link to some weird auto site), I would allow anyone to comment without needing approval.
You know how I feel about your comment since we discussed in an email. 🙂 I hope next time, you don’t get kicked to spam, but I will keep a look out in that folder in case you do.
I also miss Rose. 😦
So I totally get sex and love going hand in hand. But I have to remember my audience, which could be people from church. Right now, one of my friends from church has Tristan’s Redemption in her shopping cart. I appreciate that your sex scenes are only between married people. I’m trying to figure out how to reconcile a true sex scene with a “behind closed doors” scene. Especially in the book I’m writing (or trying to write, LOL) because it’s a little dark, and I’m trying to make the romance intense without making it explicit. It’s a fine line.
I hope wherever Rose is, she’s happy.
It’s not always the church crowd that doesn’t like to read sex in romances. You don’t really know what people are going to want when they pick up a book, and I think one of the things that makes romance the most challenging genre is that the heat level covers such a wide spectrum. I end up clicking the “mature” box when I publish my books because I don’t consider my content suitable for anyone under 18. There are a lot of romance authors who don’t because they fear being “hidden” at the retailer. The only place I have noticed that will hide you is Amazon (though they had no trouble promoting the Fifty Shades series). That “mature” content box can actually be very helpful to weed out people who want steamy content and those who don’t. Also, putting in keywords to specify heat levels like “clean and wholesome” or “steamy and sexy” would be beneficial. Sometimes I choose a cover to convey that my book has steamy content, but I can’t always find the right models to fit what I’m looking for, so I will end up reverting to a cover that doesn’t convey it. I think it would be nice if retailers had a rating scale with a definition of what each level means. Like 1 would be, “No sex. Just kissing.” Then 2 could be, “Kissing on the page. Sexy times off the page.” And go all the way up to 4 or 5. That would really help readers out when they are browsing romances. I think that would be better than the “mature” box because it narrows down how much sex is in the book.
Is the book you’re working on going to be under your pen name or this one? I might be able to help you out in the area of some spice without going too far. I’ve read a variety of romances over the years.