Season 2, Episode 51: Mel Nails Her Sex Scene
(Pun Intended)
Melanie gets her turn in the time-looping barrel this week (finally!). In the first part of her chapter, she was interrupting the narrative with some unhelpful backtracking. It wasn't moving the present story forward. As Jennie Nash says, "things were happening...offstage". Mel thinks she was attempting a flashback, or trying to work some offstage information into the narrative, but it stood out like a sore thumb. On the upside, the back half of the chapter went swimmingly, and all Kemlo had to do was say "Hey, you want to fix that first half of the chapter? You know that stuff you did in the end of the chapter? DO THAT."
Turns out, the time-looping half of the chapter was newer, and it was being integrated into first-draft work. Things have to unfold in sequence - you can't go back and forth, back and forth, with no consistency.
Mel admits she was super stressed out about her sex scene and just wasn't focusing on the rest of the chapter! But all's well that ends well, and the chapter ended well. Kemlo was happy with how the scene went, and it makes sense for the characters and where they're at in the plot. Does it matter that it's more of a fade-to-black than explicit sex scene? No, because this isn't romance - other genres are more forgiving. There are certain expectations for sex scenes in romance novels that don't exist in the same way in other adult fiction.
So, how did she do it? "I had everything I needed in the chapter except the actual sex scene - every other part of the chapter had been drafted so many times! I admit I left it until the last minute, but it worked!" Shoutout to MomWrites favorite romance writer Michelle Hazen, (@michellehazen on Twitter, michellehazen.com - UNBREAK ME and other novels at your favorite indie bookstore, online, or where ever fine books are sold) whose advice and support is always appreciated!
More of Kemlo's advice centers around what the reader needs to see about what Mel's protagonist knows and expects in the rest of the chapter - things that make scenes stronger include more of the protagonist's decision-making process, as well as the side-characters and what they're up to, what their objectives are. Let them wrestle with their choices like we wrestle with ours in the real world. Remember, they're all living out their own story too, and while it's challenging to maintain these threads to the end of the book, your reader wants to know what happens to all of these people, and you want your reader to want more of this, more of them, more of your story.
