This article was developed from part of my Let’s Talk About Sex Workshop presented at #RWAus22, exploring the usefulness (or otherwise) of heat levels and other labels to describe sex in romance.
I’ve taken that workshop session and developed it into an ongoing series of sex in romance articles for Heart’s Talk (the monthly magazine from the Romance Writers of Australia) and those articles will eventually end up published here.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear a romance described as ‘clean,’ my hackles go up, and I’m ready to throw down and fight dirty.
Because, as every writer knows, the opposite of clean (which in this context is used to describe a romance without open door sex) is dirty.
And the words and labels we choose to identify things are powerful. They have meaning.
Synonyms for dirty include soiled, unclean, contaminated, filthy, obscene, pornographic, coarse, sordid, lewd, and indecent, none of which are proper or useful descriptors for romance.
Sex isn’t dirty, unless you want it to be.
And using ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ to describe romance in this way, frankly, feels like slut-shaming to me.
But my repeated efforts to come up with alternatives haven’t come to much.
At a fundamental level, authors choose to put sex or intimacy into their stories in three broad ways:
- no sex: where intimacy doesn’t progress past hugging, maybe light kissing, and there is no suggestion of a love scene on page;
- closed door: where kissing and hugging happen, and there is some sexual tension on page, but any actual sexual activity happens behind closed doors; and
- open door: where the sex happens, and we see it on the page.
At the next level, there are three broad categories of sex on the page:
- euphemistic: the sex isn’t graphic, the language is generally euphemistic, and the activities are fairly ‘mainstream’ (although, to be fair, what is considered ‘mainstream’ activity is also changing). I put Anne Gracie and Nora Roberts into this category.
- explicit: where the sex is graphic, the language more direct, and the activities often more varied. Think Sarah Maclean or Kylie Scott.
- erotic: where the sex is as for explicit, but the sexual activity is fundamental to the plot of the story (and erotic romance is not erotica – the point of erotica is the sex, the titillation, and the pleasure – no plot, no character development, nor any HEA is required). For great erotic romance, try Nicola Davidson or Sierra Simone.
Every one of these choices is valid.
But they’re not marketing catchy like clean or sweet, or spicy or sexy.
So, where does this leave us?
While things aren’t that much clearer, over the last few years I have seen a shift in #Romancelandia and we’re a little more thoughtful than when we started about the words we use.
There certainly doesn’t (yet) appear to be a one-size-fits-all approach to classifying sex in romance. I’ve seen some great attempts – in particular the scale used to grade the content in RomanceClass books – but those scales don’t have application across the breadth of #Romancelandia.
And the terms clean and sweet, and all the synonyms the Thesaurus can provide, aren’t all that great as a heat descriptor because closed door romance can be sexy as hell, while erotic romance can also be sweet.
Then there’s attempts at heat level ratings – whether they be flames or chilis or eggplants. Which can be sort of useful, but sort of not, because my three or five chili read may not be your three or five chili read.
Particularly given I like my five chili reads to be pretty bonkers.
To me, this all boils down to the promise of your premise, which gives some context to those words and heat scales. And, irrespective of which end of the sex scale you’re on (whether it’s the euphemistic or the erotic) sex on the page MUST have relevance to your characters and their stories.
You can’t just ‘insert sex scene here’ if the scene (or the act, if we’re talking erotic romance) doesn’t develop something with respect to your characters or your plot. When it’s done well, sex in every romance is fundamental to the progress of the stories and the characters.
So, I leave you with this thought.
There are as many approaches to writing sex as there are romance writers. Everyone’s approach is different, you don’t NEED to have sex for your romance to sell (or vice versa), and there is no wrong way to tell your stories, because there is a market for pretty much EVERYTHING.
I mean, have you read C. M. Nascosta? She’s fabulous, but she writes minotaurs and moth men and, interestingly, brands herself as high heat – always sweet, so kinda proves my point, but I digress.
Don’t force your characters to swing from the chandeliers if that’s not your thing, but if it is… write YOUR story my friends.
Because I want to read ALL your books!
This post was originally published in the Romance Writers of Australia Hearts Talk October 2022
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