The Inspiration Trifecta for Romance Writing
By: Harper Kincaid
I was recently on an all women’s pilgrimage to the Middle East and it was while walking through the Old City of Jerusalem when a group of ladies from South Africa surrounded me and asked:
“So, where do you get the inspiration for you romance novels?”
“Your husband must be a very happy man!”
“How can you come up with new ideas after almost twenty years of marriage?”
Nothing like talking about writing hot and heavy sex scenes while walking by religious men in black who swerve into walls in order to avoid touching you by accident.
Alright, so besides from the incongruent setting and the obvious boundary issue within my group, these women asked some excellent questions, which I’m sure others have wondered as well. All writers have their own process and one should not be regarded as the sole, inherently superior prescription over the other. That said, the following are my tried-and-true methods for inspiration to the sexy story:
Girl Talk
God bless my women friends. They’re the ones we can truly let it all out with – our pig-snort laughs, our ugly cries. They keep our secrets and forgive our bad choices and we do the same for them.
And as long as you change a few key facts and the names? They’ll spill some really juicy stuff for your next romance novel.
Now I don’t know about you, but if I want the sweeter stuff, the stories about how people met or how someone’s husband got out of the doghouse, I can hear those with a group of friends over a bottle of wine. Not a huge conquest as a writer.
However, you want the juicy bits? Whether it’s the secret three-way your best friend had in college or her clandestine affair with that smokin’ hot professor everyone was after, then keep the wine and lose the sorority reunion.
Trust me…she wants to tell you. She’s been keeping that delicious morsel under lock and key in her diary since shoulder pads were in fashion and the idea of her story immortalized in some way is a thrill like no other. Especially if no one will ever know that naughty vixen in your latest release was the current PTA president.
Old Boyfriends
I have been married for almost twenty years, so I have to admit; it feels like my dating/old boyfriend life was back in 1913. Some of them were very sweet boys and others were genuinely and truly awful. I hold no grudges, however, because – let’s say it straight – I chose each and every one of them. And there’s an old saying in New Orleans, where I lived for a few years: that’ll learn ya.
Those experiences and years offered heady fodder for scenes and stories for my books, although not always for the sexy. Much to the chagrin of a couple of exes, I have used lines from some particular lame-ass break-ups; words that would make their current spouses cringe. Ironically, those are the ones who message me on Facebook and ask when I’ll write something good about them. And I say, “what makes you think any of this is about you at all?”
Porn
For the record, I’m a proud feminist and yes, I like porn. Do I understand that no little girl – or boy -grows up and says “Mommy, I want to grow up to be a porn star!” Yeah, I get that…and I understand that what I’m seeing may or may not be proof that something has gone really really wrong for someone along the way.
Does that bother me? Sure it does. Do I think that’s the entire porn industry? I know for a fact it isn’t. But I am not here to debate the exploitive nature of porn. It is. Case closed. And here’s another dirty little secret: porn thrives because what we find abhorrent in our normal, daily lives we – sometimes – find to be a turn-on sexually. Sexuality is a deep, dark, complicated mosh pit of unpolitically correctness. Accept it. Deal with it. Then use it for your writing because if it turns you on, it will most likely flip someone else’s switch as well.
Because the more honest you are – the more you get into your dark and sexy, your ugly and vulnerable, the more likely you’ll touch an unexplored place in one of your readers, which may spark his or her own personal revolution. Or at least offer them a good story for an afternoon. And that, is everything.
Find HARPER KINCAID here: @HarperKincaid / Facebook / Website /
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BIND ME BEFORE YOU GO
A sexy category romance from Entangled’s Brazen imprint…
His heart is bound tighter than the bondage he craves…
Determined to put her past behind her, Cassidy Peyton moves to the Big Apple. But New York has a few dark secrets of its own, including Serve, an exclusive BDSM club. It’s a place she isn’t sure she’s ready for, until she sees him watching her. Hot. Intent. Knowing. With eyes that leave her stomach tied in knots, because the loneliness he’s trying to hide matches her own.
Security expert David Cavill has more secrets than any man should. Secrets that forever shut down any possibility of love, marriage, or family. Yet Cassidy draws him in, an intoxicating combination of strength, candor, and sensuality that David can’t resist. But as their bond deepens, Cassidy must decide if she can love a man whose heart is bound tighter than the form of bondage he craves…
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