How to Write Your First Make-Out Scene (In 9 Easy Steps): For Serious
(PRE-BLOG ANNOUNCEMENT: This is my last Sunday update! From now on, I’m switching to WEEKLY MONDAY POSTS. Just to keep you on your toes.)
Once upon a time, I wrote a comedic blog entry making fun of my own embarrassment about writing a make-out scene.
Then, I got a stats package for my website, and realized that it’s consistently my most popular entry. Lots of writers are searching for tips on writing make-out scenes, and Google was taking them all to my humorous essay. Which probably wasn’t very helpful.
So let me make it up to all those disappointed writers right here. Get ready, folks, because here it is, for realsies, no-take-backsies:
How to Write Your First Make-Out Scene*
~in 9 easy steps~
*but actually for real this time, from my own very limited writing experience
1. If you don’t want to write it, don’t.
Don’t include a make-out scene because you feel like you have to. If it’s fanfiction, and everyone else in your ship is doing it — who cares? You’re not everyone else. If you feel like you have to be explicit because your novel is adult, not MG — why? How will it serve your story? It’s up to you what to include.
If you’ve considered it carefully, and your story absolutely needs this scene, but you really, really don’t want to write it and not just because you’re embarrassed — maybe you’re not writing the story you really want to write. That’s okay. Try again.
2. Write down a list of all the people you’re scared might read your make-out scene.
2a. Tear it up.
One of the scariest parts of writing a kissing, make-out, or sex scene is worrying that you’re going to embarrass yourself somehow. What if your readers think your character is you? What if your own sexual experience is limited, and you get something wrong, and your readers know? What if your mom reads it?
If you write every word of your make-out scene imagining other people disapproving of it, it’s not going to be a very good scene, and you’re not going to have much fun writing it (which is also likely to make it Not A Very Good Scene).
3. Even if you don’t think you know much, ground scenes in what you do know.
You don’t need to have made out with someone to write a good make-out scene, just like you don’t need to have fought alien spies on a steampunk dirigible to write a good scene about someone fighting alien spies on a steampunk dirigible. But you DO need to ground any scene in an emotion or sensation you can inhabit.
Maybe the idea of making out is really hot — or disgusting — for you. Convey that. Maybe you’re scared of making out but excited about it at the same time. Okay, convey that.
And for goodness’ sake, don’t worry that you’re getting stuff wrong. Maybe you are. So what? Focus on getting what you do know right.
4. Accept that some people are going to think your scene is silly, wrong, or gross.
It’s impossible to write a scene that will make everyone feel exactly the way you want them to. Readers bring different things to the table. If nobody interprets your scene the way you intend, then you might need to revise, but don’t try to reader-proof your scene. You can’t, especially with something as idiosyncratic as sexuality.
5. Figure out why you’re writing this scene for this story.
If you’re writing romance, maybe it’s supposed to titillate. Or move the plot forward. Maybe you need it for character development. Or to throw the reader off-track regarding a mystery. Or to tell the reader about safe sexual practices because you’re writing educational fiction. Your scene might need to do one of these things, many of these things, or something else completely different. But once you know what your goal is, you’ll be able to shoot for a tone that will help you achieve it.
For example, talking like a medical textbook likely won’t help you titillate (except to certain specific audiences); if you need this scene to move the plot forward, you’ll likely want to concentrate on specific aspects of what’s happening, like emotional revelation or lack thereof, or the fact that Jamie has already hooked up with Pat in this story, and that’s why Leslie and Pat fight later on.
6. Get messy.
Even writers who plow through first drafts of every other kind of scene, trusting to their future selves to make it better, can get stuck on having the same no-fear attitude with first drafts of make-out scenes. Why?
For me, it’s because if other people somehow get their hands on my other first drafts, all they’ll think is that I’m a bad writer, which is OK, because I know I’m not. But if they read my first drafts of a make-out scene, they might also think I’m Bad At Making Out. Which part of me is kind of scared I am. So it’s a lot easier to get hung up on those scenes.
Protip: don’t. Because, honestly? NOBODY BUT YOU CARES ABOUT YOUR FIRST DRAFTS OF MAKE-OUT SCENES.
7. Remember that where you’re going, you don’t need no rules.
Sometimes, it feels like it would be a lot easier if the Writing Gods handed a list of appropriate words and acts for various genres (“YA: OK to mention genitals by name, no kink, metaphors preferred; MG: first base only”)
Unfortunately, there’s no magic style guide that will tell you when it’s better or worse to write “I was drowning in a pool of shining love transcendent as an angel’s tear” instead of “orgasm vagina sex erection.” You have to do what you do with any other kind of writing: write the best you can using your own feelings as a guide, and then re-evaluate and revise.
8. Write the damn scene.
Why are you even still reading this?
9. Then get feedback and revise.
Omigod, like, a million times.
Good luck.