Sinking into Dialogue
How to Suck in your Reader and Leave Her Panting
Dialogue is the most overlooked and crucial part of erotica and erotic romance. Okay, a bunch of you are laughing, but it’s true. The mind is really the most erotic organ. Without involving the mind in the sex of a written work, but only for the value of the sex act alone, you have porn. Once the mind is being enticed, you have erotica or erotic romance. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have sex with a guy who is a piece of eye candy but has no sign of a brain. I prefer my men to have brains and brawn, and in that order. Did I mention he has to have a sense of humor? I want a man who can engage in verbal foreplay way before the actual sexual act occurs.
Dialogue in erotic romance can be used in many different ways. There can be the use of the double entendre where the sexual connotation is there, but no actual graphic language is used. Please note the title of this blog. An example of the double entendre can be seen below in Rose, a romantic comedy, excerpted with the author, Bobbye Terry’s permission. This romance is not classified as erotic, but the sexual connotation is evident.:
“Women say I’m not as they first expect. Once I get to know them and allow them to see the real me, exposed, hiding nothing at all, I grow on them. The closer they get to me, the more they like the whole package. In fact they embrace it. I guess you can say I suck them in. Or maybe it’s just because I get so deep into them. But, most are very surprised at how much there really is to me and they open up. I don’t even have to pump them for…” He stared at her with the blank, innocent stare of a choir boy. “Information.”
He didn’t say one slang word for sex, not one truly inappropriate thing, but the heroine is soaking wet. That’s verbal foreplay, my friends.
Sometimes double entendre doesn’t work. It can be a turn-on for the character and the reader to hear what the lovers say while getting ready to have sex, like below from All for Lust, releasing through Turquoise Morning Press in June:
Phoebe opened the door. “Why, Collin. I never expected to see…”
He pushed her back in the room, shut the door behind him and pinned her up against the wall. “Don’t waste time with pleasantries.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
“Some things I make my business to find out. Especially when a woman makes it clear she wants sex every bit as much as I do.” He leaned into her, making full body contact and put his hand under her chin. “I have wanted to sink into you from the first minute I saw you behind that desk. Watching those pert little breasts, aching to rub them into hard nubs, thinking of that ***, only inches from the bottom of your skirt. How wet it would be as I played with your ***, sucked on you ‘til you moaned low in your throat….”
Here’s an example from Red Hot Lightning, now available from Turquoise Morning Press:
“If you call that a quickie, I want to do it again.”
His chest rocked hers as he laughed. “You will. But not until after the marathon. First, a little slow foreplay. I get a chance to explore those rosebud breasts and that tight ass. Roam my fingers around every inch of your body while you do the same to mine. You can stroke me and…”
Of course, there’s a lot more dialogue in these works, a lot of it naughty, but this isn’t a content-warning blog site and you get the drift anyway. Talk like your characters would. No two will talk exactly alike. They’ll all have their own style and way about them. Be true to them as you tell the story and don’t do or say anything they wouldn’t. Whatever a writer does, she should never carry on a lengthy conversation in the middle of sex. It makes me laugh just to think of it. I mean, how engaged can two lovers be if they can carry on a conversation then? Nope, by that time, all bets are off.
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Stormy Knight is a true southern girl: sweet, sassy and oh so sexy behind closed doors. She loves to look at snow as long as she does it from inside a ski lodge with a big mug of hot chocolate and a handsome guy. However, at her core, she is a child of the winds and the water, loving the warm climates. Partial to the ocean, she has spent many hours on the beach and piers of The Outer Banks, Fort Pierce and Fort Myers, Florida. Now she lives In Texas but her heart still bleeds Carolina Blue. Her latest short works at Sapphire Nights Books include Red Hot Lightning, Blown Away, and Better at Midnight (Steaming Quickies). Stormy’s first novella in The Three Bustiers series, All for Lust, debuts in June.
Great blog, very interesting, and so true!! Dialogue is so important!
Great post.
LOL! Awesome