Heart-Racing Scenes: What Do Suspense and Sex Scenes Have in Common?

Sweaty palms. Flutters in your stomach. An uptick in your heart rate. Did you just read a scene in a dilapidated old building with a detective in pursuit of a serial killer? Or did you read a scene where the romantic leads finally tumble into bed (or for our sweet romance readers, did you just experience the inevitable hand flex moment)? Without seeing the text on the page, I would assert it is hard to tell.

One might think that writing suspense and romance would be akin to comparing apples and oranges, but really, they are two sides of the same coin. Why do you think the Romantic Suspense sub-genre is so popular?

(Writing Scenes With Your Senses.)

The biggest thing about these two types of scenes? The reader needs to feel something. And not just any something, something big. Any reader knows what I am talking about: the kind of feeling that makes you sit up from your cocoon of cozy blankets, the kind of feeling that makes you want to cheer (or scream), the kind of feeling that has you flipping pages faster than you thought your eyes could read.

So, what technical writing elements do these two types of scenes have in common? Simple: Each of these scenes focus on showing your readers what your characters see and what they feel. As a writer, these scenes need to be vivid and exciting; they need to keep your readers on the edge of their seats (either figuratively or literally). This is just one more variation of the ‘show, don’t tell’ tenet of writing, but to the extreme.

While writing is a subjective art to perform and consume, there are three major things suspenseful or intimate scenes must have or do.

There is a time and a place for descriptive settings and internal contemplation, but if a reader is going to be in the moment of the suspenseful or spicy scene, then the setting and sensations must be tight. Instead of five senses, pick two or three key ones.

Maybe the character experiences the cool fog on their face in an alleyway and the echo of steps on cobblestones. Maybe the smell of perfume and the heat of their lover’s body pressed against their own is all that is required by the reader. Whatever senses and sensations are chosen, they must count as more than just simple words on a page.

Any author knows not to waste words on the page, when fewer could get the job done; this applies for any scene. But, when the mystery is closing in on the big reveal, or the main characters finally realize they cannot stay apart for one second longer, readers want the action.

Characters are experiencing these revelations, emotions, and sensations rapidly, and the reader should too. These types of scenes do not include filler words, avoid overusing predicate statements, and eschew fancy prose. Now is the time to keep your language precise and succinct.

While hopping points of view (POVs) should always be avoided (aka “head-hopping”), the scenes with the highest tension should always have a deeply rooted sense of their character and more importantly what that character observes and experiences. This is the point in the story where small inconsistencies in personality (e.g. observations and reactions) will be magnified ten-fold.

So, while it may be fair to show everything a character can see, it is more important to understand the characters so well that the reader can experience exactly what they would see. Is the character a musician? Maybe the haunting or melodic music they hear sets the mood. Has the character grown up near the ocean? The character may enjoy the smell of the ocean breeze while awaiting their lover or crinkle their nose at the fetid odor of an unkempt harbor.

Suspense and sex scenes are constructed to elicit intense emotional responses; they require carefully chosen prose and intricately styled settings. Key senses, vivid and succinct language, and deeply rooted sense of characters create the effects for both. If you follow these tenets, the next time you are writing a big mystery reveal, or the final culmination of a slow burn romance, you can be sure you created something impactful, something sincere, and something that readers cannot stop consuming.

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